Life or something like shit

I came into IIT expecting a lot. And I got more than a lot, more like acres. This place is like HUGE. There is no parking lot, but there’s a lot. The amount of trees in this place is unimaginable. Apart from the Gymnosperm and Angiosperm kinds, there are the trees with numbers on them, such as Tree No. 38, tree no. 138 and tree no. x with 130 < x < 140. I came in expecting professors with brainwaves coming out of their ears, and other professors measuring these using brainwave-o-meters. I came in expecting students to find unbelievable solutions such as turn on the switch to indecipherable problems such as why the computer wouldn’t start. I came in expecting to find brainiacs in ill-fitting shirts and with messed up hair because they had stayed up all night. Not thinking up solutions to Schrödinger’s equations, but watching the latest sitcom from NBC. I came in expecting all this. And I found them.

One of the things that I most admired in my seniors was their ability to sleep in class without the professor being able to discern the same. This was a very important skill to have as it ensured that the body got its required amount of sleep, which had been lost at night on the above-mentioned sitcom. Oh, apart from that, they also had something or the other to do with this thing called the Lit-Soc. The Lit-Soc is this thing, which happens in my college, which doesn’t amount to the tiniest bit of hair on a rodent’s posterior, except for one big cup at the end of it all. Which you can get in any elec course without much effort anyway. Without any effort, actually.

And so, since I’m an Indian, and no Indian has ever had an original idea, I decided to do something else, to make my wonderfully incomplete life even more incomplete. I read classics which I couldn’t make head or tail of just because they were classics. I watched Black and White movies which even their directors would’ve forgotten having made. I played football as a two-footed winger whenever I had the opportunity, and finally got two and half minutes at right-back in the only match we played. I went to quizzes and stared blankly at the paper - the Mass Transfer/Equilibrium Operations kind of quizzes. I was desperate to be recognized as he-who-does-something-else by the band of we-all-do-something-else people. I ran from here to there and back here again. Sometimes, I just ran.

And then I found the Hat.

The Hat. It’s very difficult to describe completely what the hat is about, and I can never do justice to it. But I can try. I’ve seen cricketers kiss their helmets when they score a century, and I’ve always wondered what made them kiss that smelly, plastic object when their lips would’ve done much better in contact with another pair of lips, attached to a fragrant, organic being of the opposite sex. I’ve wondered what made them feel so strongly about something. The hat helped me understand.

The hat is the epitome of the simplicity of genius. Its power lies in its non-existence, its secret lies in its openness. It’s the ultimate paradox. To wear the hat is to experience a feeling like never before. With the hat on, you get the feeling of having done something to stir the innermost rumblings of any heart. You’ve made them feel insignificant, unwanted, ignored for that small period of time. You’ve made them stop talking, and so By Douglas Adams’ hypothesis, their brain starts to slowly grind into motion. You’ve done something that would make them remember you forever.

You’ve made them think. For once.

The hat can be worn to anyone. Professors, seniors, juniors, friends, irritating cell-phone company callers, annoying Xerox machine characters… anyone. The beauty of the hat is in the universality of its use. And it’s not that the usage of the hat is limited to people. The hat can be worn to things too, such as Computational Techniques quizzes, or assignments, or classes. Or End sems. Whatever. The point is, once you’ve worn the hat, you’re liberated. From the mundane, from the boring, from the routine, from the inconsequential.

It is difficult to totally describe what the Hat can do. And the hat says that this is enough about itself for now, and it shall be so. For the hat is never wrong. It doesn't matter what kind you have on. It could be a sombrero, a felt-hat, a bowler or a top-hat. All that matters is that it's there, or actually not there. For as said before, it's the non-existence of the hat which really makes its presence felt. Like sometimes when you feel that silence is very loud.

This could go on and on, but that would be disrespecting the hat, and all that it stands for. It’s got nothing do with memories being butterflies and you shouldn’t stick em to papers and all that. It’s just that you don’t talk about the hat. That’s all.

Amen.

P.S: I put this post up, and by some weird machination of Google's Edit function, it got deleted. But I wore the hat and reproduced it. From memory. Thus the hat also doubles as a thinking cap. See?

November Rain

The title has nothing at all do with the following story. It's merely the song playing on my computer right now.

Once upon a time, there was a rich but stingy old man who slept in his barn because he just really really liked his horses. He was very fond of them and he didn’t want any harm to come to them. He had a lot of enemies and he wanted to make sure all his horses had their heads on their sleek shoulders, and not on his bed, as he had seen in the movie The Godfather. Besides, if he was to sleep with some animal, he rather preferred that it was his horses than, say, his fish. If he was sleeping with the fishes, it would mean that he was no longer part of the realm of the living and had left his mortal body behind to ascend to heaven, or descend to hell, whichever. Basically, it would mean he was dead. This again from The Godfather. Besides, it was not that he was sleeping in the smelly barn with all this hay around without reason. A hitchhiker had come by a few hours ago, and had offered to give him 267.75 bucks for letting him sleep in his house tonight. This was an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he’s let him have the house. And if you haven’t figured by now, the old man was obsessed with The Godfather.

It wasn’t that the old man was in desperate need of money. He had half the GDP of Somalia locked up in numbered accounts in Switzerland. He had purchased land which, put together, amounted to just over 1/3^rd the total area of Tuvalu (YES, it is a country). But of course, all that was never enough. And even though these 267.75 bucks would not contribute even one-billionth towards furthering either of those two pieces of statistics, it would at least help him buy a calculator. With which, he could calculate those two pieces of statistics better. He patted himself for having cleverly let the hitchhiker have his bedroom for the night to sleep.

The hitchhiker was not at all asleep in the bedroom. In fact, he wasn’t in the bedroom at all. In fact, he wasn’t a hitchhiker at all. He was actually part of the special commando unit of his country, the Fraternal Army of the Republic of Tamenia, which couldn’t be abbreviated for obvious reasons. They had been sent over to the neighbouring republic of Crazykhistan, to disarm a nuclear bomb that the country had inexplicably created. The hitchhiker-soldier shook his head again in amazement at this fact. There was no way anyone in Crazykhistan would’ve been able to put together a nuclear weapon. The person with the highest IQ in the country was one who had identified a cat as a dog. Everyone else had identified as a cat. With such intellectual property, it was beyond anyone how they had managed to work out the working of nuclear fission. And yet, the intelligence department had positive information about the existence of the bomb, and they had deemed it necessary to disarm it as fast as possible. And that’s where the F.A.R.T came in.

Their unit had crossed over into Crazykhistan last night, and had arrived at the location sited by the intelligence as the most likely hiding place of the weapon. They had just decided to do a quick in-and-out, under the cover of darkness, when floodlights blazed all around them. They found themselves in an open field, where the most terrifying weapon for miles around was a sharp piece of blade which could tickle a man to death if used properly. Other than that of course, there were the hundred and fifty one rifles trained at the seven of them by the Crazykhistan army. It was an ambush! Before anyone could react, they had all simultaneously gone for the flashlights, and then it had been every man for himself. With bullets whizzing by within 0.0003 meters from his head, he had stumbled on blindly, keeping low and using up 8 of his 9 lives on the way. He still didn’t know how, but he had crossed the border at some point and after two more of hours of stumbling, had arrived at this house. He had convinced the owner to let him stay over for the night, telling him that he could have his 9.23418 mm Beretta for 267.75 bucks, when it was actually worth 272.25 bucks (Ha, he’d pulled a fast one there!) And now he wondered if any of the other six had survived…

The old man was finding it really uncomfortable in the barn. He knew there was a spot at the left rear end, where there was new, soft hay. He went over there and threw himself on the hay, and immediately regretted the action. His back hit something hard and he got up clutching his back. He cleared the hay to find a hard object underneath. What in the world… was not the first thought that crossed his mind. The first thought that crossed his mind was How much will this be worth? However, the What in the world… came soon after, followed by How? Where? Wha…? in varying degrees of incomprehensibility, all waiting at the signal, to cross his mind. Once all these thoughts were done crossing the increasingly congested road that his mind was becoming, he decided to call the hitchhiker to see if he could help him remove the object.

The hitchhiker-soldier-survivor came to the barn smirking inwardly. The old man’s probably seen a cockroach or something and wants me to drive it away. He entered the barn and saw something gleaming in the corner that the old man pointed to. For a moment a crazy thought entered his head, but he dismissed it immediately. He walked over to the corner and cleared away more of the hay. As the long, cylindrical object revealed itself, the crazy thought came back into his head, knocked loudly and said ‘I told you so’. There, lying in all its glory, with its timer reading 00:00:17, was the nuclear weapon. Immediately everything fell into place for the hitchhiker-soldier.

There had been a bomb, and the army of Crazykhistan had meant for it to be found. And then, once they were sure it had been exposed enough for the intelligence of Tamenia to become aware of its existence, they had it moved and set up an ambush in its place. They had wiped out nearly the entire commando unit of the Fraternal Army of the Republic of Tamenia in one blow. And, when the unit had thus been occupied, they had secretly slipped the bomb itself into Tamenia and armed it to explode. The complex plot convinced the hitchhiker-soldier-sailor that Crazykhistan had somehow developed a machine to put together the IQ of the entire population, to create a super-brain.

Or, someone hadn’t taken that IQ test.

This entire thought process cost the hitchhiker 16 seconds to think. When he looked down at the timer again, it read 00:00:01.

The old man was getting ready to shout ‘Happy New Year!’

The hitchhiker was thinking Oh Shit…

White Noise

Hari got up to the sunlight streaming right into his eyes. He hated it when that happened, and wished he could shift his bed away from the window where it currently was. But his single room apartment afforded only so much space and there was nowhere else he could put the bed. Besides, light wasn't really a problem, that was not what had woken him up. His mind dully registered the rhythmic thud thud of the concrete mixer which came in through the window. That was it, that was what had woken him up. Light of any kind he could sleep through, but expose him to a noise slightly above a whisper on the Decibel level, and his foray into dreamland would be unceremoniously cut off and he'd find himself with his feet firmly on the ground, which was what he was attempting to do now.

He swung his legs over the bed and plonked them down, but instead of meeting terra firma, he found his legs in a semi-solid state of matter with pieces of solid spread intermittently through the matrix. His brain tried to reconstruct the events of the past night, trying to search for clues which might explain the gunk under his legs. Let's see... friends come over, match too boring, go out for a quickie... quickie expands into rounds, rounds into bottles, stagger back between friends' shoulders, flop on bed... no wait, ah YES! Before the flop on bed part, his stomach had rebelled against the excessive alcohol treatment it had been subjected to and had decidedly rejected the contents of the bottles that he'd been interacting with a few hour before that, and so by the process of regurgitation, had splayed his floor with the same. In short, he had puked, and now his foot was in it.

He got up and immediately regretted the action. The world spun in one direction, and his head in the other, as he staggered around to find something to get a hold off, other than himself. Thankfully, the world realigned itself to his sense of balance and he went into the bathroom to clean... most of himself. That concrete-mixer was really getting to him. Who in the world wanted a new driveway for the neighbour's cars anyway? And then the thought struck him that the neighbours did, and he felt very depressed by the simple logic of it all.

He needed coffee. Sugar-less coffee. Just cafe con leche as his Spanish girlfriend would've put it. Which reminded him. They were supposed to meet today... or was it tomorrow. Yep, definitely today. Things hadn't been going that well between them lately. She was finding his perennial lack of time, or seeming lack of concern for her quite irritating. Even when they were together, she complained that he looked so lost all the time, dreamy, sleepy... she didn't know how to put it. And the last time, when he had yawned right in her face when she was in the middle of an animated exposition about her work day, she had been really put off. She had gotten up and walked off in a huff, and it had taken more than one conciliatory phone call to agree to the meeting today. He had wanted to be the perfect boyfriend today, listen to everything she said, nod in agreement with a smile, inject the odd funny comment... the works. But now he had gone and got drunk and his head was throbbing.

He still had an hour till he was scheduled to meet her. He decided to take the coffee and walk to her office, maybe the air will help clear up his head. He had a cold shower, nearly died of hypothermia as a result, towelled himself dry, put on the cleanest clothes he could find, stepped around the mess on the floor and stepped out of the apartment.

She worked in an NGO, which took care of the orphans abandoned on Mumbai's roads... or atleast as much of them as they could. Why she had to come all the way from Catalunya to actively involve herself in this, was beyond him. He wasn't complaining though, they had nicely hit it off when they had met at the party for the Spanish ambassador, when he had thankfully been sober, and it had been good ever since. That is, till that last time... or the last few weeks in fact. And now she was angry. And today was the make-up day. And he was hung over.

The hour long walk through the fresh, polluted Bombay air did his head no good at all. Now not only was his head throbbing, but his feet were complaining and he was hungry, since his stomach had efficiently emptied itself out last night, and he had fogotten this thing called breakfast. Still, he was in front of the NGO's office, and he took a deep breath and stepped inside. He knew her office was on the third floor, she had told him that during one of the stories that he had been listening to. He reached her office and without knocking, opened the door, shouting 'Surprise' as he did.

She was not there. The office was empty. Probably stepped out for a bit, he thought. He stepped into the office. It was brilliantly lit, and very clean too, giving the office a look of purity, like some minor angel's office in heaven. He shut the door behind him and something struck him as being very odd. He waited a few minutes, and then realization dawned upon him. The room was completely silent! Either by a quirk of architectural brilliance, or accoustic magic, the room had become completely sound-proof. Not a single noise permeated through the white walls or the now-closed door. He walked around the room and settled into a couch, which looked wide enough to fit two people into it. He decided to wait for her, and settled a bit more comfortably into the couch. He found that if he pulled his legs up into a foetal position, he could really get a very nice orientation of his body parts. He did so, and his eyes decided that the best orientation for them, was with the eyelids down, and so they screwed shut. The white walls, the bright lights, the near-heavenly cleanliness, nothing mattered for Hari. All that mattered was the complete aural isolation that the room provided, and his brain acknowledged the fact by immediately switching off. Hari was out like a light, all puns intended.

Maria stepped into her office and let out a short gasp of surprise. There was a form sitting, rather, curled up on her couch. Then she recognised the unruly brown hair and smiled to herself. That can only be one person. She tiptoed into the room, hoping to catch him by surprise. As she leant over to place her hands over his eyes, she saw that that would not be needed, they were closed anyway. She went around the couch and knelt beside him. He was sleeping peacefully, not a care in the world. She knelt closer, and found what she was looking for, or rather, smelling for. One coffee was nowhere near enough to supress the smell of the bottle, or more, of yesterday night's drinks. She looked at him for a long time, just kneeling there and staring. Then she lightly ruffled the unruly brown hair, got up and tiptoed away.

As she went out, she switched off the lights too.

Snapshot

Quiz week is one of those times when laws of relativity, gravity, sphericity, electricity and all become defunct. Time exists only in terms of pages of book left to read or number of problems left to solve. Performance optimization occurs by judicious use of time alloted to sleeping, eating, and other necessary human activities for poring through the book. Dead Man Walking would be the description closest to being correct at these times. And yet, in this primarily black and white state of existence, there was a brief splash of colour, yesterday.

This was while eating dinner. Across the table from me were two other gentlemen who clearly did not have to worry about Mass Transfer and other such trivialities of life. So they launched into this animated discussion about a lesson they had in 9th Standard in their English textbook.

You remember that story called The Deer in The Forest, or something?

You mean Bambi?

No no, this was just, a deer in the forest. There would be this deer, with it's baby deer, what do you call it...

Fawn.

Yes, fawn. So there is this deer and the fawn living in a forest. One day there is a huge forest fire and there is mayhem all round. The deer and its fawn, in panic, run straight into a tiger. As the tiger watched hungrily, the fawn starts trembling, its legs refusing to move. The deer knows that there is no way its baby can outrun the tiger, so it steps in between the tiger and its baby...

In real life that'll never happen, the deer will just run away.

What? Why?

What, obviously it can outrun the tiger, and besides the tiger will be satisfied with the fawn. This way the deer can atleast survive and maybe give birth to another fawn. If it stays there, the tiger will kill it first, and then go after the fawn and kill it too anyway.

The man had a point, I thought.

Eh no, what're you saying? You know when a Cobra lays eggs, and a mongoose comes to eat the eggs, the cobra will go out and fight the mongoose and die, rather than let the mongoose take the eggs. If that's the case for unhatched eggs, surely a deer would do the same for a living, breathing fawn.

Yes, but the cobra and mongoose are at least well-matched. Between the deer and the tiger, it's a no contest, and hence, no point.

The man was making point after point.

No da, the deer will defend the kid only first. Ok, that's what the story says, let's stick to it. So the way that scene is described, it's one of the few lines etched in my memory.
"With a trembling heart, she stood in front of her baby, as she watched the jaws of death of the tiger, ready to tear into her flesh at any moment."

I smiled. I had finished my dinner. I was full.

Saarang 2007

Finally, I get to do shameless publicity on my blog!

The Saarang 2007 blog is up and running... and you can visit it HERE.

Yes yes, Saarang is till a long way off and all, but you know, we believe in starting early (also read as 'we didn't have anything else to do')

Ergo, enjoy.

Shakespeare's Greatest Gaffe

To be or not to be.

That's not even a question!

Road-side Cricket

I'm tired of everyone in this universe cursing Chennai's auto drivers every time they have a bad day. A taffic hold-up on the road, a display of rash driving, blatant extortion in the name of meter-less fare... even if they're all true, you can't keep blaming these guys! This is the problem with our country, we don't know how to look at the bright side of things. I mean, step back, detach yourself from your mortal body, and look at it from an unbiased observer's point of view, and you'll see that our Auto drivers make such bloody good cricketers! I shall prove the above statement to you, and then you can give me my Nobel...

Fast Bowlers: This is so obvious that they won't consider such theses for a Nobel. Our Auto Drivers (ADs) have the kind of reckless pace and sheer ruthlessness of a Shohaib or Brett Lee. What's more, they strike fear in the heart of every other commuter on the road, including the one sitting in their own auto. Isn't that what you want a fast bowler to do, strike fear in the hearts of the opposition? Sure, they may be expensive some times, costing a life here or there, but basically they're the kind of option you want to open your bowling with. Fast, focussed and furious.

Batsmen: Ever noticed an auto weave through rush hour traffic? The uncanny ability to pick the smallest of gaps in the field, I mean road, is matched at best by only Sachin. You set a 9-0 field and bowl 3 meters outside off, and you can still be sure our ADs can pick a gap through this. It was Chappell who said Sachin had "peripheral awareness". Clearly, he's not seen enough of our ADs. Leave alone Peripheral Awareness, they also have Policeman awareness, unsuspecting-cutomer-waiting-to-be-taken-for-a-ride awareness and most important of all, signal non-awareness!

Fielders: The most important ability on the field is agility, the ability to twist and turn and generally be on your toes. And as always, our ADs are easily upto the challenge. The U-Turns that they manage to take defies all laws of Physics, Chemistry and Nano-molecular Plant Microbiology. The concept of a turning radius does not exist for the auto, it justs pivots about its back wheels. No dead end is too small for them to turn back from, and so no boundary is too tough to save. With this amount of flexibility and turnability and twistability, you put Kaif up against our AD on the field, and it's a no contest, really.

Spinners: The art of Spin Bowling is not about turning the ball, it's about the one ball which does not turn, or even better, turns the other way. It's called the Googly, and oh boy, our ADs are the last word in perfection of this art. They put the left indicator, stick out the hand on the right and then go straight, throwing a double googly to the bewildered cop at the intersection. We know that the Chennai Cops aren't an easy lot to confuse, but if our boys can manage that with such incredible insouciance, England and all... I'm looking at 64 all out.

Umpires: Not only the players, we can draw people for the ICC's Elite Panel of Umpires too from the ADs. There will be no Hair-raising controversies about ball-tampering, because the auto meters are tampered (putting it mildly) too, and they won't preach what they don't practice. Besides, their fares amount to daylight robbery irrespective of whoever gets into their three-tier, I mean, three-tire coach. Hence, you can be assured of their fairness when they are giving LBWs or close catches. Atleast all decisions will be uniformly wrong.

Commentators: I know I only said players, but most players go into the commentary box stright from the dressing room as soon as they get out anyway, so why should our ADs be any different? And that they have as colourful a language as any number of Tony Greigs and Ravi Shastris put together cannot be denied. It's not that they are lacking in content either. When an AD is in the mood, he can make more sense about the nation's economic situation than P.Chidambaram. And when he's infuriated, he can cause more of a stink than the (in)famous Cooum river. Imagine our eloquent ADs instant reaction if Dravid calls for a suicidal second run when the throw is already coming in... "Dei Kasmaalam, Vootanda Solltu Vanntiya?"...

Ergo.

My Nobel, please?

Rebirth

The Wood Apple, otherwise known as Vilambazham in Tamil is a fruit that is round to oval, 2 to 5 in (5-12.5 cm) wide, with a hard, woody, grayish-white, scurfy rind about 1/4 in (6 mm) thick.

To put things into perspective, this thing disguised as a fruit is as hard as a hockey ball. But wait, no one knows how hard the ball of our national game is. Proud to be Indian. Anyway, it's as hard as... um... a hockey ball people, come on! Point I'm trying to make is, it can hurt quite a bit, if it hits you at a decent speed. Now, assume this thing fell from a tree from a stationary position. (yes, it got detached from it's branch, or whatever)

Height of tree(h) = 12 feet
Initial velocity (u) = 0 feet/second
Acceleration due to gravity(g) = 32 feet/sec^2

Hence, by the fomula v^2 = u^2 + 2gh, we get, final velocity of the falling fruit as approximately 28 feet/sec. At that speed, a hockey ball hitting your head, can leave a good sized lump. And wipe away a few memory cells here and there. You know, you'll know your name starts with A and ends with D but the letters in between would've been erased. A wood apple hitting you right at the top of your head, at that same speed, in a cycle parking lot, with no one else around, could make you unconscious. In which state you would stay for a while cos no one's around. And therefore eventually, you MIGHT have put your mortality to test.

The Wood Apple missed me by 2 inches. I brought it along with me. Newton's apple taught him gravity. The Wood Apple taught me the gravity of life.

Feeling line, I know :)

T for TNR

This Tortured soul, Tumbled into this Totalitarian world by the Twists of fate, taken for a ride both as Teacher and Torturer by the Treasonous Tryst of my parents Throwing me into a world of Tension and Trouble. The Toxins Traveling Through my veins are but a Testament to the Testimony that my Tender parts are Tingling with the Terrible Thoughtlessness, felt usually during a Traumatic Ten-hour operation.

To elaborate upon the Travails and Tribulations which afflict me would Try the Tolerance of any Timid Tribal among These Teeming millions. The only Thought of action possible is met with Terapidation and Toothlessness by the Throngs of This Ten-Thousand strong community.

But this Temerity with which I describe Trivialities of my Troubled life caught between the Throes of Tired Teetotalers and Totally Trashed Tipsters must surely take away the Tiny Tokens of Thinking matter you have been Trusted with by The Maker. Therefore, let me Take away This Totally needless Tapestries surrounding my Timely arrival to save you from your Timeless Troubles, and just say That ‘Tis my honour to meet Thee, and you may call me, T.

:)

Yeeeeah, so...

I'm alive. The blog is not. Or rather, was not. Is now.

Ok... so... I must write now. Right now. Right? Wait, I should probably write a poem. I've never written one. Well, nothing that's not a rip-off of Metallica songs anyway. No originality of thought, that's my problem. I've never thought of originality as such a precious commodity. But then, only when you lose something you feel its absence, I guess. So, I've lost my originality, what've I got?

I will not describe my poor, uninteresting life for all to comment about. I won't. I haven't read any book or watched any movie or heard any song in the recent past that has sufficiently impressed or disgusted me to describe it for all you poor, uninteresting people to share your views about. Football season hasn't started yet, and I'm sick of everyone talking about that game all through the World Cup anyway. Oh wait, I've already made that clear.

That's sad, really. All I want to is to Keep the Dream alive, I mean, keep the Blog alive. But it doesn't seem to me like a sun will shine on me again, A Well will Ring inside my head, and all will be brand new. Wait, I will go back into myself, delve deep into the unexplored corners of my soul and rediscover myself and be born again and emerge a new man and... and... do all those kinds of stuff.

It's been raining.

Show's Over

Alright people. World Cup 2006 is over, The Forza has been with the Azzurri, they defended stoutly, let in only one goal scored by an opponent and that too from a Penalty. They came out of a scandal exactly like in Spain '82 when Paolo Rossi, accused of match-fixing went on to top score. France defied gravity to reach the finals, made a match of it, then Zidane made a meal of it. Whether he lost his head by using his head, whether he was provoked or revoked or coked, we'll never know. Fact is, that didn't lose France the World Cup. Or maybe it did.

What I'm saying is, time for all you normal people to get back to your original lives! All you who couldn't tell Joe Cole from Ashley or Andy or Rio Ferdinand from Les or Antoine and all those whose only connection to Chelsea was as Bill Clinton's daughter, go back to leading your football-empty lives. Aggressive marketing by all the sponsors and jobless 24-hour News channels have ensured that the Pakatthu Veetu Mami knows that Zidane is the name of a footballer and not the latest Chevrolet model. Same reasons responsible for hotly debated matches on buses and local trains by people who, on a normal day, would've been debating... actually, nothing. So all of you who found out only last month that 4-4-2 was a reference to a formation and not the Toll Free number for free marriage counselling, please, return to normalcy.

Look, I'm not making accusations of illiteracy without foundation. And I'm not trashing everyone who's been talking football with me either. I've had some very engrossing conversations with a few. And I'm not claiming to be a know-it-all too. I didn't know anyone in the German back four before the World Cup. Nor that Ze Roberto would start for Brazil, though that was probably because Edmilson put himself out through injury. But I do know enough, not to do these...

1. Two is company, three is a crowd, four is football mania. So there's four of us, sitting around, watching Spain-Ukraine. Yes, the match where everyone hailed Spain as world champions, which, as always, didn't happen. So anyway, the match is on, and suddenly this one, let's call him Neo, speaks up, "Did you see England yesterday? Beckham alone was wearing some armband!"
Wait. Backup. I did NOT just hear that. Someone actually ridiculed Beckham saying that he ALONE was wearing an armband. Of COURSE he alone was wearing an armband, a team has only one captain and only he gets to wear the armnband! See my boy, the Captain's armband is a thing of pride, only one person in a team gets to wear it. It was not one of Beckham's Victorian mistakes, like his Sarong at a party. This time he was adhering perfectly to his dress code, surprisingly. So please go read Football Attire again.

2. Opening game, Germany-Costa Rica. I still maintain, that was one of the most open games of the World Cup, maybe because it was the opening game!!!! (those of you who want to kill me for that, I'm available at anandn86@yahoo.co.in. Please contact only if you're female, between 17-19, and single.) Anyway, that digression apart, I was watching it in the peaceful solitude of my home, when Wanchope scores from a through ball, where the German Rightback had played him onside. Over enthu friend, let's call him Morpheus, messages- "That was offside!!!!!!!!" I'm like "What bull, the Rightback clearly played him on." No message for some time. Commentator looks at replays and confirms what I said. Message from Morpheus, "Strong boy, that's what the commentator said too! Rightback played him on, whatever that means!"
Deja Vu. Wait. Back up again. You can pass judgement on what offside is, but you do not know what playing someone on is??? Ok, I thought offside was the most complicated rule of the jogo bonito, but clearly, people also need to be taught that when you're not offside, you're onside! And playing someone on, is when a defender has failed to hold the line of the backfour, and has strayed deeper than the others, thereby allowing an attacker to remain onside when the pass was made. Is ok? I can watch my Football in peace now?

See, all I'm saying is, I appreciate all of your enthusiasm and euphoria and energy towards a game which is currently being played in India at a level of the English Fourth Division. It is a start, that so many people learn about the game, and follow it with so much passion, and support Italy and Brazil and France and England because India couldn't make it, and declare their undying lover for Zizou inspite of all he's done (currently, he must be concerned about his orientation... too many people love him). But let's not get too ahead of ourselves, shall we? We still know the Sachin Sandstorm innings and the '96 Quarterfinals against Pakistan and the Natwest chase much better than Beckhams' halfline goal against Wimbledon and Zidane's overhead kick against Leverkusen and United's comeback at the '99 Champs League finals to complete an unprecedented treble... Therefore... Show's Over folks, let's get you all home and get you some sleep before West Indies-2007 :)

The Cutlet of Ham.

It is tough enough to stage one play perfectly, without any glitches. Evam's The Cut of Hamlet, tried to stage two, and if there were any glitches, the audience were none the wiser, for they didn't know if that too was part of the script or not. That, as a friend put it, was a very good safety net.

So yes, the two plays were called 'The Cut' and 'Hamlet' respectively. Well, the second one was Hamlet, so for a justification of title, the first must have been The Cut. The Cut was about a play, within a play, within a play, within a play (wait, one, two, three, four... yeah, that's about right.). And then there was the play itself. You know, The Cut! The characters were all actors, as in the actors were playing... actors. Get it? It's about the appreciation of the delicious irony of the method of picturisation of the existential crisis of actors who get caught in a web of their own doing and which they are now trying deperately to undo. Also known as Autograph, a method of script-writing first pioneered by a till-then-unknown-but-after-that-well-known director called Cheran. The cast was very good at playing themselves, and as we all know, it's very difficult to act like you are NOT acting. Seriously, it's tough. Add to that, the problem of being afflicted with an identity crisis about which 'you' you are, and you've got a very tough role to portray, and as far as my knowledge of acting goes, it was all done very well indeed. But while this was all very innovative and all, this play within a play within a play, at one point of time, your brain had to start racing to keep up with the storyline, if there was any. It was a bit like watching Memento in slow motion, except that the shots weren't going in reverse chronological order. Or maybe they were. I don't really know...

Hamlet was, pretty obviously, a spoof of Hamlet. With only three people portraying various roles, you could see that there had been loads of work done by those three. Mix some original lines from Hamlet and some own compositions, add background music from Star Wars, do fight sequences a la The Matrix, and you've got the perfect script for a spoof, really. But it's one thing getting the script right, yet another thing to make it as funny as possible through the acting, and that wasn't a let down. One of the Hamlet monologues delivered in a single breath in a monotone by one of the actors showed an effort any audience would praise and a memory any 12th Standard kid would kill for. Getting the audience involved is like a given in most plays by now, but a much more theatrically-sound friend next to me kept predicting how they would get the audience into it. So clearly, lack of imagination there, but Hey, we all like to stick to tried and tested things that have worked before. Yeah, the play got a few laughs with some good lines, a lot of laughs actually, but there were lines which you knew were coming too. But then, they didn't try to Copy and Paste the original Hamlet script but went on and tried to be original instead, so I guess that's imagination enough for one play.

And now we'll do it faster...
Hamlet, a spoof of the original. Only three people, who showed great effort. Usual mix of classic lines, famous music and famous movies. Very good Monologue, murder by 12th standard kid. Got the audience involved with an old trick, but then, we know what they say about Old Dogs and New tricks. Mission of making people laugh, accomplished, but also made them groan at times. At least there was no Copy, Paste of original script. Hats off for that.

And now we'll do it even faster...
Hamlet, a standard spoof, with usual ingredients. Wonderful effort by the three actors. Murder of Old Dogs. Laughing and groaning is a part of life. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V avoided. Well done.

And now, we'll do it backwards...
Done well. Avoided Ctrl+V, Ctrl+C. Life of part a is groaning and laughing. Dogs Old of Murder. Actors three the by effort wonderful. ingredients usual with, spoof standard a, Hamlet.

Anyone find this remotely irritating????

Day of the Jackal.

1. Metallica retake their rightful place as my favourite band. Listen to the Metallica Playlist for hour and a half. Get high.

2. TNEB finally computerises its database. When you pay bill, they will give you printed out receipt. All very nice.

3. Passbook update. I get measly interest of 154 bucks on 10,00 odd over 6 months. But then, Mutual Fund Investments are sunject to Market risks. No time to read Offer Document carefully before investing. Besides, if I go to them with like 10,000 bucks, they'll probably suggest, very politely, a very unsavoury place where I can shove it.

4. Kinetic Honda has small wheel-base. Onyx sweeps off the sand from center of roads to the sides. Two facts. Thing not to do because of these facts- Take a turn along the edge of the road, holding the brakes all the while too. Thing that happens if you do The Thing That Should Not Be (Metallica all day, showing.)- Seven big bloody scratches, all on left side. Three toes, the knee, the thigh, the palm and the elbow. Kinetic's fork bends, take it to the Mechanic. Mechanic guy looks at you, standing like Tyler Durden after first day of Fight Club, decides he better patch you up before you get Tetanus or something. Get extremely high over remaining bloodstained for so long and getting it patched up at a Mechanic's.

5. Still can play guitar, palm is not used in that process. Feel extremely gratified, and proceed to strum it aimlessly for one and half hours. Index finger nearly cut, just misses being eighth injury for the day.

Must get self a diary.... then I can go Dear Diary,...

Deep Breaths

I'm a calm man. I'm a man who suppresses emotions and does not splay them all over the canvas of my life for all to see vividly. I'm a man who walks alone. People have a hard time reading me, knowing me. I don't blame them, I don't know me. What I want, what I care for, what I love, what I would give my life for. The works. As a result, people never know what I'm feeling, at a given point. It doesn't show on my face, my words, my action. And I end up thinking to myself, how callous can people get, can't they see I'm frustrated? But the fact is, they can't. And I have no one else to blame but me.

Life during the holidays has been a blank sheet. Nothing's happened. And so I've been able to do what one is supposed to do with one's holidays. Enjoy them. Of course, I miss not having cofee at 2 A.M... and not sleeping that night because of that very coffee, but Hey, you win some, you lose some. Loll in front of the Laptop all day without feeling any guilt about the next day's classes. (Mis)use the internet to the fullest, chatting on (so far, a maximum of) 6 windows at a time. Watch T.V, even if it shows the same Maradona solo goal against England 23 times a day. You know, generally indulge in the indulgent, consumerist lifestyle that we have got used to indulging in. The things you own, end up owning you, Fight Club style

And today, I got frustrated. I got frustrated, and I got angry, and I smiled. I smiled and made a joke and since that was normal behaviour, no one asked me if anything was up. And that made me sad. Really sad. Angry too, but that I already was. So it was mostly sadness. That welled up inside me and washed over me like a wall of water 6 feet tall, leaving me behind, cold and drenched. But it was my fault. If I was angry, I should've shown it. At the world. The world is not waiting to do you any favours. You gotta ask for it if you want any.

What in the name of God am I typing? Wait, some other time, if I feel like it... I'll elaborate on this.

My blog is alive though. Great news for my millions of non-existent fans, that.

Silence Please.

Ah could, likesay many people who woulda watched yestirday's fitba match, write aboot the perr, perr standard ay refereeing which nearly destroyed wha promised tae be one heck ay a gaim. But it is tae the credit ay the players that thay took all those shitein decisions oan the chin, and just played their fitba like thay wir supposed tae. It did manage to turn oot to be a classic, wi the man disadvantage just provin too much tae handle fir Arsenal as the clock ran doon. When Eto'o equalised in the 76th minit, it wis Gaim Oan... and when Belletti scored in the 81st, it wis Gaim Ovah. Barca wir Champions ay Europe.

As ah said, ah could write more aboot this. But ah'm not gaun tae. Instead, ah'm gaun to write aboot somethin which ah hiv noticed ovah the past... well, the past so many days whin ah huv not had college and therefore huv time to notice things. And ah'm gaun to borrow a line from Fight Club, 'cos that's essentially wha ah've noticed. It's only whin thay think you're dyin, do people actually listen tae ye. Otherwise, thay're just waitin fae thair turn tae speak.

Ah've lost all belief in the fact tha it takes two tae make a conversation. As far as ah ken see, the two perr sods just keep talkin aboot what they think is worth talkin aboot, fuck aw if it is ay no significance to wha the other person's sayin.Ye ken wha ah'm talkin aboot?
"So, he nivir eats junk food when he goes oan tae the beach or somewhere".
"Yeah, mah grades will come oot in a week or so."
"Is it? So we try tae tell im it's awright, he ken eat that stuff once in a while, but he nivir does."
"He he. Ye know, it's aways the even sem which pulls yer CG daun... Hope that I ken break the even sem jinx."
"Yeah, hope ye do. So, whin are yer grades comin?"

Ah'm no kiddin when ah say this is usually how maist conversations will go. And that tae me is just a perr waste of time, ay both the sods. Why no just say it in the face that yer no interested and git oan wi yer life? But that cannae be done either, cos then, ye woulnae huv anyone tae listen tae your stories. So they jist keep up the charade, two people actin interested in the other's perr, soddin life, while inwardly thinking Fuck All.

Which is why, ah decided to follow the Silence is Gaulden rule. Only whin ye want tae say something, you feel irritated and restless aboot the other person gaun oan n oan n no lettin ye git a word in. Instead, if ye nivir have anythin tae say, then there's no heartburn, ken what ah say? Ye wade intae the conversation with the supreme knowledge tha ye will no be able tae say anythin of any significance. So ye jist sit back into the recesses of yer mind, switch oaf yer thought process fir a while, and nod along or make appropriate Hmms and OKs as situation demands. This also helps in ending the conversation briefly, as there is only one story runnin and no two parallel ones. Once thay're done, ye nod and smile, shake paws if ye wantae, n go yer seperate ways.

Enjoy the Sound oaf Silence.

Poll ka Dot.

It was 6:45 A.M and I was up and ready to go and exercise my franchise to choose who my representative in the State Legislature will be. Voting was officially supposed to begin at 7:00 A.M and I was there at 7:05, so all those who shake your heads in dismay and go Tch, tch, this younger generation, no reponsibility, try saying that now! (Ok, that said, I must admit I was the only one in the age group of 18-25 over there... there was a girl in an Orange Tee and Three-fourths and all, but you know how it is with girls, you can never tell their age!)

All you kids who haven't voted because of age reasons or out of sheer apathy personifying the sterotyped "younger generation", this is how the process will be...

You have a number on your voter-slip, a nice three-digit one which gives which division you are in. There will be 4-5 divisions in one polling booth and you stand in the queue which is for your division. Once there, you will hear raised voices coming from inside the room for the adjacent division. If you're inquisitive or attentive enough, news will eventually filter throught that an indignant citizen has take exception to the fact that the booth opened only at 7:15 when it has been said all over the papers that it's at 7 o'clock, don't you people read the papers??? At this point, you're thinking Uncle, if he stopped and read the papers, he will have got here even later, you would rather have that? But prudence, and the fact that you're approximatley half as old as the next youngest person in that given radius of 100 meters, stops you from making such scandalous statements.

In your queue, you just mentally verify that you're standing in the correct division and inardvertently let the 182 (the divsion no.) slip out of your mouth. The omni-present ever-helpful Mami in front immediately whirls around and launches into a detailed explanation of matching the no. on your slip to the no. on the board in front of the polling booth. She confirms that you have indeed selected the right queue, God bless you. Mercifully Pink Floyd's High Hopes is running through your head and it blanks out all such external noise. Seeing that you're being very uncivil, your Mom will step in to handle the situation and enquires politely as to whether her children could not make it to vote.
"They're over there", the Mami says with a you-know-the-place wink.
"Oh, in The States, is it?", Civil behaviour being maintained by Mom.
"Yes, imagine how many people will be like that. That's a lot of votes going waste"
... Ringing of the Division Bell has begun. You're thanking Floyd... and your Mom.
"So what do you study?". Pause on Pink Floyd. Time to assimilate question. (Not really. Surely you did not expect her to ask if you thought Henry would leave Arsenal and move to Barcelona next season even after a fariytale Highbury farewell yesterday.)
"Engineering. Just completed Second Year." Please, can you go back to your Floyd now?
"Which college?"
"IIT-Madras" and you wait for it. It's about the only joy you get from studying where you study. You say IIT-M and you wait for the reflexive raise of both eyebrows right up to the hairline, a moment of shock, then an approving nod and a smile and then one prolonged period of silence to contemplate how to continue the conversation, now that you've stopped being human and become an IITian. Most people make it up to Which Branch? and then they stop. The Mami stuck perfectly to the script.

As you near the room with the EVM, there'll be this huge poster with all the candidate's names and symbols and stuff that a person with a 5/20 vision could read. And then there'll be another poster, albeit smaller, about how to operate the EVM. Yeah, you push the Button... you don't know how they managed to make it a 6-step process. Ok, so the last step is that in case any of the above 5 fail, you go and rat about it to some officious looking guy over there. And he'll not be able to do anything much about it. Whatever.

Now you would've proudly entered the booth, handed in your voter slip to the guy with the list and shown your Driving License for Identity proof (Yes, they allowed it, yay!). Once the guy finds your name in the list, he'll call it out so loud, you'd think they'd just found India's Most Wanted and expect at any moment to be surrounded by Black Cats or Blue Cows or some other such colourful animal. But nothing of that sort happens, it's just said out loud to ensure that all the agents of the candidates know who all have voted... they have the same list too.

The Poll ka Dot. It is supposed to be a dot, right? Your index finger on the table, wiped clean off any grime you migh have picked up on the 20-meter walk from home to polling booth, and you're expecting a dot to be placed at the intersection of skin and nail. But no, depending on the generosity of the applier, you will get a thick strip of nearly half the width of the finger, running all the way from the first joint to the tip of the finger. You're going Dude, this is a voting booth, not a Mehendi ceremony. But once again prudence, and more importantly, the size of that guy play a decisive role in your appreciating the value of silence.

After that it's nothing, really. Sign next to your name on another list, as you have done a countless times in the examination halls of your college, go into that cardboard-protected booth with the EVM and push the button. There'll be a beep sound, at which all the election people will start clamouring Aan, that's all, that's all for everyone. And no no, you cannot say, I KNOW that's all, I read that outside. Prudence.

And you come out of the room and look around, and the girl in the Orange Tee and the Three-fourths just comes out of the room for 181. Briefly your eyes meet, and you contemplate whether to let a hint of smile show. You're still holding eye-contact, and you're still thinking... but hey, that's another story!

The truth is that I'm a bad person. But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

PH 670- Einsteinium

The seconds crawl along inexorably. You wouldn't have thought one second is such a huge interval of time. It is funny when you try to quantify time... by time. You're staring fixedly at your watch, and you're thinking, It's taking hours for that seconds-hand to move. And then you smile, realising the impossiblity of the thought that just crossed your mind. Of course, that doesn't stop you from boring through the watch with your eyes, willing those second, minute and hour hands to move at ultra-sonic speed. But after a while, you stop bothering about the minute-hand, being resigned to its inexplicable immobility, its stubborn defiance to move over from the current minute to the next. It gives the minutest(pun unintended) flicker of motion when the seconds-hand trundles around the dial to complete one full circle, in about as much time as it would take you to go to the moon and back... twice. And this tortorous crawl around the circle continues, the minute-hand obliging with a barely perciptible motion after approximately an eon. These eons drag by, painfully, brutally, until 50 eons complete their life-time... and the class ends. Nirvana.

There's no one around, you are just walking across the ground, and the ball is in your way. The goal is inviting, mocking even, as it gapes open, challenging you to put that sphere of 8-inch diameter inside it. You kick it, making perfect contact between ball and foot (you just KNOW when a perfect strike happens). And the ball speeds towards the huge, open area between the goal-posts... and hits the post! As always... ALWAYS. The ball rolls over to someone else, who promptly puts it it, just to show how it's done. Nothing's been said, but the challenge has been thrown. You can't wait to put on the shoes, the socks, the dirty T-shirt. Six others have got wind of the proposed battle and have, with miliary precision, been didvided into two sides and are standing in perfect formation. As you run out of the room, you steal a quick glance at the clock, and for some reason, the time registers in your mind... barely, but it registers. Out on the field, the first kick is taken, and it's Game On. At the end of it all, when you trudge back to the room, wiping your sweat off, you glance at the clock again. Three hours??? THREE hours??? Three hours which had flown past at Mach 4. You shake your head as you remove the socks...

Relativity Explained.

For the Love of God

I don't know why I have this addiction to titling blog posts after song titles. Maybe because it saves me the effort of thinking up a title and because I can build up something that will justify the title anyway. Because unlike most bloggers, I don't blog with a point in mind... mostly. Sometimes I do, but for that, something must have left a REALLY deep impression on me, which doesn't happen often. Otherwise I just take things as they come, going with the flow, hoping things will work out for the best. I mean, the method works for me in real life, surely it would work for the blog!

I had the humbling realisation today that I do nothing in life. I've been having quite a few humbling realisations about my life over the past week... or two. Like the one I had two weeks ago. That I couldn't talk seriously. I was in a Debate, an inter-hostel one and we were given this high-intellect, serious-thinking topic to talk about. All the while I'm thinking, How many jokes can we get in here. The round was based on The Big Fight, where there are three people shouting themselves hoarse and going nowhere in the end. So I decided to reduce the participation to two, and kept my mouth shut. Unfortunately, we were seated such that I was in the middle. So there were these two guys having an extremely heated discussion about something I had no opinion about, and there was me, in the middle, waiting for the appropriate moment to deliver my wisecrack. As Chandler would have said, I felt like- Rock. Hard place. Me. Needless to say, I placed 5th... out of 6 (there was another round of 3 people). And realised that I could provide only comic relief... not the main show.

And now I've realised, I do nothing in life. Like if I have 6 hours of free time in the evening, and my laptop is not with me, there's nothing I can do. There is no football till later in the night, so that's out. I am in the middle of "The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari" but I am not feeling too philosophical right now, so I'm afraid I'll miss the full import of what the book hopes to deliver to me and hence hurt Robin Sharma's sentiments in the process. (ok ,THAT'S one thing I can do... write long sentences). There is April's Reader's Digest... not in the mood. There is MA 204- Statistics... DUH!!!!!!!! And then, there were none.

I mean, if I could play the Guitar or something, I would take my six-string, go up to the terrace and strum away, all the while looking up and thinking what Chris Martin was thinking when he wrote Yellow- Look at the stars, Look how they shine for you... Or if I had Music on my computer at home, I would turn up Pink Floyd and just feel Comfortably Numb. Or if I had any bit of interest in electronics and gadgets and stuff, I'd take apart something in the house and put it back together again (My cousin did it... a LOT!). Or atleast read about some such thing on howstuffworks. Or go clean the car and the Kinetic. The Kinetic has a front-tyre puncture! Ok, good time to remember that, 10:37 P.M. Ok, so that's something to do for tomorrow, but today's gone. Or rearrange the bookshelf (yeeeah, with about 234 books... like THAT will take a lot of time).

Ok, I have Broadband at home and a 100-MBPS LAN in the hostel. Someone tell me what to do with so much free internet! I feel extremely guilty about wasting all these god-given resources n what I usually do... Bumperball!!! HEY, I've never played Bumperball at home! Ok then... catch ya later, people...

Mostly Thoughtless

The dry grass crackled underfoot as he walked down the driveway of his mansion. It was set farther up than the rest of the houses in that hill-station. Understandably too. He owned half the hill. The tea estates stretching away till as far as his eye could see were all his, as were all those tiny dots which would move around picking out the leaves and dropping them nonchalantly into the bags on their back once the sun came out. All his. He felt extremely satisfied at this, that he had achieved something. Not pride. Or joy. Or greatness. Just satisfaction. I've done my job. Like a painter would feel, stepping back to survey his masterpiece.

He had wanted the driveway swept yesterday. It was getting very difficult to find good help these days. They were all becoming lazy. Or maybe it was because it was 4 A.M on a winter morning in the hills, and that he was the only lunatic to get up at such an hour and venture into the biting cold. They'll probably do it later. They'd better. He hadn't achieved what he had by allowing room for complacency.

He had a single shawl around him. The cold demanded two layers of sweaters and a shawl over that, but he had only a single shawl. He was a native. He didn't have to be afraid of the cold. The cold was his friend. He had been brought up with it, brought down by it, thrilled by it, chilled by it... and now, he hoped, killed by it.

He walked down from his house to the old burial ground. It was about 2 kms away. That was where she was buried. They had had no children in the first ten years of their marriage. No one knew why. And then God blessed them with a pretty, little baby girl... and took the mother away. It was as if he was destined to have only one woman in his life at a time. He had left the baby at the mansion and then come down to these grounds to bury her. And after everyone had left, he had cried. He had cried like he had never cried before, he had cried like he would die because he was not breathing in at all, he had cried like his face would get eroded by the tears streaming down. And then he stopped crying. Forever.

He stood by where she was buried. The cold was beginning to make its presence felt. His hands had gone numb, he could feel his body starting to tremble to keep itself warm. And yet, he stood there, unmoving. It is done, dear. I've driven myself like there was no tomorrow. Our child has everything she'll ever need. She has her nanny, she has the best tutor for miles around, she has wonderful friends and their parents who love her as their own. She turns 18 today and is officially capable of taking care of herself. Don't you think it's time I joined you?

The cold peirced through his body, sending his spine shivering into convulsions. His breath tightened as the cold pressed his chest in. He thought of letting the shawl go... quicken the process. A gust of wind blew across his face... and he smelt something. He knew that smell, he knew it from 28 years ago. He could still smell it on her neck, her favourite talcum powder, the only cosmetic she used. The wind blew again, and he instinctively drew his shawl closer. He immediately felt warmer, warmer than what a mere shawl could offer against that wind. The warmth spread through his body. He was brething freely, normally. He cocked his head to one side, as if listening to something. Then he turned and started walking back to his Mansion, drawing the shawl closer to him all the time.

As the first dry leaf crackled on the driveway, he saw a tall, slim figure react to the sound at the other end of the driveway. He watched her as she sprinted down the drive, making enough noise to wake up an army. She flew into his arms as he barely managed to get out "Happy Birthday, Dear", before she squeezed his breath out of him with a tight embrace. Really, she must realize she's grown now, I can't hold her weight so easily. She let him go and looked inquiringly at him. Where had he been? He looked into her eyes and nodded. They stayed silent for a while, then she took his hand and led him back into the house.

The dry leaves crackled underfoot as they walked back into the house. He remembered the last gust of wind that had blown at the burial ground, the one that had caused him to draw his shawl closer. He remembered her smell, and remembered her voice, as if she had been right there, telling him. She can have everything, but she needs a father. He squeezed his daughter's arm and drew her closer as they climbed up the steps into the Mansion.

The Immortal

I'm The Immortal. I have just passed my 31st hour without sleep since 5:00 P.M on 26-3-2006 and am yet to feel sleepy. My mind has transcended mere mortal shackles of slumber and rest, and has passed into an elevated state of uncaring existence, going beyond the portals of the cranium which kept it contained in its constricted surround and merging into the ultimate scheme of things, the greater good of it all, and becoming one with the universe itself...

Given above is the Text of speech running through an insomniac's mind as he made his way form the place of his dinner to the place of his residence at 12:08 A.M, 28-3-2006

bnfiefhi oldsfhb nsadvvrerkoeorererjkerqef eoijfasfklkjls dfhsfdjklasdkojvebkiw dofenflekjflekqoiqnfq ihokfnlkfnq knw dqkwnj dknw nwdjqpwijqwkfn

Text of speech written by the insomniac as he crashed on top of his Laptop's keyboard.

Sad.

It's a very sad thing. (Yes, this is going to be one of my socially responsible posts, with deeply meaningful messages for the youth of this country, so those of you who just want to read nonsense, go here...) Coming back to the point, there is a very disturbing trend, call it a fad if you will, spreading alarmingly among the pre-college teens of our country, and it stokes up a mixture of astonishment and consternation that something could be so addicting.

No, it's not drugs. Or cigarettes or booze. Those will come only in college. No, it's this simple "social network service", launched on January 22, 2004, developed by a Google employee as an independent project. This Google employee is a Turkish software engineer. And he has a strange name. No, not Keyser Soze of The Usual Suspects fame. But someone who's had just as much an impact on so many people's lives staying just as anonymous. Yes, his name is Orkut Büyükkökten.

(Disclaimer: ESPNStar wishes to advice that the athletes in the following program have had professional training and none of the actions seen should be imitated at home)

(Actual Disclaimer: This post is not a call-to-arms against Orkut. I myself have spent many a lazy night going through scrapbooks, reading in delight the "Hey, I see that the third letter in our second names is the same... wanna be friends?" or the "Hola, buenos dias! Como esta este manana..." or the Scrap conversations like, "You online?". "Yes". "Cool". "Yes". "What doing?". "Nothing". "Wanna be friends?". End of conversation.)

So anyway, this Keyser, I mean, Orkut, has invaded the lives of people at levels that you would not have thought possible. School kids, in the age group 15 and above, are on Orkut, writing detailed "About Me" or whatever that column is called and scrapping each other like crazy. In all honesty, I will accept that I did not know About Me till I was 19. (SURELY you didn't expect that I'd admit I STILL don't!) So how in the world can those 15 year-olds know??? And this scrap-crap. It's some kind of a race, as kids see it. Hey, I got to 300 scraps before YOU did. Wow, what an achievement, and at such a tender age too! The kids are just growing smarter by the day...

It's been barely two years since the inception of Orkut. And I suddenly feel like I'm from a different generation when compared to the Orkut-savvy school-goers of today. I mean, 2004, I hadn't passed out of school either. And yet, I did not even know the concept of Orkut, or that you could do a "How was Physics?" or "When is Maths?" scrap in the middle of the friggin Board Exams! COME ON, people, you're gonna meet your classmates for the next exam anyway, or at the end of it all for the Big Lunch or Dinner or whatever. Surely your curiosity is not SO insatiable that you really HAVE to know how the Physics paper was for the person that you met barely an hour ago in the exam hall...

A valid question in this context would be How do parents let their kids stay Online so long anyway??? Agreed that it does not take Rocket Physics to put a "Maths was easy" scrap, but ten to twenty scraps a day would surely require the investment of a considerable amount of time... that too online. Don't parents notice at all? Or is it the classic both-parents-working-leaving-no-time-for-child case? In that case, well, someone needs to talk to THEM!

I'm not against the whole concept of the "taking a break between studies" thing. I know that Boards is a pretty big thing, in fact, the FIRST big thing in a person's life, if I may. I know that it needs people to be calm, relaxed, not go overboard about the seriousness of the whole thing. I know staring at 150 pages of NCERT's rambling about Azo-Dyes and Chemistry in Everyday Life can be terribly monotonous. I know all this because I watched Titanic in Tamil, the day before the first exam, Physics. I daresay I did satisfactorily in the Boards nevertheless.

What I DO feel srongly about, is the WAY these "breaks" are being spent. I don't remember what I did (yeah the Titanic, of course) during the multitude of breaks that I gave myself between studies. I have a very short attention time, barely an hour. After that, my eyes will unfocus and I'll just blankly stare at the book. And so I would... yes, I would go out with my tennis-ball and bowl it at my house's gate. Or I would switch on the TV and watch the Swat Kats take on the Metalli Kats. Or I would pull out an old Tinkle Digest from my bookshelf and curl up with a Lay's Magic Masala. But the point is, these are all necessarily just half-an-hour activities. The bowling will tire you out, Swat Kats will get over in 30 minutes and if you read a Tinkle for more than 20 minutes, BOY, you must be slow. So once the break is done, you're back with your Chemistry. Orkut, on the other hand, does NOT tire you out, does NOT get over in 30 minutes and does NOT have a "Tinkle tells you Why" section...

I know it's their lives and they can do anything they want with it. I know that they are all informed, educated, nearly-adults who know what they are doing and going to do. I know they will all (HOPEFULLY) clear the Boards with flying colours.

But it's just a sad thing to see a 10th Class kid, scrapping a 12th Class kid, "Hey, My Math just got over. Was easy. When is yours?", instead of going up to his Mom, all smiles, and saying "Mom, I did my Math very well" and the Mom beaming with pride, with a hint of a tear at the edge of her eye, that her child is so clever...

Pah!

MY LIFE

My name is William Jefferyson Clineton. I was the President of the United Sovereignities of Andulasia, USA for short. I became President easily enough. The total voting population of my country is a gargantuan 51 people, of which 27 are my relatives, or my wife's relatives... or 'her' relatives. So anyway, mine was a clear mandate, I won 49-31 on the vote count. The election officers were slightly perplexed. There had been totally 103 votes polled, so the missing 29 had to be accounted for. Then they figured that those people had probably been electrocuted when they pressed their finger into the electrical socket of the Extremely Vile Machine (EVM) rather than into the button beside my name... So yes, as you can see from the Math, it is pretty clear how I became President. However, this story is about how I UN-became President...

"Shall we tell the President?" is the name of a book by Jeffrey Archer. It featured Edward Kennedy in the President's role in the original version, but was replaced by Florentyna Kane in later versions. THAT however, is not why I brought that sentence up... I'm saying this because that was the line I overheard when I was passing by my Chief Security Officer's room in my Presidential Mansion, The Off-White House. Nevertheless, I carried on to my own room, the ellipsoidal-heptangular-tetra cuspidal hypocycloid... also called the Oval Office for convenience, feeling sure that my Officer would come and tell me whatever was bothering him. And sure enough...

He came in and took the seat facing across from me. I gave him a cup of coffee to soothe his high-strung nerves. He finished the coffee, but still seemed extremely shifty and uncomfortable, even more so, if it was possible. "Mr. President", he began, still staring straight down as if he'd just figured out how shoes fit perfectly around the feet thanks to those wonderful things called Laces. I was really beginning to lose my patience now.

"Mr. Edward, it's all right, you can go ahead and say it", I coaxed him. No one used his full name, Edward Shit. Which was quite unfortunate really, because it was HE who had to sign all the official memos to the armies- the ones which cut down on their holidays, increased their training periods and placed a limit on the amount to be bet on Barrack-fights between Captains and Privates... Invariably, the reaction to such memos was "Aw, this is SO Shit E. man!"... and so was the signature...

"Mr. President", he began again, and looked up and saw that I was really getting ready to blow. So he hesitantly stretched his hand and asked, "Can I have another cup of coffee?"

I was taken aback by this request. It felt as if someone had just driven a piledriver through my mid-section. For all his life, Edward had never asked for a second helping of ANTYHING. Even in the parched sands of Irania, where we had fought together during The Bay War (no one called it the Gulf War anymore), Edward had been offered only a thimble-full of water at the end of a long day, an amount that would have barely quenched the thirst of an ant after a marathon. But Edward had stoutly refused another thimble-full, and had marched on the next day sprightly as ever...

I handed him his second cup of Coffee. He downed it in a single gulp, drew a deep breath and began, "Mr. President..."

"Oh for God's Sake, call me Bill!" I snapped.

"Bill, we have a crisis. The Central Reserve Army of Promenia (CRAP) is revloting against their dictator, Am-Ul Dhoodh. Promenia is the second largest exporter of oil to our country, and right now they're trading a barrel of oil for a barrel of sand... apparently, they want a beach in their county, but all they have is oil and no coastline... so anyway, it's a profitable trade for us, and if Am-Ul is toppled..." his voice trailed off, leaving unspoken the terrible calamities that could befall my country as a result of such a disastrous act.

"What are our options?" I asked in my most everyone-asks-this-question-in-this-tone tone.

"One very good one, actually. The leader of CRAP, Amino Acidov, is willing to continue the same oil-sand exchange with us if we do not speak against his revoulution in public and if we pass him some weapons on the side... like we always do"

"Excellent then, what's the catch in this?" I asked incredulously.

"He wants you to come over to Promenia, alone, and sign an agreement to such an effect with him and his associates. He's crazy, I told him so. The nerve to expect that we'd let you go..."

"Nonsense, Edward! I've been in the army too, you remember? Of course I know how to handle myself in hostile territory. Now, no more arguements. Chalk up the rendezvous details and arrange for my transport" I ended the conversation with a finality befitting a President.

So there I was, the President of the USA, all alone in a dark alley in the capital of Promenia. I wasn't sure how Amino would show up, fully-armed and heavily guarded or defenceless like me. Either way, he was on home gorund, so he had the advantage. At the end of the alley, I could see the headlights of a car shining right at me. As they dimmed, I saw that it was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, complete with tinted glasses, bullet-proof body armour, puncuture-resistant tyres and a 6-litre, turbo-charged V8 engine... or so I thought. As it drew closer, I saw it was a battered 1920s Ford, with the bumper hanging loose and the front windshield missing.

And a woman driving.

The car pulled up closer and stopped. The woman, in full military dress (it was amazing how severely cut men's clothes looked so great on women), walked up to me and said, "Hi... I'm Amino."

"Wha...???" was all I could manage to get out of my larynx as my brain raced as fast as it could to catch up with proceedings... and my eyes tried very hard not to stray below her face.

"Yes, I know," she smiled, "Promoenian names can be gender-confusing. We believe in an equal society, you know." She smiled again, "The agreement is in the car, you can sign it there."

She was getting straight to business. Which was fine by me. I squeezed into the passenger's seat, read through the agreement, noted that the words 'oil' and 'sand' were exactly where they should have been with more than a degree of satisfaction and signed it. She leant closer to check my signature, and I could feel her perfume lifting me. She took the agreement from my hand, and in the process, her hair brushed against my face. She put away the agreement and turned back to me. The rest, as they say, was Chemistry.

I had never had that experience in a car before. She smiled at me as she slid out through the driver's door to tie up her hair. She was still smiling when I heard the unmistakeable clicking off of the safety latches of sub-machine guns. I turned forward and saw four gunmen, with their Uzi submachines pointed right at me through the boken windshield. Immediately the reason behind the boken windshield became clear to me. She was still smiling when I stared at her numbly, with my eyes asking Why? She was still smiling when the gunmen gently squeezed the trigger of the four Uzis...

So you see, God, I have done nothing wrong, personally. It was all circumstances, as always they are. So if you could please get me out of this horrible place that people around me are calling 'Hell', I'd be very grateful. God! You don't know how hot it is in here!

This was a Creative Writing piece. I got disqualified for the 'shit' and 'crap'

Pah!

What the Fudge??!

Yep, I can't say it. The four-letter word. Because this is Blogspot. And that would be a profanity. And then it would be wrong. What is the point? Why should you always be in control, in your senses? How will you know what it is to be free if you've never tried it?

BAH!!!! I CAN"T EVEN BLOG!!!!!!!!!!

I can't even write something funny!!! SURELY the world is going to end...

Coming Back to Life

It's been a while. A week to be exact. Which is not much time, considering this is not my profession and so I needn't be doing it as religiously as I would, say, be studying. Yes, that was a joke, you can all smile knowingly. But it is such a compulsion to pour out the smallest, dullest, most insignificant happenings in your even more insignificant life into this webpage that you wonder if people don't have any concept of privacy anymore. The sad part is that it is so widely done as well, and getting ever so popular. The world is shrinking. But not so much that it shrinks into MY own, separate world. No Thanks. You can all shrink till just outside my world.

I don't know why I put that Floyd Song as the title. I don't know much these days. It's all abstract, a vague collection of thoughts and ideas and desires. The sinking realization that my life is headed nowhere suddenly rammed home with startling clarity in class today. Well, not nowhere, I THINK I can vaguely see paths laid out in front of me, leading to places. So I guess I must say I don't know where I WANT my life to go, instead of saying it's going nowhere. Yes, take the blame. It's easier that way.

I went through my Yahoo Mail Inbox today. The oldest mail I had was dated 25 July, 2004. It was one of those jokes which come through forwards. It was a good one, I wouldn't have kept it otherwise. I smiled when I read mails from my friends all excited about the first few weeks in college, whichever one they were in. And I was being pretty excited too, my Sent Items said so. "Oh wow, this campus is really cool.", "The Chemistry professor is unbelievable.", "The Computer Facility has Net connection at the speed of light!" Innocent, awe-struck wonderings of a boy lost in an unfamiliar place. And around November of first year in college, I saw the first signs of the crack showing. "I'm a man broken by the system he tried so hard to get into.". Now of course, I'm beyond all of that. Take life as it comes. Go with the flow. Things will happen when they have to. Call me a believer in destiny.... or someone resigned to fate.

Room-cleaning. With a vengeance. Trying to get back some of the lost me. I'm usually very ordered, I like to see things neatly stacked up and symmetric. Symmetry is pleasing to the eye. My room was a mess. The table was littered, the cupboard had clothes in a heap and there's a lizard in one corner of the room which lives in this room more than I do. Therefore the room-cleaning. Swept it. Once, twice, thrice. The dust simply wouldn't stop coming. So I gave up. Rearranged the table. Ordered the clothes in the cupboard. Why am I saying all this? See what I meant, in my opening paragraph?

What do I do when the quizzes are over. Where do the 24 hours go on normal days? Frightening thought. That absolute murder of time could come so naturally and without our realising it. What DID I do yesterday??? Um, I don't know! So there's a resolution made, to do something... anything! As ever. To be broken at the first possible chance. Oh well, at least I realised that I don't realise I'm wasting time. It's a start.

It's been a while. For many things. It's been a while since... I drove my car. Since I watched Live Cricket. Since I read a novel, lying on the bed, munching on horribly unhealthy snacks. Since I went to the beach alone and sat at the water's edge and listened to the waves. Since I watched the Saturday Night movie on Star Movies. Since I've been to a friend's house. Since I've had a pure, cold shower (Chennai's becoming COLD!). Since I sent someone a greeting card. Since I've listened to a very old song on the radio. Since I played Minesweeper. Since I wrote a short story, just for the heck of it. Since I sat in front of my book collection, took them all out and arranged them again in exactly the same order...

Since I've been myself...

Um... WHAT??!!!

Frog.
Pond.
Plop.

... is apparently a limmerick. Hmm...

Hello! I'm still single too!

OK, it just HAD to happen. I mean, if something becomes part of your life, no wait, becomes FULLY your life for five days, you just have to crap about it on this otherwise useless piece of webspace. Jeez man, visit any IITians blogsite and it's all Saarang, Saarang, Saarang! I've always been the rebel (I AM, really. See, I got 486 in my boards and got into this institution and am generally following the 'optimum path'... how rebellious is THAT!) and decided I'll NOT write about Saarang. And so now I'm writing about NOT writing about Saarang. And hence I'm writing about Saarang anyway. Man! Nothing ever goes the way I want it to!

Everyone knows Saarang by Day. But hey, I'm the man who slept at 5:30 on two nights and didn't sleep at all one night! I caught the sunrise of 29th January, 2006, folks, and it's NOT because I woke up early! So anyway, not sleeping and not eating and drinking loads of soft drinks and then not sleeping again can put your system slightly out of sync. As in you'll feel like vomiting all the time, but there's nothing in your stomach, so you can't vomit. And your stomach has this constant pain, but you don't know why, because as has already been established, there's nothing in your stomach. Wait... Except for the gas from all the soft drinks. Oh! So THAT'S it??? OK, NOW I know...

Not sleeping is this wonderful thing. You can feel very drunk when you don't sleep, and I got 5 people concluding independently that I was drunk on one of the days when I was actually just lacking some 30 hours of sleep. But yeah, that's the closest I can ever get to being high, being the 'rebel' I am. Another thing about sleeplessness is that you fall asleep in a micro-second when you hit the bed next time. It's a bleeding painful thing, to be in bed and not get sleep. That's when you start reviewing your life or current situation or the day ahead and you feel very down. On the other hand, lose some sleep and you can feel high for that time and also sleep off instantly without getting into angsty reviews of your hopeless life.

ALSO, you can walk around zombie-like all day with your head down and your mind switched off. THAT is a very helpful thing, especially at Saarang. It helps you to forget about the title of this post and walk above all the mindless flirtations of all the lowly mortals who strive incessantly to grab the attention of the fairer sex. In other words, it lets you forget that you are this give-up guy who can't get a girl all his life. So might as well do the "these grapes are sour" thing instead of accepting the inevitable.

Last, but not the very least, We, The Newsletter Team of Saarang 2006, are very happy that The Hindu noticed our very dedicated work towards improving the general excitement level at Saarang and decided to honour us by putting us on Page 2 of their daily publication (THAT or because they WERE the Newsletter Sponsors and we religiously mentioned that in every issue!). We also realise why they have people who do day-shifts and people who do night-shifts. We'd also like to tell them that there are a few things the Newsletter Team created in their long nights of mostly sitting around before eventualy beginning work at around 4...
The Newsletter Anthem :"Eef you come today..." (Rajkumar and Band)
The Newsletter Addition to Lingo: Khunntrrie Maxxx
The Newsletter Revelation :There actually IS a band called Repertoire Dogs!
The Quote that didn't come up : During WM, one of the participants goes, "this is my own composition by me..."

Goodbye Saarang... Hello boring old life.

My I(Mage)

find your elementat mutedfaith.com.

No Man's Land.

Oh wow, New Year's here and I'm yet to post anything. Well, I don't believe in reminiscing about the past year or making resolutions which I will break-down with about as much regularity as the MTC buses in my city, so nothing along those lines. Apart from that, it's been a dull, drab year so far. Till today...

I've also wanted to see how long it takes for me to type a post. So I'm gonna check that... in a different way. So, I'll see how many songs I run through on my iTunes before I complete this post, starting with...

High Hopes - Pink Floyd

Have you ever been to a place where you KNOW you've made a mistake in going there, the moment you enter it? It's a scary feeling man, you want to get out of that place as quick as you can but without making yourself look like the biggest fool in the world after the President of a certain country which starts with U.S and ends with A. So, now that you're in there, you try to mix with the crowd, most of whom are "veterans" in that place and are gulping in amounts you wouldn't have believed was humanly possible! And it's not like everyone's of the same kind, there's quite a heady "cocktail" of people in there. You feel so insecure, childish, lost, totally unsure of what to do next, what the procedure would be to get yourself one of "those".

City of Blinding Lights - U2

It's not like I've never wanted to go there. On the contrary, I've ALWAYS wanted to. But most of the times, all the things just failed to come together. So I wouldn't be able to go and remained a "good boy". But today, it was just so unplanned, so unexpected. A friend just said he was going over there and asked me if I was coming too. I don't know what came over me at that moment, but I nodded yes. And Bang, before I knew it, there I was- the place I had always wanted to come to but had "conveniently" got some excuse to keep away from.

Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd

SO, as I already said, now that I was in there, I thought Why not? I just followed my friend blindly as he went straight to the table and spoke in the most cinematic conspirational whisper he could muster. Then he went through a back-door into an even bigger room which was filled with rows and rows and rows of our... um... subject of interest! I mean, I didn't KNOW there was so much variety in this world, and that there were so many people who KNEW about so much variety... God!

Lifting Shadows off a Dream - Dream Theater

By this time, I had had enough. I was totally convinced this was the wrong place for me to be in, and looked for ways to tell my friend that. He, however, had already got really..."elevated", shall we say, and I saw that there was no point speaking anything to him anymore. I just hurriedly worked my way past all those rows of tables and chairs and people sitting on them... well, as near sitting as they could manage and found the welcoming light of the red Exit sign. But it wasn't over yet. Just as I stepped out, there was this other friend who was just walking in and on seeing me, raised his eyebrows so high that I'm sure I saw them disappear into his hair. I hurriedly mumbled a "I didn't DO anything in there" and scurried out.

Zoo York - Paul Oakenfold

Lesson learnt. Don't go somewhere just because everyone else is. It becomes painfully obvious in about two and a half seconds that you don't belong there, and you stick out like a sore thumb. And when ESPNStar says Please don't try this at home or when any other organisation issues any warning of such sort, heed them! Don't make the same mistake I did and go to places you don't belong...

Yes, people. I went to The Central Library, IIT-Madras today...

Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve

So, takes me about six songs then...