Speed Racer

He knew he never had the straight-line speed to catch him. If it had to be done, it would have to be done on the braking. And soon, they were on the last lap.
“And Schumacher starts the final lap still in pursuit of Hakkinen. Will he finally be able to make this one count, or will the McLaren’s straight line speed keep him ahead till the chequered flag?”
He felt the sheer adrenalin making him sharper, more focused. He had been called the greatest driver of his times by many, and the greatest driver ever by a few but all of that was immaterial right now. He tightened the grip on the steering wheel and pushed himself deeper into his seat by a fraction of an inch. That’s what this sport was decided on, fractions of inches.
“We turn into Beckett’s now, the series of long, sweeping left-handers that will suit the Ferrari’s balanced chassis. Can Schumacher gain ground here?”
He knew this circuit like the back of his hand. He could drive it single-handed through blinding rain, and had actually done it a few times as well. He went along the same route so many times that he knew exactly where to brake late, where to move that fraction of an inch closer to the edge of the road, where the upward slope was so that he could get on the accelerator early…
“Coming up to the first intermediate marker here, and Schumacher’s first sector time is faster than Hakkinen’s! He’s gaining here surely. Not by a lot, but he’s definitely gaining.”
He hated that his car was not just simply faster, and he had to drive his way out of this if he was to win it. But then again, wasn’t that what great sportsmen were made of. If everything was set for you- the best car, the best team, the best conditions, then what was to differentiate you from anyone else who got those. Thus consoling himself, he screwed his eyes closer and leaned forward ever so slightly, as if egging the car forward. The grip got harder still, the seat was pressing against his back now more than he was pressing against it and the legs had practically become welded to the gas and brake pedals. He was as close to being one with the car as he ever could be. As close to Nirvana.
“We’re past the second intermediate and it’s still anybody’s race. There’s barely half a second in this one now, and we are not making any calls. Hold on to your hats folks, this one’s going all the way to the last corner”
This was it now, he knew it. The last chicane, the sharp left-right before they floored their pedal to the finish line. He braked really late, as if making a move for the inside of the left turn. Predictably, the car in front defended, closing the inside line and leaving him no room to move. But then, he had known that. He hadn’t done 25000kms in a vehicle to forget the basic rule of racing, ‘Always defend your inside line’. He turned sharply right, simultaneously accelerating hard even while turning. A cardinal sin of course, but what the heck. He was now on the outside of the car in front, but more importantly, on the inside for the upcoming right. He practically stood on his brakes for the right turn, perfectly clipped the edge of the kerb to make the racing line and gave a quick glance towards his left. He could see the nose of the McLaren, in line with his seat. This was it!
“And Schumacher’s just pulled off the most amazing move! All the way around the outside on the left turn before diving inside for the final corner and flooring it all the way to the finish line. What. A. Finish!”
* * * *

There she was, in her usual seat next to the CEO’s office. She looked up, flashed him that brilliant smile of hers and asked, “You’re in a bit early today, aren’t you?”

He smiled back and nodded. Then, still smiling, he made his way to his desk, the noise from the grandstands still ringing in his ears.

It had been another record-breaking lap from his house to office.

TwitteRant

Firstly let me clarify that this has been long due. That it has not seen the light of day can be attributed to various reasons, not least of which is paradoxically one of the things this post seeks to address. And thankfully, now that I've got my customary long sentence out of the way, I can get down to business.

Unless you've been living under a rock or, in massive over-preparation for 2012, in an ABC shelter, you cannot have missed the internet phenomenon that is Twitter. I was about to prefix that with 'latest' when I caught myself, realizing that in the digital world, Twitter is about as latest as the chubby Ronaldo is to football and the Pterodactyl is to the earth. Either way, your life has been touched by #twitter at least once. I am among the last of the muggles left in Twitter-warts magic school, simply failing to understand how a medium that needs such constant attention and allows no room for flowing, liberal prose could ever be such a popular medium of expression.

It's not that I don't like the concept itself, it's just that somehow I feel, it's no different from those big ol' public chat-rooms that Yahoo had. For me, twitter is like the Chennai Central station - as soon as I enter it, I just get swamped by this incessant buzz of chatter, each with their own voices and opinions and all talking at once. Similarly, most twitter conversations which go @reply after @reply after @reply seem like the chubby, late-middle-aged bureaucrat or businessman in a Safari next to you talking loudly into his phone forcing one side of the conversation completely upon you.

And what is this about joining the conversation. Most of the times the conversations fly by so thick and fast that I barely get to comprehend what's going on, let alone get a word in. Apparently there's 'clients' and 'apps' which can read your brain, paraphrase it in 140 characters, throw in a few links and hashtags and announce it to the world within 10 seconds. I, on the other hand, lose about 2 minutes just trying to see which @ I should reply to, and then thinking about the line which will best pack a 140-character punch. By then, the topic of discussion would have moved on entirely about thrice, rendering you clever, thoughtful and brilliant insights kinda 'old school'. Damn.

"If you know so much, you must be using it, Aha!" you say. I am, but it's mostly in such a passive state that bears in hibernation will have a longer timeline than mine. Mostly I'm just scared that I will break some unwritten rule in the flurry of all the @ and #s. Is it ok to address a guy you completely don't know as 'mate'? Should I ask for people's permission before @mentioning them? And seriously, what's the deal with celebrities?!! Questions to which deriving the answers from the iterations of my moral compass result in the same lack of alacrity as mentioned above. And on twitter, alacrity is everything.

As far as I see it, it has been most successful as a news dissemination medium, which is quite different from what it allegedly started out being. By the sheer strength of crowd-sourcing, it's been able to pull together stories from all over the world in a way no news agency can, and for that it works. Imagine a current affairs wikipedia, constantly edited and getting filled with some useful information by a modification of the Infinite Monkey theorem. And the power of customization letting you choose which parts of infinity you want to read, right here right now. Well, that's all just fair. I guess some of us would still like to wait for a more informed, thoughtful opinion in the next day's papers.

What do you think? Feel free to drop me a line on twitter @Duckyied and I'll be sure to get back to you. By 2013.

Or you can just leave a comment below.

Phase I

(00:02)

Amit leaned across from his desk and dialed the number he dialed every day at precisely this time in the evening-The Goldilocks zone, when everyone required for the discussion across all time zones was awake and fresh. His fingers flew over the numbers on the phone and he stared absently at his screen as he waited for the cheery ‘Hello’ to interrupt the ringing tone.

He sat up straight and stared into the darkness in front of him. He was sure he was seeing the colours of his wall painting dripping from their canvas onto the floor. He was also sure he wasn’t. And what of that smell? There was no reason for that smell to penetrate his nostrils, where he was. But it was! This inherent mistrust of his own senses made him question whether to believe the message that the next of his senses was conveying- that noise! He reached for the button which he vaguely remembered stopped that noise. Ah, Silence.

(06:11)

The connection was being really bad today. It always happened on trans-Atlantic phone conversations, irrespective of the amount of progress that the telecommunications industry had made over the past few years. The person at the other end wasn’t helping either, with his constant mumbling. Amit looked at the clock and sighed. It had been more than 5 minutes and they hadn’t really got closure on the first issue they had been discussing. He sighed, forced himself to concentrate on the call and strained his ears to hear better.

He opened his eyes and let his mind register the dim light illuminating the room. He smiled to himself as he thought how just a single light was enough to dispel any amount of darkness. Amount of darkness? Was darkness quantifiable? For that matter, was light quantifiable? He remembered a conversation he had had a few days ago...

“What’s that?”

“It’s a lava lamp man. That’s electric arcs streaking inside”

“Sweet. How does it work?”

“So if you touch it, your fingers create the potential difference, and the electric arcs converge to it”

“Nice. But you should be able to control it remotely too”

“How?”

“With your eyes. Light is a particle right? So if you stare at it long enough, or hard enough, you should get enough light particles on the lamp to create that potential?”

“Yeah... no. Your eyes don’t emit light. They absorb them.”

"Ah. Damn”

(08:23)

Amit was beginning to wish the emotional baseline of this conversation was a little flatter. The caller had gone from monotonous mumbling to quite an excited state, even agitated. The deadlines were close and they had closed only one of the five issues they had to discuss. He didn’t like it when he had unclear issues on his hand; it messed up his mental plan. And he didn’t work well with messed up plans. He was getting increasingly impatient for his turn to speak, he was barely getting a word in right now.

He forced himself to shift his body into a vertical position. He knew he had accomplished that task when he saw himself staring at the painting again, as opposed to the ceiling that he had been staring at for the last ten minutes. The room was beginning to feel stuffy too, all of a sudden. It was so hot in there... No wait, it was actually cold. Nope, hot again. It was being... groovy. Either way he had to get out of the room but he just couldn’t make himself. He was beginning to feel mildly perturbed. Surely he should be able to get out of this room? Of course he could. As soon as he could get up.

(11:33)

Amit was relieved the call was coming to an end. They had clarified all that he wanted cleared up, though he was not sure about the confidence level of the person at the other end of the line. He wasn’t going to be unduly worried about that, he wanted to get home as soon as he could today. It was his son’s 5^th birthday, and he had already missed the 4^th birthday party because he was off on official business. He paused long enough to make sure that the person at the other end had nothing more to say as well, and then ended the call with his usual farewell message, “Alright then, Goodbye, Brian”

He rolled over and as if like a trained response, hit the button that he always did when he heard that phrase. Apparently it ended something...

Brian’s rocky journey ended twelve hours after it had so innocently begun. He was shattered by it...

CWG 'shame' is fine, but what about daily life?

The last three months have seen cringe-worthy behaviour from all fields of our beautiful, huge, over-populated, 'developing' country. First the sports bodies involved with the Commonwealth Games, then the beauracracy involved with the sports bodies, and on top of it all, the press involved with all of the above, who outdid each other in claiming the 'first to have unearthed the scam'. Clap clap, congrats to you, you are up for the upcoming Peace Nobel for this monumental achievement. News seems to be the new entertainment - always on, unearthing 'breaking stories' hour after hour involving oil spills, games scams and Deepika Padukone's cat getting stuck up a tree. This arrival of 24x7 media hasn't exactly helped the world I feel, but that's a debate for another post.

So, as I was saying, there has been approximately INR 20,000 crore siphoned off the games so far. I have no clue how to type the new Rupee symbol - a symbol which represents our arrival on the world stage, our economic clout, and in this case, our unending corruption. It's a crying shame that the first widespread use of the new symbol was when those news items about 'Treadmills for INR 10 Lakhs' were splashed all over the pages of one of the above 'we saw it first' media houses. Just goes to show, you can change the symbol, but you can't change the people.

So now, unlike Beijing and later South Africa, the hosting of a games has mostly pulled down any respect India gained over the last 10 years. It's just been a case of the Emperor's New Clothes all along, India Shining, India and China, Neo-liberalization, all other associated bullcrap. And while all the attention has been rightly focussed on this monumental mess up, I have one minor question to anyone who cares to listen - What about the smaller people and the smaller 'somethings' that are given everyday.

Here's a small experiment. Someone please tell me the exact fee, as laid down by the law, for:

1. Getting a driver's licence from a state-established RTO.
2. Changing registration/paying a state's road tax (I don't get why the heck Road Tax is a state subject in the first place, but again, I digress)
3. Getting a passport, including that very famous step of 'police verification'
4. Getting a birth/marriage certificate.

Rates aside, I have one other question for the list. Why does it take, and is accepted as the norm, for an Income Tax refund to come after 3 years of the year of Assesment? I mean, it's the age of the TDS and NEFT transfer. I should pay my taxes promptly before I even receive my salary, but if I have to get a refund I wait 3 years? Heck, I probably belong to a very small percentage of our Billion+ sweethearts who even pay the friggin tax at source. The least that can be done is settle my accounts at the end of every fiscal.

I guess my point is that unless we stop this 'thousand for this saaar', 'chief officer will also have to be satisfied saaar', 'it will take 3 months to get this signed, but I know a way it can be done quicker saaar' habit of ours in our daily life, practiced by a million people every day, there's no point losing sleep over all those crores that went down a few very fat pockets in Delhi. Between us, India's famed New Middle Class, would've hit the total amount of the scam over the course of barely 4 years of our lives. We really can't complain about someone thinking they can get away with doing it over 4 weeks.

Sigh.