Into The Void

Teenage angst has paid of well, now I’m bored and old…

That’s the first line of the first track of this absolute brilliant album by Nirvana called “In Utero”. The track being “Serve the servants”.

Had a rough day yesterday. Any day that involves you having to discuss with the agents and then go to the RTO of any city has to be a rough day.

I don’t really feel like writing about the clowns that exist in the RTOs and make a living being general case parasites there. Hope AHAK or Antya take it up sometime. Just that they (the RTO characters) are misbegotten scavenging bloodsucking sons of… never mind.

Oh yeah, the day began with an argument with a rick driver (scientific name: Callous Nincompoopus). The bike’s gone to Bangalore and hence the rick involvement. I walk into the office and realize it’s traditional day and had to face a barrage from people I hardly even know as to why I’m not wearing anything traditional.
How about my ancestors being apes as a retort? (Idea courtesy Antya, who went about telling this to a nut who didn’t understand it anyways, pretty hilarious stuff, guess Antya will let you in on that some time). I’m all for traditional day and all that, just that I was too busy to notice this time around.

Anyways, had been invited by an aunt for dinner last night and reached home at say quarter to midnight. Got a call from a friend and decided I’m going to walk around a bit while chatting away. The range within elevators is pretty bad anyways. So there I was downstairs walking around and talking. Out came a moron who has a high-pitched voice that makes him sound like he’s crying every time he speaks. We’ve been in an argument before about them telling Gag to “get out” cause he was seated in the colony park. Well the argument had us getting logical, confusing them and telling them to mend their ways while addressing people in general. They had asked us to stop playing or exercising in the colony for reasons that sounded like they were jealous of the young fit crowd that seems to have turned up of late. There were four on their side in that argument against the three of us.

Anyways, High-pitched moron (HPF… replacing M with F for better effect) comes up to me whilst I was talking and goes,

HPF: Hey what’re you doing here walking around so late like some indecent blah blah.

Me: (into the phone) hey I’ll speak to you a little later, some clown wants to get chatty, this sounds interesting already… yeah will definitely tell you about the conversation heh heh, minus the profanity though. Yeah b’bye… (disconnect… at HPF) yeah you were saying?

HPF: blah blah… families stay here blah blah… (he hadn’t paused for a breather even… just went about some crap of his)

Me: Are you done yet?

HPF: huff huff yeah (to himself) phew what brilliant dialogue delivery, he’s shivering.

Me: Are you alright? You’re struggling for breath… you’re shivering. You’re all pale.

HPF: eh? Yeah I’m alright. I’m shivering? I thought you were... er… no, yeah, what? Huff… phoo phoo.

Me: Foo fighters? That David Grohl thingy? Good band…

HPF: eh? I was just breathing…

Me: heh heh yeah I know, I was just taking your case. You’re an interesting conversationalist you know…

HPF: Thank you thank you… what!!! (he’d just got his breath back)

Me: Ok now that you can speak, I missed most of that fantastic opening sermon of yours, could you repeat it? Or at least explain the gist?

HPF: (getting all red… to be fair, a fine effort had gone waste, he deserved to be pissed off) You’re not supposed to walk about here, society rules.

Me: Cool, I won’t walk, now go get your bike or car or whatever, and drop me to the elevator.

HPF: Acting smart!! I meant you can’t walk about, you can obviously walk to the elevator…

Me: And how would you make out the difference? And why shouldn’t I walk about anyways?

HPF: We have formed a society association and have framed some rules. One of them is tenants cannot walk about.

Me: Jeez man what a tragedy. Could I take a look at the legal paper, which carries such rules or something? Not that I don’t trust you or something, just that you look damn cool with a paper in your hand.

HPF: I do, don’t I? (blush)

Me: yeah… The paper?
HPF: err… it’s in the court… formalities…

Me: I’ll be standing right here, I won’t walk a yard, I swear… please go to the court or wherever and get it…

HPF: WHAT!!! This is not a joke, you’re in a society man…

Me: Well, so are you, it’s time you people realize that a society is a place to live in… and there are going to be others living here as well, not just yourselves. The next time you go in for one of your discussions, just keep in mind that you can frame society norms which help toward a better social life… Don’t go about framing rules you fascist pigs want to enforce on the others who somehow seem to find peace of mind in the same place. Get the definition of society right first, and stop cribbing about every thing, will you?

HPF: gulp… see, you guys may be decent, but look at those two girls walk around… girls!! At this time of the night.

He didn’t notice that I’d called him a fascist pig. It’s one of the advantages of speaking in long sentences.

Me: they do look cute don’t they? Heh heh. Anyways, now I’m decent and they’re not… and that because they walk around INSIDE the colony or society or whatever…

HPF: But how can girls walk around here at this time?

Me: (to myself) with people like you around, yeah it’s a valid point (aloud) Sir, honest opinion, please don’t make the rules too strict, cause the stricter you make them, the harder it will be to enforce them, and there’ll be many people breaking the rules. Like I said, people LIVE here.

HPF: (to himself) thinks he knows everything, what a brat (aloud) yeah I’ll keep that in mind.

Me: (to myself) insecure morons (aloud) nice talking to you sir, guess it’s getting late, you better head back home, I got a call to complete, and will do some walking about here and in the park with you permission.

HPF: Whatever, just don’t stay too long, the others might not like it.

Now why bring in the others when he’d very blatantly said he doesn’t like it a short while ago. Anyways, no point trying to understand such characters, let’s leave it at that.

Yeah, he walked back home and probably spent a sleepless night pondering on answers he could’ve come up with to my statements. I got back on the phone, the weather was delightful, walked about for an hour or so after that.

And finally:
Yeah come the weekend, I’ll be leaving town for good. Had a great time in Pune and the crowd was fantastic and all that jazz, but then really, the few people I did meet and connect with were fantastic folks. Here’s to them. Thank you all. Have a great life (convert that into plural).

Bangalore ahoy.

Will be going on a bit of a holiday and will be like out of reach of computers and all that for a while. See you all once I get back.

Adios.

- Komodo Dragon

Where are we headed?

Independence:
Too much’s been spoken already

Quite a few decades without progress:
Same deal

IT boom:
Lots of cash coming in. Everyone wants in. Everyone’s digging in. Engineers everywhere. Colleges all over the country.

The lull period:
Engineers just keep popping out. The country’s overflowing with them. No jobs.

IT Boom-II:
Jobs here, jobs there, jobs everywhere. Cash coming in again. Everybody has a job, Everyone’s happy. Yay.

Geniuses!!! Did anybody notice the Colleges all over the country deal?
People from all over the country come to the cities in waves. How many cities (or currently called IT hubs) in our country have the infrastructure to handle this influx?
Lemme give you a rough estimate… 0, zilch.

What are we doing?
Cheap chores the Americans or Brits don’t want to do themselves. At rates that they wouldn’t work for. But then, the amounts we earn are enough for us here… cool.

We are a lucky generation in a way. We got to see in a decade or so what our parents had to live out four to five to see. We don’t need to say something like, “30 years ago, we got dosas at like a 10th of a rupee for one”. We can say, I remember land being sold at 3 digit figures per square foot about a decade and a half ago. Now we’re at 4 closing in 5. Awesome. We earn way more than our parents did, and we pay in roughly the same proportion more. And we’re happy about the current days and all that.

The one huge difference being, our parents had 10-6 jobs to complain about.
The last month or so apart, I’ve no memory of leaving the office before dusk, or for that matter before dinnertime.

So in short, they pay me a decent deal and skin me alive, and the rates for everything are much higher anyways.
There’s a whole generation that slogs through the week and sleeps the entire weekend out. Too exhausted to go anywhere or do anything you see…

That’s one side of the deal.

We also have tonnes of people flocking into towns and the towns genuinely crumbling under the burden, Already spoken about.

Did anybody think about the rural sector? How many kids there really want to till the land or do whatever it is that’s to be done with the land there?
There’s an engineering college everywhere, and every college offers computer science. So everybody’s son is an Engineer. A few daughters as well, but let’s not brag too much, our country is still pathetic in that regard. So everybody’s son(s) and a few daughters.

This is alright for a generation or so, but what after that?

So we’re short on food supply and still quite content cause we’re getting decent salaries which are still incredibly low as compared to what, say, an American would earn for the same work. “I’ll starve for you, just gimme my cash!!!”

I just shifted my job and all that, it was a bit of a surprise to a few in that I had a good pay hike in the last appraisal. Now most people were more surprised that I didn’t go for a huge hike during my job shift. It wasn’t such a big deal for me cause I’m going home and all that, but people were genuinely concerned. Why go for a shift for a not so huge hike?

How about the concept, I’m alright with what I get, the work seems promising, the location’s good, etc etc. Why does it always have to be incredible hikes? Is anybody satisfied?

Now, almost everybody that doesn’t get about a 35-40% annual hike wants to leave the organization. That’s like at least 3 times the average hike in most other countries.

What if we someday (going at this rate) catch up with the salaries people there earn?
Would the outsourcing continue? They might still be forced into it cause they cannot produce so much manpower by themselves, they have to depend on us to an extent, but for how long will that continue? How long will they pay us the same amount? And we’ll still want the same hikes… Do you really think they’ll pay us more than they pay themselves? Frightening eh?

What then? What if they feel intimidated and stop outsourcing? What will we do with the entire IT setup here? What will become of the colleges that we have all over the place? Will anybody really want to get back to tilling (or whatever) the land?


And then there’re call centres or BPOs. I would’ve loved to have some extra cash on me in college. Damn tempting isn’t it?

Anyways, my colleague was a little upset about a load of work being dumped on her on a Friday evening, more so cause she had her plans for the day made and was free all week.
I suggested she make a clear stand and probably put it off till Monday since it wasn’t too important. She gave me a “do you place your head inside a church bell for a hobby?” sort of a look.

I got my headphones back on… The trial (Pink Floyd – The Wall (yeah I do listen to big hits as well)) was playing.

Crazy, Over the rainbow, I am crazy,Bars in the window.There must have been a door there in the wallWhen I came in.Crazy, over the rainbow, he is crazy.
Anyways, I wouldn’t probably have been telling her this had I not resigned and all that. Probably.

- Komodo Dragon

Was it always this way?

Received 2 mails today regarding a rock gig that’s taking place in town. 3 out of the quartet that make up the company rock band will be performing today. They play (professionally) for 2 different bands.

It’s short notice, but I guess most of the regulars would be making it there anyways. Point being we do have a regular crowd. It’s like all rock fans in the organization seem to know each other. There would be a flurry of mails over the next few hours with everybody chalking out plans and getting rid of their bosses etc. hmm on hindsight, it’s quite fortunate… the resignation thingy.

It’s odd in a way. It’s a fairly big organization I assure you, and all rock fans knowing each other means there are hardly any rock fans around (ratio). We’re like a sprinkling here and there and are the official weird bunch.

I guess most of us can live with it and be fairly happy about it as well. I wouldn’t compromise my sanity and go about listening to Himesh just so I fit in.

For all those who’re frowning, Thinshark – Music – Himesh bashing… see the link?

Anyways, all the mailing kinda reminded me of he last gig, a month or so ago. Something similar had ended up in AHAK and me ending up in a smallish rock gig in a disc. It was this classic rock deal and had one of the ‘quartet’ (a guitarist friend) playing with his band. The show started off with a couple of bands playing classic rock and fitting the definition, but then went the usual, ‘lemme play maiden leads and impress the crowd’ way. I’m fine with maiden once in a while. Used to absolutely love the band in college, but seem to have grown out of it now. I still find their music alright though, but then this was an absolute overdose with ‘fear of the dark’ and ‘hallowed be thy name’ being played like 5 times each. If that was what I’d wanted, I could’ve gotten hold of a CD instead.
Oh and when they didn’t play maiden, they played some sidey rap stuff with thrash guitaring. What’s with that stuff anyways? Since when did it become a necessity to get rap into good ol’ rock? Am I being too old fashioned?

Before I go into a tirade of sorts, the band we guys went to check out were awesome. They played Led Zep!!! How many local bands play Led Zep??

In fact, a few of us apart, most people (college crowd mostly) didn’t seem to have a clue about Led Zep, Van Halen etc. and they’d come over for a rock show. A ‘CLASSIC ROCK’ show. And boy! Were the rapping dudes a hit with the crowds or what?

Does the entire planet genuinely lack vocalists? If not, why settle for rap in rock? Let’s not get into that again…

Some band somewhere along the way had their lead man getting the crowd going with chants. Something like this, he shouts MC (the same mom oriented Hindi slang) and the entire crowd responds with BC (same deal, sis this time).
‘Bunch of wannabes’ says I,
‘Attention seekers’ opines AHAK,
‘You guys’re sure pissed’ Guitarist friend (who had played a while before),
‘Thanks for sticking to classic rock dude… some things in life are still worth it’ me (to guitarist)

If we guys were pissed off in a rock show, then where is it that we fit in? Damn frightening. Not that we genuinely expected Floyd/U2/Tull or something. Even though they said classic rock night, you don’t expect that, but chanting MC/BC sheesh. What point does it drive? That you know swearwords?

Anyways, the show apart from these jokers was quite good and so are most rock gigs of nowadays. It’s just disheartening to see people using shortcuts to fame and getting away with it. At least not in rock guys.

Just occurred to me,
We have this fairly huge segment of society who do not like the standards of music coming out these days. The music of say 30 years ago seems to be preferred.
Was it the same 30 years ago, when Rock was the big thing? Were there people then who didn’t like the music coming out then and probably preferred Classical stuff?

-- Komodo Dragon

What happened of…?

Let me be real nice to myself. I was this completely weird student all along. No I wasn’t even this regular problem kid in class or something. I mean yeah, on retrospect, I was quite a bit of a pain to the lecturers in a way. All those bombs in school and all that… heh heh… But then even that’s usual, what’s real weird is, I used to be very very attentive in some of the classes… generally those conducted by teachers I liked in a way… I mean, entire year… (or semester later on)…
I could be totally focused in one class right through and a real pest in another class during the same year. Just that I probably liked the subject in the first case and not so in the second.

This helped me in a way… there were always this set of teachers who would back me every time I was in trouble, which was quite often courtesy my behavior in the ‘other’ classes.

There (like always) were two sides to this entire deal though. The ‘other’ teachers were like generally waiting to catch me red handed doing just about anything!! And escalate it as high as possible.

Yeah, I forgot to mention. I had this other habit, I would every once in a while pay attention in the ‘other’ classes and start questioning the concepts and test their (teachers’) basics so to say. If you know enough teachers, you’d know who’d come out second best in such arguments. I guess it’s an ego thing with idiots, every time they’re faced with a question they can’t answer; they go along their random irrelevant tangents. If pursued further, it becomes a complete battle of egos. With me definitely not going to lose. If they answer it, I’d say “fine” and go about my existence, if they don’t, they get hammered and laughed at by the entire class. Never understood the entire problem with telling something like “Not sure as of now, I’ll look it up and let you know” (like a very few teachers used to do… really respect them)

Yeah all this had the ‘other’ teachers really waiting for a reason to get at me (and like I said, the reasons came about quite often).

When they did get a chance, trust me, the concepts of mercy, pity, sympathy, forgiveness were not on their list of virtues.

Now that used to generally leave me feeling wronged. The immediate crime would be usually too small as compared to the punishment meted out. That would leave me all in angst and all that. The number of times we’d swear we’re going to give it real bad to some teacher after passing out of school/college...

I mean we felt there’s no holding back once we’re out of the bloody place, we might as well give them a thrashing for all the bloody trouble they caused us because they couldn’t face the fact that they were demented in the first place!!

But all the promises came to nothing. I’ve not beaten the crap out of any lecturer yet!! Whatever became of those promises? Trust me, we meant it when we were ‘swearing on our blood’ and other such shady school stuff. I still remember us guys discussing it during our prep holidays before our 10th std boards.
Still wonder, what happened after that… I mean we weren’t damn busy or something, yeah we went out of town on holidays at different times. But we did hang out in town together for most of the summer vacation.
Why didn’t it occur to us to go about belting them lecturers? We had it all planned when in school… use quilts and all that, so the lecturers don’t get to see us, and absolutely skin them. We (after school) decided it’s not worth the effort and the risk… and the rotten scum got away without even a scratch. I’m sure this happens all over the place and at all times.

All these years down the line, I still feel they should be thrashed for ecological reasons. Remember the concept of the slowest buffaloes in the herd… well nothing about them, just that the get eaten by the hunting animals. Now these teachers I’m talking about definitely belong to that class and should be eliminated. Instead they go about their long irrelevant existences in their cheap comfort zones and get us quicker ones tortured for it.

This isn’t just about teachers. This is about all those real sluggish characters that would’ve been eliminated by nature had not society intervened. They’re everywhere, being a general hindrance. We, as a country, give these morons too much leeway.

I’m not sure if they really care too much about this, but here’s to those brilliant teachers who seem to genuinely try getting some value and reason into an otherwise meaningless and directionless profession.

Thank you… really. And wish you a happy teachers’ day.

As for the rest… Damn, I really hope I meet any of you on the road today… trust me that punch’s going to hurt!! And after all these years, you won’t recognize me heh heh.

I know it’s not worth carrying grudges for so long and all that, also that thrashing these clowns aint worth it, but I got a few promises to keep and if it helps a nation progress and also helps Mother Nature go about doing her thing, then why not?

- Komodo Dragon

Hate

Hate , the most prevalent emotion in the world. Its hate that’s the driving force of many. Though the endless list of Chopras , Johars and Barjatyas might claim that its love doing rounds all the way. But then as I define it, love is a chemical reaction (gone wrong if I may say). Now this Johar guy makes a love story ( supposedly a love story) but then where’s love in that. From what I’ve seen in the movies be it Chopras DDLJ or Johar KKHH or the latest KANK or for that matter any movie of that ciggy smoking puppet (except for 3 real good movies on his list) its more of him robbing someone of his girl. Now it doesn’t need a psychologist to tell you that its sadism or just someone trying to get over his serious inferiority complex.

Now my point is, the sole emotion rising from this situation is HATE. Hate for the guy who’s hell bent on infidelity and hate for the guy at the helm who brands this infidelity as Love. Also the starry eyed bozos (of all ages) who refuse to look through the façade and still claim it as some jazz called love n stuff like that.

The point is that in spite of what anyone would like to say, I decree that the lingering , everlasting all prevalent emotion if any that exists on this planet is not Love but HATE. And whilst some scientists from some remote part of some remote continent decided to take away the status of “PLANET” from Pluto, we can only hope that the people of the world will wake up and the same fraternity who robbed Pluto of its Planetary status will take away with the emotion status of love and label it as a Chemical Reaction (gone wrong).

Recently a movie got made about mature human relationships or something like that. Again made by the same individual who squeaks and squirms at the drop of a hat and blushes and gives a grin on hearing the name Shah Rukh Khan. Now that grin would even give a complex to Julia Roberts. About the movie, he mentioned that it was about mature human relationships. Now watching the movie makes you wonder what’s so Mature about the movie. The characters are cardboard characters and so the term “human” holds no relevance there and relationships .. yeah that’s the only thing that exists in the movie but by the end you start wondering whether this was a relationship or a sham. And still we have a multi million junta spending 130-200 bucks per head on that movie. To cap it all they end up loving the movie yuck what a sad world we live in.

If I ever publish my hated peoples list, the grinning beauty of the director and his mentor the king puppet would both figure in the top 5.

At the moment my hate list figures like
The guy who made the movie (kabhi alvida na kehna).
The main protagonist of the movie (kabhi alvida na kehna). Its your job to decide who it is but then the name abhishek bachchan doesn’t find a place on this list. So you can try your luck with the other characters.
The Omnipresent nasal crossbow (read: Himesh Reshammiya . you probably don’t need reasons to justify why he’s hated)
A polygamous homo-sapien who transformed himself into a simian who insists on wearing a watch that nobody wants to buy and drinking pesticide and then deciding all of a sudden to champion the cause of keeping people without water.
The morons that rule the roost in the parliament.

The list might go on and on but currently we’ll stick with only the top 5 which in itself will amount to around a 100+.

Elimination of all such filth from the face of our “STILL CALLED PLANET” is almost impossible but if we decide that we wanna HATE such muck and get rid of it then we still have a realistic chance of saving it from extinction or demotion.

- The Antagonist

Burning Bridges and the ‘Nothing to lose’ factor

Life is incredibly peaceful and smooth. Like in the movie Fight Club, “After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down”.

I seem to be going through something similar nowadays. Guess the previous month has got a lot to do with it. Nothing seems to bother me anymore. It’s like this eternal calm has set in or something. All at peace with myself.

There’s also the moving along in a short while deal to go with it. It’s like this, I’m going to leave this place in a few days’ time and hence there’s no holding back. There generally wasn’t much holding back right through, but then I used to ignore the presence of hypocrisy, stupidity (and other such words that end with ‘y’) in conversations and used to probably get it all out of my system in other conversations with friends with whom conversations wouldn’t generally reek of the afore mentioned words.

In short, get real pissed off with the attitudes shown by people, but do nothing about it. Nothing apart from a discussion over drinks or some such. They happy, we relieved to be rid of them and whatever it is that we have to hold within…

Now, with only a few days left in this town, there’s this nothing to lose attitude that’s crept in. I normally wouldn’t have given that Nokia dealer the time I ended up giving him. It’s the complete lack of fear or consideration for consequences.

How many times have you figured out that you wouldn’t be able to get what you want done… and still behaved politely with the person who could be the hurdle. Now that was the whole deal with the nokia dude, I figured out he wasn’t going to help me in any way, so I decided I’d take his case big time and at least be satisfied in my own way about it.

Had a similar incident yesterday… the usual attitudes of the clowns with families toward ‘bachelors’. That word ‘bachelors’ is received with the awe, fear and apprehension reserved for ‘criminal’ in India. Now there was this set of clowns who apparently told Gag not to sit in the local park last evening (around 8 pm) we guys went about confusing the living daylights out of them, explaining the law and finding logical fallacies in every statement they came up with.

That could probably be another post, but the point here being, we wouldn’t have gone ahead with the argument and made the whole set of clowns look real stupid some other time. We would probably have kept quiet about it and let the whole thing pass over. We would have ignored the insulting tones used and even the choice of words.

The only difference being, we are both leaving town very shortly and don’t really care for neighborhood oafs and their idiosyncrasies. It’s a lot of fun getting them all tongue tied though.

When you’re leaving a place for good, you don’t think too much about burning bridges and all that. You just stand and make your point. Things suddenly fall into place.

The people making the rules are just a bunch of jerks waiting to get intimidated and need the group around them to feel secure, people following the rules are the smart ones who don’t give a damn what the morons in crowds think. The smart ones try not to be intrusive and let the rest go about their weird frightened lives.

These people are so insecure that group and all, they go into their shells the moment somebody speaks up. One of them was a lawyer by the way… and tolerated me explaining the law to him. That’s how bold people get.

We guys spoke up because we didn’t care about the bridges being burnt… we were moving on and had nothing to lose. It’s a nice state to live in. These characters are too frightened of you to be of any use ever. So what’s the point in being nice and polite to people who aren’t polite to you anyways? Go ahead… give it back to them… thrash out at even those people who don’t intend to annoy you, but do so courtesy their complete lack of intelligence… even they deserve a hiding.

Life suddenly feels a lot lighter.

Ever wondered why the countries that are real good in sports are either the real rich or the real poor ones?
I guess it’s because the rich ones can afford taking up sports as professions and the poor ones take it up as they don’t have an alternate profession and hence have nothing to lose.

Anyways, the entire deal with me feeling real cool about the life thing and all that has it’s effects in that, I’m not quite so in angst against the system nowadays. That means progressively fewer things to write about by the passing day.

Guess I’ll be taking a bit of a virtual holiday and will keep my ramblings to the inside of my skull. If in case somebody says/does anything real nasty to me, I might have a good old fashioned Viking style showdown ‘again’ and live to let you nice people know about it.

Adios for a bit…

- Komodo Dragon

The Antagonist Returns

I’m Back !!!

Its been a long time since I actually wrote anything, so this might be considered just as a warm-up to future postings by yours truly, in fact the only shark from thinshark that’s been active in a long while now has been the komodo dragon, keeping the flow in fact more of a gush, but then he’s not to blame right?? Come on guys... with most parts of the country getting flooded its but natural for komodo to keep the torrent going with his posts... so 3 cheers for komodo... Hip hip hurray… also not to forget AHAK who did come out with words of reverence for the late Khan Saheb (For the benefit of the greater populace inhabiting Earth II and fed on daily diet and dosage of Himesh, Sallu and Co.. Khan sahib is not a ciggy smoking puppet or a shirtless wonder or an ape wearing a titan but the late Ustad Bismillah Khan the greatest Shehnai Player of our times).

For me it’s been a pretty turbulent last month, which has got nothing to do with me completing 9 months of married life and all that stuff. This was more on the professional and after a few turbulent weeks decided that I was gonna go “phishing” instead of “fishing”. So I chucked the net and went straight into business and also decided that my organization needed me a lot more than I thought and so decided to dedicate more of my services to a freewheeling enterprise that thought that it also makes tractors and vehicles on wheels besides handing people with mobile sets that have nothing to do with wheels.

Also I relived my bachelor days, again it had nothing to do with the missus going home and stuff like that, it was just that I went plain broke mid month and if it wasn’t for my better half saving all the stuff that I was handing over to her at the start of the month I would’ve been forced not to beg , borrow or steal but to access my non salaried account for the money. So people, a bit of advice… if ur single and getting broke… get married... There’s a lot more advantages to that and u still end up getting broke.

Komodo has given the tale a twist by voicing his concern on the treatment meted out to him by certain sections of the society (mentioned in an earlier post) and decided that he shall be going back home later this month (nothing to do with the treatment). That doesn’t mean thinshark is in any danger... The posts will be there and so will our views on matters of concern.

So long guys… until next time…

- The Antagonist (Antya)

Things you shouldn’t try !!!

Happened a few years ago. I was all thin, naive, irrelevant etc… (Yeah that’s used when people run out of words) Things haven’t changed much since then I guess. The single huge difference is my getting myself a job and getting paid for my irrelevance.

Hmm on afterthought, I guess I’m not quite so naïve anymore either.

Anyways, it was during the time between the first and second IT booms in India, when there was this huge crunch in the job scene and us guys (who passed each year out in numbers enough to equal the dinosaur population on the planet during their prime) were like in real deep trouble.

Those few months in Bangalore were a pain. It’s home and all that, now the major deal with home being your parents' friends coming up with words of advice and expecting you to emulate their kids.

It didn’t seem to matter to them that their kids were equally unemployed as well.

Have you heard the ‘statement’ “Everybody is getting a job nowadays, there are so many jobs around, even [some irrelevant lady’s name]’s son got one on campus… How come you haven’t found one?”? Yeah if you’ve heard it, you’d have a good idea what we guys had to go through.

All that and the sudden having to face the rules at home, after all these fantastic years in the hostel, kinda gets on your nerves. Not to forget the call of the BPO (damn tempting)

It was during that phase of life that I decided to make a movie. I assumed it would (if good enough) have quite a few people who could associate with it, as there were quite a few kids, who were going through something similar.

It was about the frustrations people go through during the post-college-pre-job days, which most people tend to overlook.

I got hold of this damn famous director and confused him into agreeing to direct the movie. So yeah, there we were, trying to make a movie out of something that didn’t have much of a story, but did have a definite target audience. We even got the relatively younger part of the star cast to say things about it being a very bold movie in it’s own way and that it was something being shown in India for the first time ever and that the director was a very nice chap and he never offered to sleep with them in exchange for a role and they never had to tell him that it’s the last time they were sleeping with him as they’d never slept with him ever.

Even the girls had to say such things (just in case you were wondering who the director was).

The story was pretty much a direct copy of ‘Reality Bites’ but who would know anyways.

We had the initial arguments regards which language to use. He was all for Hindi and I wanted the Bangalorean version of English (you got to listen to it to know what I mean).

Anyways, the movie started off with my character (played by this upcoming hero, handsome dude, I was happy and all) and my girlfriend walking into a pub and straight into an item number.

I had two issues with this,
1) I hadn’t planned on a girlfriend in the movie.
2) Which Bangalore pub has item numbers on?

He added a twist in the tale, (before the bloody first dialogue) which involved me completely losing it and dancing with the item chick and my girl storming off in violent fury after having thrown off most of what she was wearing for the heck of it.

Then there was this romantic track shot in Lal Bagh, Lonavla and The Alps, which I completely didn’t like. Even the heroine didn’t like having to walk bare feet in bikinis on the Alps. She kept giving me those horrible looks. I tried explaining. I told her that it wasn’t my idea, but then she was too good looking to listen. I finally had to tell her that she wasn’t even supposed to be there in the movie. All hell broke loose, she started wailing like a retard pup and the director offered his shoulder and a makeup kit.
The aftermath was good fun though, tearing out frozen teardrops from her skin…

The song in the story ends with me (that upcoming hero dude) telling something like, “Tum meri jaan ho, jaan se bhi mahaan ho, I love you”
And she says, “I love you too” (followed by a lingering kiss (she, still in her bikini))

We had decided to split on the sentence count.

Story so far; 2 songs, 1 dialogue (2 sentences each in Hindi and that awesome Bangalorean English). Things weren’t going as I had planned. I was beginning to feel like a bit of a pushover here.

Anyways, continuing with the movie;
The story featured this girl I confided to. It was the general talk about our frustrations and also brought in an alternate view. She was working in this call centre, had her parents looking for a ‘suitable’ groom for her and all that. She had her own set of frustrations to deal with. Most of the movie was supposed to revolve around those two lives and a mature relationship. Not something cheesy.

It was supposed to start with one of those annoying ladies preaching her know all bullshit and me taking it all in without a whimper, and then calling her (friend), waking her up and pulling her out to a café. She figuring out that something’s wrong and coming along in a hurry (no apologies for being late for obvious reasons).

It was this that brought the entire movie crashing down.

The director wanted us to speak for a minute or so in GOA!!! And he wanted to follow it up with a dance sequence and you can guess her dress in the dance.

I said “HELL NO, I’m not going to drive 16 hours to meet someone for a coffee, I’m not going to dance in that state of mind for the third time in 20 minutes movie time”

He: “You’re not trying to understand. We have to keep everybody happy.”
Me: “I don’t care a @#$% what everybody thinks. This is for a target audience.”
He: “It’s going to flop, your story sucks anyways”
Me: “You’ve ever tried anything apart your usual dance nude crap to know if it might work?”
He: “See I’m more experienced here, and also, you’re being very unreasonable… you’ve made me sacrifice too much already”
Me: “I told you, I’m bloody straight, screw your sacrifice”
He: “No, not that, I’m over you now (heh heh no pun intended) you rejected SRK, big B, Salman and Sunny Deol as the lead character”
Me: “Yeah cause, I’ve just passed out of college and I don’t stutter like a car that doesn’t start, I’m less that 60 years old, I don’t drive over people and I definitely wouldn’t thrash the crap put of the Pakistani IT billionaire for not offering me a job… NONE OF THEM FIT!!!”
He: “Fine, forget all that… what’s your problem NOW?”
Me: “Like I said, I can’t drive to Goa, and yeah yeah I know you agreed to scrap the Goa part till the intermission, but there’s no way I could sit in that open air Barista joint on MG road with this girl in swimwear and definitely no if she’s going to kiss me on the lips every second sentence. That’s damn distracting.”
He: “See, you’re being stubborn, that’s what the young crowd wants. And what about the rape scenes”
Me: “Everything’s over the top. Firstly, I wont drive around in a merc while applying for a job, then I won’t take a circuitous deserted route home for the heck of it. If there are 4 rick drivers raping a girl, I might do something about it, not sure, but I’m not strong enough to pummel them into submission… anyways, why does she have to get attempted raped? It doesn’t fit in the thought process of this movie. And NO… NO, I don’t have a sister and she doesn’t need to get raped either.”
He: “FORGET IT THEN!!! You’re not listening to anything I say… why do you need me? For my contacts? I’m not willing to direct this, this is a sinking venture”
Me: “Consider it sunk… I’ve lost interest in it as well… you can go screw yourself and your contacts, I really don’t care… really. I’ve found myself a job by the way, so I’m not so driven anymore. I might write about this someday, and I may not… so till then… you go your own merry way whilst I go mine… adios”
He: “Loser!! B’bye”

And yeah, so the adventure came a crashing down… A relief it did… sigh…

Anyways, it’s a bad world out there… Even if in disparate need for cash and something to do, don’t get there… they really get you to compromise your morals.

- Komodo Dragon