Holy Apathy

In the middle of last week my first cousin’s dad expired. My cousin the only son of his parents handled the situation very bravely. To begin with his dad wasn’t suffering from any ailment nor did he have any vices. And moreover he was only 59 which is definitely not an age where one would be expected to die and his son ie my cousin was just finding his footing in the real world. This incident had me marvel at the uncertainty of the phenomenon that is life and the certainty of the reality called death.

Are we so vulnerable that we just stay put and watch as mute audience as the maker unfolds his unholy death dance upon us? Of course we are , but then once again I began wondering where the hell is justice in the act of the maker. Call him God you may, with our best interests at heart but the sheer apathy of the creator towards situations like these makes me question a lot of things including the high handedness of the creator.

This writing may definitely seem to be written in sheer anger or helplessness. Absolutely Not!!! Anger a bit , yeah , not helplessness. The bad part doesn’t end here. There’s an unending queue of mourners who generally think that its futile to visit unless you make the bereaved cry. And then there another set of bastards who see this opportunity to squeeze money out of you claiming some ungodly situation as in 3 people in the family due to expire if a ritual worth 25 k is not performed and crap. There are also people who try to tell you to move ahead. Honestly, at times like these I would rather beat the crap out of these well wishers. More than 95% of them are just there to see the fun and the gossip about it later. As in my cousins case I found out with a couple of people , after they left they were saying “his dad died and he’s sporting a goatee” . now isn’t that childish? If the creator is all encompassing and all knowing and omnipresent I reckon he should just exterminate such anomalies. Hell man this guy didn’t even know what was gonna happen, it happened that fast .

The most popular line “everything happens , happens for good”. Yeah absolutely , agreed, a guy feeding a family of 4 loses his arm or leg in an accident and his children and family are left to starve. Furthermore at the end of years of starvation and hardships , they end their lives coz they’re left with nothing. Now if that is the so called “good” there is nothing more to say to that. Extending this situation a bit further, there are people who come up with lame excuses “karma and further crap”. Can somebody please explain me why do you have to maim me for something I don’t even know I did? This is definitely not justice, not to the logical human mind nor to the person who underwent these hardships. Justice doesn’t exist above the stratosphere I guess. And if the “creator” is omnipresent then he’s gotta be blind right?

Raving and ranting as this writeup may seem, it just a lot of pent up anger. Anger not at myself or directed at anyone. But anger at the sadist up above as the same people who claim to be believers say “who to humko kathputli ki tarah nachata hai”. Isn’t that sadism enough?

Picture this, an orphan is picked up by a couple (not childless, they did it out of empathy for the orphan). I reckon that’s good enough. Within 3 days the entire family except the orphan is killed in a car crash. That is the second time the orphan is orphaned. And he’s not old enough to have done any bad deeds. Then why? Do we need so say anything more?

-The Antagonist

NB:Mind you this is not a piece of fiction this is something that has happened. The orphan later grew up on his own and later was mentored (not adopted) by a gem of a family and is now a definite success. The everlasting scar given to him by (you know who) on his psyche however forbids him from calling the people “parents”.

Ding Dong Bell and All That Cat Crap

Another of those weekends where you loaf about and laugh like a hyena with a gland problem on laughing gas or some similar and equally painful descriptions. At some stage of the weekend we were like terribly tired and decided to lie about in the regular hangout (inhabited by people you’d need a novel to describe) and watch TV and talk about extremely relevant topics like “When did we watch TV last without beer in our respective noses” with slight exaggerations that brought the values to something staggering like 15 years ago or so. Anyways, cnbc was airing this all day show about the CAT and how it affects everything. They went about interviewing people who didn’t seem to have a clue as to what to do now that the exam is over. It (the exam) apparently went on for longer than it was supposed to and drastically altered all the sales calculations of the territorial rag pickers around. Longer the exam, more the paper and other such issues had cropped up apparently. Anyways, here were a few comments or statements or whatever that came out in the interviews. “uh… the exam was uh easy except the English section which was difficult as compared to my opinion about it.” “I slightly think that the English section was slightly tough” (there were quite a few uhs again, didn’t bother putting it in here cause you get the point anyways) Now if these characters were seen by the people who conduct interviews, would they stand a chance of making it? I mean why jump at a chance of being seen on TV. Everybody does this nowadays. If some of these TV clowns were to confront me, I’d probably mumble something incoherent and scoot for cover, hoping they’d clip that part off during the editing. Honest. Deal is, the CAT is quite significant and one of those rare real worthwhile events left in the country as of date, now you media junkies, please don’t make a mockery of it. Don’t discuss issues you have no clue about and make them seem ridiculous. Don’t make issues up where there aren’t any. Publish (or air) news. Is that too much to ask? And most definitely, “We do not need opinions of all and sundry!!!” As for those whose opinions do matter, Are you sure an increase in the number of seats in IIMs is a solution for all issues? I’m not sure, I’m just this techie dude you know… -Komodo Dragon

Mysterious and other happenings

Hey all, for starters, I’m back. In many ways, I’m back home, back to blogging, sport and fitness, all that venom (which I never stopped spewing in the first place). In short I’m as much myself as I’ve ever been.

The last few days have been all about holidaying, getting back to the job scene, training and all that. Am allocated a proj and have got a PC today and am for now being bombarded by Gag’s mails.

Oh yeah, before things look perfectly normal, the holiday wasn’t exactly relaxing. If a guy is forced into driving his car (with family in it) through a communal riot and then on another day, while returning home (from the holiday destination), meets with this crazy accident where he does a 180 and falls into a ditch and then has the cab (which was taken because of the accident) breaking down in the middle of nowhere and then goes about telling people that he had a nice relaxed holiday, trust me he’s not being honest.

Oh the breakdown forced us into jogging about 5 kms on the highway in rainy weather. The rains were the primary cause for the accident in the first place.

Anyways, the period post the holiday began to look a tad boring (anything would be after such an eventful fortnight, you get used to pacing your life you know). To combat the boredom, I got into a slew of ridiculous addictions and all that.
One of them was James Bond movies.

I saw the first one and was overwhelmed by the absolute genius that’s Ian Fleming (or is it Stephen, nah, that’s the New Zealand captain). I was like big time addicted all the way till about mid way through the second movie where I got bored and gave it up in search of something equally morbid.

There were 2 reasons for me going all gaga over that stuff.
1) It’s incredibly remarkably funny (copied from the movie ‘My cousin Vinnie’. Vinnie goes… actually watch the movie, it’s hilarious). It’s a riot. And the best part about all this is, the less intelligent inhabitants of the planet are lead to believe that it’s an action flick and all that. Brilliant.
2) We’ll get to that after getting done with point 1.

1 Contd.
For people who don’t know and still care, James Bond is that horrendously stupid moron who’s also real desperate. He goes about creating a lot of noise, drawing a lot of attentions towards himself, sleeping with any chick he finds anywhere and relies on dumb luck and real funny gadgets that gets him out of any trap that’s set for him.
Oh and he falls into every trap that’s set for him btw. It’s just the incompetence of the executors of the hit that keeps him alive.

The only catch being, why are all the hot chicks into espionage. I mean anybody with that kind of looks would settle for modeling or something like that right?
And if you need to net 007, you don’t need to be smart or anything, all you need to do is, be a lady and give him the idea that you crave for sex with him. He’ll come following you like a pup.

Now, it crossed my mind that if Ian Fleming was this brilliant comic writer and had realized that more than half the population of the planet confused his stories for detective action adventures, he’d be dejected.

Check this out, if you crack a joke and nobody laughs, that’s one thing, but if you crack this brilliant joke and everybody gets all excited and thrilled and praise you for the suspense and what not, what would your reaction be? I’d probably turn suicidal.

Now if Ian Fleming had gone that way, people would have gotten to know about it and then laughed during the movies cause that’s the intelligent thing to do.

Since that didn’t happen, I guess it wasn’t meant to be a comedy in the first place (just turned out that way). But then if it’s a set of stories about espionage and agents and all that, it’s supposed to be intelligent, but then why is the lead character such a moron, and why are all the bad guys so incompetent?

That got me to this theory about the entire series. And that’s point 2.

Point 2:
Ian Fleming is extraordinary intelligent. He’s also damn good in his knowledge or spies and their ways of operation.

The story’s is something like this. There’s this super intelligent spy who’s going about his operations as any spy should, quietly and behind the scenes. James Bond is the nincompoop who goes about attracting all the attention towards himself and diverts any attention away from the original spy.
Now even the baddies aren’t exactly dumb and incompetent. They pretend they’ve fallen for the smoke screen (is that what you call it?) so the original man comes out in the open. They pretend to be trying to kill James Bond and failing.

Now you know where James Bond seems to be getting all his info from eh?

The smart spy is so bloody good that we the audience don’t have a clue about his existence even after the credits have rolled. Now isn’t that the hallmark of a truly brilliant spy?

Even the support staff (characters in the movie) is brilliant in that they give James Bond the idea that he’s the one who’s solving the mystery and not some other dude in the backdrop.

Now what’s real brilliant about the whole thing is, even as I’m coming out with this theory, I assume the spy is a he or a him, it might as well be a she or a her. Wow I just can’t seem to stop admiring the writer’s credentials. And all this so many decades ago… awesome.

And here I was watching Adrian Monk and all that until fairly recently. James Bond rules. Even Sherlock Holmes isn’t quite as cool as this man is.

Here’s to the genius.

Anyways, like I said, the addiction was short-lived, it was followed by much worse, I’d gotten into this habit of making faces at cops and racing away. Deal being I don’t have any (ANY) of the documents required to be riding my bike in town.

That apart, work’s been fine, in that it hasn’t started as yet, will let you’ll know about it when it does start.

-Komodo Dragon

Gentlemen ... What the Hell !!!

Saddam to be hanged, was the big news on Sunday. For whatever worth it was the farcical trial by a US backed tribunal subjected one of the most troublesome pains in the US neck to death by hanging. Has he been done away with? Will the US of A now breathe a sigh of relief? Well the questions are best left unanswered coz the bully that the US is any rising influence on any part of the globe will invoke the ire of Uncle Sam.

A rather funny looking sentence though oft used regarding the same stuck me during channel surfing on Sunday. “Saddam to be hanged by the neck till death” said a scrawley on a popular news channel. For god’s sake I thought how else do u kill a person by hanging. But then many people in the world would debate how fair it was to thus end the tenure of a great dictator . like it or not but he had gall.

And then do I need to say that once the news was out, we’ve had every possible guy who could’ve been called a lawyer.. expressing their legal opinion on the judgment. Hell these guys could never get out of law school.. how in blue blazes did they ever get this far?? But then as the old adage goes. Every lawyer (oops dog with all due respect to ram jethmalani and dogs) has his day.

The 11 models sponsored by the BCCI once more made a brief outing in the match against the wizards of OZ. Scraped and scampered around a bit and were off in a flash to other modeling sessions, this time not in sweltering heat or anything but in closed studios. India , they should now say is a land of opportunities if you know how to hold a stick and throw the cherry to the opposition that they can hit it out of the ground. Needless to say winning or losing doesn’t matter as long as the money keeps flowing in the BCCI coffers.

Talking about the gentleman’s game (erstwhile if I may say), our yellow dudes (for purists I am talking about the Indian media) have found something to chew upon. It so happened that another group of 11 models (real ones) who play real good cricket. Came to India and beat the hell outta other teams and when it came to accepting the cup showed some real attitude. Now our ex defence minister and now BCCI chief is a gallant enough man to let it pass by. But such an act by the kangaroos was uncalled for definitely. But again there is no need for our media to blow it up unnecessarily.

An ex offspinner in the Indian team now turned selector suddenly felt that Suresh Raina and Kaif need to perform in South Africa lest they be dropped in favor of a real example of aggro who was shabbily treated by our current coach. But then why is a balding model of a clothesline and a children energy drink who once in a while wields the willow in around 1 games in a 50 left untouched after so many failures. However you try to fathom how these guyz at the helm function you always end up getting confused. Hey, simply put , theres no explanation.

And all of a sudden an ICC umpire Darell Hair (remember the guy who no balled murali) was dropped from the ICC list of elite umpires because finally the Asian cricket councils flexed their muscles. Now that’s the way.. if you cannot beat them on it.. beat them off it. That’s not a gentlemans approach but then if you are someone who gets the most revenue for the ICC and you have people treating you shabbily , that’s a good way of showing them who’s in control. In such cases gentlemanly attitudes do not matter. Again the whole issue was blown up way out by the media across every cricket crazy country in the world and led to lengthy nonproductive debates on existing racism in the game. Racism does exist in world cricket , theres no denying it. (Remember Dean Jones?)

And yeah, a silver lining finally. The BCCI gave Mohd. Azhar a lifetime acheievement award or something. About time too. Yep.. there’s still place for gentlemen in the game of Cricket.

-- Antagonist