THINSHARK

Bitches Brew

2011-06-01T21:05:00.003+04:00

I like jazz. Maybe. I mean im a musical novice. I listen to a bit of rock mainly… quite a bit actually. But then its not all rock, I mean I listen to Hindustani classical too... bit of a range there… for somebody who doesn’t know the first thing about generating music so to speak.
Point being, there are times in my life when I like jazz. Like right now, when im driving home from another hard days work filled with extremely pretentious discussions. Discussions about ridiculous topics generally, but executed with thoughtful frowns on everybody’s face to make it seem important.
Wandering again.
I like the drive home after the days work. Its not a quiet drive, there’s always music playing. It’s funny though, it’s the music that makes the drive quiet in a way. The music generally cuts out everything else… gives me some me time. Now since I listen to rock more often, I tend to either hum or scream with the song playing. Depending on the song and my mood in any order.
With jazz, with my ignorance about it and all, I tend to let it play and let my mind follow its own thoughts. Not very deep thoughts or anything like that. They’re my own (the thoughts I mean). That’s their only claim to fame here.
So, yeah this album is playing and my thoughts had drifted to a day on the beach when I reach the signal. It was red of course. I mean you generally have to wait for the green twice before crossing this particular junction anyway. The car to my right suddenly moves forward a couple of yards or so to fill up the gap between itself and the car in front of it causing me to instintively turn that way and look straight at a random lady leaning against her steering wheel and looking left… at me. You know how uncomfortable those post-breaking-of-eye-contact-looking-everywhere-but-back-at-the-eye moments are. Im super vain and all, but she had probably turned because of the music, I mean you don’t get to hear this kind of stuff often. I mean it’s so rare that most people arent aware of its existance even. More importantly, she isn’t a looker by any stretch. So the whole leaning on wheel, looking sideways is a tad repulsive. I mean even if she was seriously hot or something, that wouldn’t have… maybe it would have… been attractive. You can get away with any amounts of dumbness if sufficiently hot anyway.
The signal turns green and I manage to get sufficiently ahead of her by the next red and wait out an uneventful signal. Next green, me out of there. The signal being the NGEF junction on old madras road. Now the stretch parallel to the track between the NGEF junction and under bridge just before kasturi nagar is the best part of my day. It has been so for as long as I can remember. No actually, when in school, I liked the hours of cricket between 4 and 7 odd better, but now, this definitely is. This tragically lasts at most a minute and a half though. There’s something serene and dark about that place. Even with all the traffic and all, it some how grips me. Maybe the track to the right being elevated enough to not allow us to look beyond it and hence giving an illusion of us being at the end of the civilized world… I don’t know honestly.

My thoughts generally border on the park that’s formed in my head without really getting in. This park is my second travel to Cambodia and all the shit that I had to take there and the consequences, the reward, Karma and all that. This is central. This is a set of seriously depressing memories. Like I said, the stretch is just the best part of my day… not the happiest. You tend to look back fondly on the sad memories for some reason. There is a certain romance in the hell you went through… in retrospect.

You know, this whole post is probably just the introduction to some long winded reflective crap. Get the whole mental aspect out of the way stuff. It’s funny how the word mental suddenly made people start wondering. All I mean to say is, this is mentally normal, just very unapologetic.
You go through a very trying time and are releived (in rare cases, happy) it’s over. The memory stays with you a while, the details fresh but the pain reduced. You can let the memory go or you can jot it down. I choose the latter.

I pass the underbridge and turn right to kasturi nagar. This part is even better drivewise. Now there’s another track (which was on the bridge I just passed), to the left this time and apartments to the left. Curving road, fastish and sparse traffic at any time. Heaven in Bangalore. Also, this marks the clear transition from the city to the suburbs of the north east. North-east… the best part of any place. Take India for instance. I’d give my arm to be in the north east right now.

The whole north-east reference is actually a long running joke with a friend from south Bangalore. This friend is the second person in the know who I spoke to before starting this whole jotting down exercise. The friend being from south bangalore is referred to as southie in the jokes. This brings us to another theme which is very central. The north-south divide.

People tend to ignore this. I used to ignore it the best I could for a while. Experience has taught me that there is no getting away from it. So much so that im fairly certain that it’s stupidity to look the other way and pretend that it doesn’t exist. Im going to speak my mind, im going to lay down facts and im going to do this in as unbiased a manner as possible. Only unapologetic.

Past kasturi nagar, the place gets further residential. Now here’s the best part of this place. There are a few colleges around and this has brought is a hell of a lot of people from China and surrounding countries and Afros (not sure where from… met a couple from Kenya, but most of them arent from there, if american, then african americans, else africans… can we use the term afro and not be racist or inaccurate? Let me know if otherwise).

The Chinese chics are perfect. I agree that maybe the teeth are an issue… but then who the hell looks a gift horse in the teeth anyway?
They are just perfect. Just incredibly beautiful in a completely sexual sort of way (the word sexy just doesn’t say it these days). You can absoloutely worship a Chinese (or thereabouts) lady without any depth of emotions if you know what I mean.
I know im married and all, just that I don’t want to pretend it screwed around with my thought process or anatomy. Of course I love my wife and am fairly certain about being loyal and all… just that the chinese are super sexy (or the longer version of that word) and there’s no denying that… unless you’re blind maybe.

The beauty of the whole asian girl thing with me is, it’s completely shallow. Completely sexual. Complete worship. It’s probably because of their accent (not the fake ones who’ve lived in the USA or somewhere). Maybe it’s just me.
I’m an Indian you know. If you’re one too, you’d know what I mean when I say that I have had the weight of 12000 odd years of culture hurled at me at a head shattering velocity. This culture could be now be assumed to be encased in a massive wooden box and placed on my head and parts of it trickling into my brain all the while and me hunching under the weight.
I think it started off as a very rich school of thought. Lets leave it at that.
Point being, sexuality was integral to our culture for significant periods of those 12000 odd years maybe its that part that has trickled down in larger doses to my brain. Let’s blame culture now.

Perfect.

Anyway, me home now. Laptop’s taking hellishly long to start up (high time I replaced it). Wife’s been back a while, went out just now to pick up a gift for a wedding. Nice and quiet. Im wondering if something like “you can feel lonely in a room full of people hammering you with opinions and the exact opposite of it when in car all by yourself” sounds cliched enough to conclude a writeup like this…
Finally started up… I start typing

A day in the life

2010-02-26T13:19:00.002+04:00

The time is half past 8 in the morning and a red Volvo (an Indian version) stops and a horde of people descend.. looking to cross the road.. I am one among that horde… I glance sideways and suddenly I see I am not the only one.. similar groups of people are waiting to cross that road and run along to start their day in one of the software technology parks of Bangalore..
This is me.. The Antagonist.. amongst a horde of software engineers going to earn their proverbial bread,,
Its been this way since I gave up using my own mode of transport and started depending on the oh so reliable (no satire here, it is really very reliable) public transport in the city of Bengaluru.
A year and half in this city and I have definitely learnt a lot of things during my stay here..
First and foremost.. the normal human tendency to yell at the locals.. be it pune or Bangalore or timbuktoo.. the locals are the most irriating lot and by the locals I don’t mean the regular set of people who live there day in and out.. it means the particular set of fanatics who think they own the place… by that I have postulated a law which states that.. “the average kannadiga.. is an idiot”. He doesn’t understand simple logic or instructions… people coming from outside.. mallus.. telugu.. tamil.. and the saffron attired bearded bozo’s community.. and the local urban Bangalore populace come and trample upon him and he’s still happy… but I guess he cannot help much.. the time for upgradation has long gone..
I guess the same will happen to the local populace of pune one day.. (which I most definitely and fondly wish it does) due to my strange hate hate and more hate relationship with the average puneite… (Veeru , The Wise One and Watson excluded from this list… they’re humans not puneites and even if they were they’re way above)
Secondly.. during Karnataka rajyotsava.. don’t ever argue with anyone especially if you have a vehicle with an MH passing… you’re most likely to be on the losing side…
Thirdly… while hiring an auto.. quote the 1/3rd price of what the auto driver says.. and 99 times out of 100 after a little haggling he’ll happily take u there.. this is coz even that 1/3rd price is in the range of 100% inflation.. and you thought Chennai was the king in that…
Then now shifting to the “engineer” breed of people.. they’re worse than even the average kannadiga… with a sub zero iq.. and an inconsequentially programmed life.. (if you call that a life).. the average engineer in this city believes he’s doing a miracle.. reading out specs sent out from onsite for us to chew on.. and has his customary cup of coffee .. lunch .. smoke.. and ends the day at end.. on a typical Friday in bangalore whether its mails or sms’s the most commonly asked question is …
“what are your plans for the weekend”
and the most customary greeting is
“happy weekend”…
What’s a happy weekend?? That’s the most irritating part.. and what do you find them doing on that oh so pleasing weekend?? Sleeping till noon.. conserving energy to read mails and speak in English for the next week… it’s a vicious cycle this..
Yeah there are those enthusiasts who actually head out… cycling.. hiking.. biking.. many other ings.. other than sleeping.. tv watching.. and b***ing… but that’s a very abysmal number.. but I guess theres still hope as long as these people are there…
The pub capital of the country.. and yeah.. there are still a few pubs on brigade and MG Road that have that old aura on them.. where you can chill out for a drink.. and spend some quiet time with yourself… :)..
This is to cut a long story short.. that a year and half in this city has given me the way ahead… a long way to go still… but once you are in bengaluru no matter what the people .. no matter what the climate (which is fantastic by the way) it starts growing on you.. but then there are ahmedabad and delhi that have already grown on me.. so I guess this’ll take time.. but yeah.. its one of those cities I’d love to settle down in… apart from the other 2…
And despite all this… the community of “engineers” that haunts the major part of this place… have a sub zero iq.. nothing can change that.. not even Bangalore…

.. to be continued…

-Antya

The Bard Signs Off

2009-11-03T15:10:00.002+04:00

Foreword:
Read on...

The Article:
11th August 2004 is still etched clearly in my memory. It was the dayI walked into the maze called ‘Sharda Center’ without knowing whereexactly I was going.
Coming from a string of small names, working with a brand ‘MBT’ wassomething I hadn’t realized would happen so soon. Little did I realizethat it was the beginning of a rather wonderful, intriguing, mindboggling journey that ends today. Today marks an end to one of themost enriching phases of my life in terms of both professional andpersonal growth
Starting as a subcontractor (C2995) the journey began with the i-MBTteam, easily one of the best teams and one of the most wonderful setof people I’ve worked with.The ever smiling Santosh Gokhale (I still haven’t figured out why hewas smiling all the way thru my interview) who taught me to navigate thru Sharda Center. The wise man Dinesh Velhal, Hrishikesh Das (DasBabu), Abhi, Nishit, GaG, Sunil, Spanati, Amey, Anoop (Guptajee),Niladri (Tan), Snigdha, Poonam, Nivedita and not to forget VarshaMehendale (the best manager I’ve worked with).
Somewhere in the middle of all this on 5th May 2005 I came on payrollof MBT (10978).
We were infact the first team to be moved to what we called Kalapaniduring that time, what is now known as Panchsheel. A couple ofarticles written by a couple of us during that time will give you afair idea of what it was during that time. Yet we survived ... theroads, the arduous bus journeys from Sharda to Panchsheel, the 5 floortreks (there was no lift in the Panchsheel building when we moved).Gradually each one of moved out of the project to go our separateways. Komodo, AHAK, Antya, GaG were born during that time, and sowere thinshark and fiteklub , the blog wars, the incessant banter issomething none of us will ever forget.
I still remember the time when I got married. Tan, Amey and Abhijitused to draw on my whiteboard on my desk. A man hanging from a noosewith a caption ‘x days to go’ with x being the number of days as acountdown to my marriage. And when I came back from leave all I saywas a man hanging from the noose. Guys, that was pretty prophetic.
The last of my assignments on i-MBT was the rechristening of i-MBT towhat you now call ‘Spectrum’.
Then came the shift from .NET to Siebel, frustrating at first andthen interesting and intriguing and pretty enriching finally.Work pressure, and more work pressure, a new horizon , new challengesand roles were a hallmark of this stint, a stint that ends today.
Was lucky to have met some really interesting people as well during this time.The ever so humble, Sanjay Tajne and Ravi Natekar ... immensestorehouses of knowledge, the people who helped me grind my teeth inSiebel.Jaisith, Achal, Rajitha, Raveendra, Pramod Patil, Pritam, ManojPatil, Avinash Burgula, Dhaval, Vishal, Lokpal, Anindo, SudhanshuAgashe, Ambrish Raval, Priyadarshani Jadhav, from Pune ... all uniquein their own way. Many forgettable ones as well, hence forgotten. Manyother interesting persons from each of whom I gained a unique outlookabout life. Each a gem, it was really a pleasure to have known themall.
Then the move to Bangalore for reasons now known to a select few.
More pressure and more interesting people. A totally new mindset, atotally new life. The entire T2R team, again one of the mosteffervescent teams I have worked with. Specially people like Bimal,Vinod Nair, Vinod Bagi, Vikranth (Wishing him a happy married life),Anil and his entire test team, Duttsaab, the 3 Rajesh’s (Naik, Mysoreand N) who are great friends. Bhagwan , Bharat (never seen him getangry). From all these people I’ve learnt something or the other.
Then a short stint with Huawei and a special thank you to Vinod Vermaand Ravi Charan without whose support I could not have survived one ofthe toughest phases in my personal life. A special thank you to bothof you.
I have had the opportunity of working under the best managers andworking for the best people in this organization, this note willdefinitely not be complete without mentioning the contribution ofVarsha Mehendale, Vivek Takawale, Vaijayanthi Rangarajan, HrishikeshDas and Sushil Kurian without whose guidance and mentoring thisjourney would not have been so enriching and easy.
Also the Techmate editorial group , the journey from a 2 membereditorial board to what it is know. These are the people who made lifebearable in times of crisis and pressure. Hawkeye, TP, Mav, Mystique,Nirvana, Ramlal , Omshafu, Saricaustic you guys rock.
As I look back on the last 5 years, I realize that I have gained a lotof experience, am enriched. There’s a fond wish that this journeycould have continued further but there comes a time in life where youhave to make a choice. This is the choice I made, and as I now set tostart life afresh (sometimes life leads you and you do not end uphaving a choice at all ;)), I would like to thank all those who havemade this journey worthwhile. Without you all this journey never wouldhave been possible.
29th October 2009, As I look around, I realize that from tomorrowonwards I will not walk these corridors again, something I felt that Imoved to Bangalore, but then this is what it is with Tech M. It growson you. It has become a part of me, something that will be confined tomemories from tomorrow. Something that will be a cherished memory fortimes to come. A part of me feels bad to leave behind something I’vealways held close to my heart while another part of me is ready totake flight towards a new horizon.
To all those who were a part of me in this journey I wish you ‘All theBest’ in life. Be true to yourself and you will achieve what you want.
To all the rest of my friends (Juri , Reuben, Kanchan, Amar , Ranji,Dr Manish … the list is mighty big it might take a further page but Iguess they got the message),a big thank you for tolerating myidiosyncrasies, all of you will be sorely missed.
I carry fond memories from this place, and the time spent and friendsearned during my tenure here will always be special… veddy veddyspecial…J
And to the select few who managed to decipher me in these 5 years… ‘S’long and thanks for all the fish’ :)

-Antya

Swine flew over the cuckoo’s nest

2009-08-13T08:19:00.003+04:00

What this place’s infested with:
1) Tourists (Flying about)
2) Swine (Complaining... probably)
3) Tourist swine (Flying about and complaining)

What this place isn’t infested with:
1) Decent medical infrastructure
2) Does anything else really matter?

So, basically… I’m shittin in my pants… but then considering I’m in the cuckoo’s nest, this seems to be fairly acceptable behavior and not symptoms of the "flew".

The Storm

2009-08-12T06:04:00.002+04:00

Darkness, my lovely shroud of comfort
protecting me, while unveiling me
permitting my hollowness to swell
to rise, to be seen

A costume providing no cover at all
yet calling, so lulling
everyday for me if no one else
never failing, always present

I close my eyes and sink into your beauty
my abyss, my sweet surender
your calming nature is my soul's perfect pleasure
hold me, obey me

Envelop me in your arms
always, and eternity
I yearn for your gentle kiss
tasteless, and I savor..

I gaze upon five billion stars
so many, all lonely
One pivotal point alone on the Earth
so blinding, yet fading

Fervently, I scream out into the night
two eyes unseeing
everything appears imperfectly clear
rippled, yet flawless

Emotions run rampant with great speed and time
anger and loathing and resentment and .....love?
memories attack like a thousand tidal waves
I'm drowning, who will save me

The wind tears full on my temple
and harshly, so kindly
I welcome the pain, the adrenaline rush
resounding right through me

Then....The Thunder!!-the sky answers back
I'm here, I am waiting
Bolts and flashes like visions of truth
I can't take it, I won't make it

A shower errupts, I peer to the sky
It stings, I embrace it
The water I fear, erodes my facade
I want to keep hiding----now the lightning

Epiphanies from old, come claw at my face
the pleasure, so degrading
The chaos inside grows with the storm
inviting, yet so smiting

I feel my will rise like howls in the breeze
come and get me, wont you take me
I am your puppet--I do what I please!!!
I love it, I can't stand it

More desolate now than ever before
the drops drenching, my heart wrenching
such immaculate pain, just reciting my name
fragile whisper--so diminish

Then stopped the rain

Alone once again......

-Antya

Sickness

2009-07-31T10:49:00.006+04:00

I live in silence
yet my world is deafening
I exist alone
yet am surrounded by the hounding presence
of those that love.

Their love burns
and blisters
I turn my face from their tears
so as they cannot see mine gleam as well
And I shy away from their touch
only to find that they cower from mine.

I am a beacon of spirit
yet am crushed beneath the shadows of my sickness
the sickness that shuns the morning light
yet cries out when the moon glistens in the nights sky
constantly the pain is etched across my brow
but none dare to notice
as they dare not notice the slipping of my soul into the black abyss
the aching of my soul.

I cry out in the fervent night
when the darkened creatures show their beauty
beneath the night's starry hide
but I know none will hear me.

For I only cry within myself
and cast an emotionless gaze for the rest of the world to see.

It is my mask
and my curse to suffer in silence
while others go about in the wonders of life.

I am stuck in the shadows
alone,cold, barely breathing as the pain erupts
reminding me of the scars
from the pain i have endured over the years
reminding me
and telling me
laughing at me.

it is a message
it is my destiny
a destiny to be...
to be at one with the darkness

For never will you leave its comfort
its prison
you are but a slave to your pain
and are dead in a live body
and this is how it shall be
until the end

-Antya

...or is it being driven by someone else

2009-07-16T10:24:00.001+04:00

Sometimes one feels that the journey of life that they are on.
Is not going the way they want it to.
It seems to be going out of control
Making one anxious every step of the way.
Making one frustrated every sec of the day
Making one wait to go out of the way
For trying to figure out what can get life back on track.
But no matter how hard one tries,
One just can’t find reason for all this mental-chaos,
The fight with your own conscience,
The uncertainty that clouds ones decisions,
The relentless war with your spiritual self,
The battle of conscious vs sub-conscious mind,
All of this just doesn't seem to cease within.

When one feels that life is going out of control,
One doesn't need to look for answers anywhere else,
It’s all hidden deeper within.
How can this anxiety, frustration, restlessness be removed?
The truth everyone ends up ignoring is that,
At these moments, lifes actually not being driven by you,
You are that pillion, who feels he trusts the rider,
But ends up being uncertain and anxious all along,
Every mistake the rider makes,
It makes you regret your decision all the more,

You are that pillion, who is neither invincible nor unbreakable,
Who instead of enjoying the cruise coupled with beautiful sights on both the sides of the road,
Ends up being tensed and terrified all along,
Every mistake the rider makes,
It makes you want to end this journey as quickly as possible.

All one needs to do to be content and satisfied of this journey of life,
Is to become the rider,
Cruise smoothly through the journey,
Savour each and every moment of it,
Relish each and every ups and downs,
After all, it’s you who's driving it.

When one feels that the journey of life that they are on.
Is not going the way they want it to.
When one feels that life is going out of control,
All one needs to do to do is
To go in deeper layers of own self,
Connect spritually to one self, find peace and solace.
The journey of life then will seem all the more interesting and satisfying!

So, all one needs to ask oneself is,
Are you driving your life or is it being driven by someone else!

-Antya

Thank you

2009-06-17T08:52:00.004+04:00

I've been listening to a lot of new stuff lately...
new to me i mean... the stuff isn't exactly new... not even close to new actually... grateful dead, bob dylan, chuck berry, hendrix and so on... (knew a bit about the dead and used to listen to hendrix quite a bit too, but now im like big time hooked)

occured to me, this is quite a bit like me in college... all curious, wanting to know about different bands, finding out new stuff all the time, generally in awe of the kind of geniuses the years gone by have produced... and then a while after college, it all seemed to go away... like i wasnt curious anymore, happy with the music i already knew about, not too bothered about anything else... content

that's a fairly decent state to exist in, but that's it... it's just a state of existence.

thank you for bringing back in me the side that was almost buried, almost forgotten... almost.
thank you... for reminding me...

p.s. ...grateful dead, bob dylan, chuck berry, hendrix in one sentence... phew... did i just write that?
anyway, just taking this post further random, the dead collaborate with dylan in one album (at least), the dead (like hundreds of others) played "johnny b goode" which is a chuck berry original, hendrix played dylan's "all along the watchtower" and played it so well that dylan started playing hendrix's version of his own song from then on...
but then that's hendrix for you, he apparently played "sgt pepper's lonely hearts club band" 2 days after it was released, and actually decided back stage to play this song or something like that. (that was me unnecessarily dragging the beatles into this post).
note, i havent written about dylan's "like a rolling stone" in this post and have not dragged the rolling stones into it yet :)

guess we can also thank the geniuses who shaped rock and roll considering this post is about thanking people anyway

2 down... ok, almost

2008-11-03T06:33:00.003+04:00

I started following cricket when I was 8. So it's been 18years now. Thats how long Anil Kumble has been playing before he finally went out, as he said, on his own terms.

How about that for a void...

I grudgingly admire Ganguly too... the change he brought about in the team and all that... but I guess I'll leave the writing about him to gag or one of the others who genuinely admired him right through.

The departure of the next 3 is only going to be more painful.

ok, lets not get all sentimental here now, that isn't something that happens on this blog on a regular basis. Look someplace else if you want tears, flowery language and all that.

On the practical side... Rohit, Badri, Raina are being billed as the future of Indian batting right?
Has it occured to anybody that the starts they have had to their careers have shown mostly flashes of brilliance and hardly any consistency?
And do they have quite the reputation in the domestic level right now that any of the big 5 had when they started out?

The new bunch sure is talented, attractive to watch and most of them do seem gritty as well, let's not take that away from them. The only problem is, they have very very big shoes to fill. With everybody being excited about the new look team after what they accomplished in Australia and Sri Lanka, the expectations are unrealistic. I almost pity them.

why3 (or is it 4?)

2008-10-15T05:58:00.003+04:00

Why do people have to have an opinion on,
1) Stuff they know nothing about.
2) Stuff that has nothing to do with their lives.

(1)
He: hey that isn’t a goal
me: (mildly surprised) huh?? didn’t you see the ball go between the posts, under the horizontal and into the side netting?
he: no, I meant that was offside...
me: offside? but look at that (replay on at this point). The leftback’s broken the line, the forward isn’t behind him, so it isn’t offside.
he: what nonsense? see where he is when he gets the ball, he’s far behind the leftback.
me: dude... it doesn’t matter where he is now, all that matters is where he was when the pass happened.
he: you obviously don’t know the rules, it’s when he gets the ball... (sees me sniggering)... oh, it’s when the other guy passes is it?
me: hahaha yeah...
he: ok, I got confused, thing is, it isn’t like that in hockey...
me: eh? I thought, there isn’t any offside concept in hockey, not sure, they might have brought it back...
he: (all charged up) no way... in hockey, there is offside, and there they see where the player was when he got the ball!!!
me: (half sympathizing) ok, watch the match now...

(2)
he: can you believe what srk said about ash... what does he think of himself?
me: huh?
he: who is he to say that man?
me: huh?
he: oh you dont know...
me: huh?
he: he said... he said... you don’t care what he said do you?
me: huh?
he: forget it!

couple of days later
(out of the blue)
he: jaya auntie gave him a good reply no?
me: HUH!!!!!
he: jaya bachchchan man... remember I told you about srk and ash...
me: huh?
he: see man, I don’t know what rajnikanth is doing, so I tell you about srk-ash...
me: huh?
he: oh, you don’t like him either
me: huh?
he: hey if you don’t like anybody in India, why don’t you go settle abroad... USA or UK or something
me: huh?

and then one day...

2008-09-10T06:31:00.008+04:00

Well... it’s been a while right? A few months at least. And to be honest, I don’t think I’m back so to speak.
Updates being, I moved to this place called Phnom Penh and have been having what can roughly be summarized as the best time I’ve had over a fair period of time in any given town.

I guess I belong to the category of people who have a saturnine view towards the present and not so towards the past. So going by that generalization, I guess it does speak a lot about the town eh?

Now for what I want to write about, like I told you, I’m not exactly back. I still prefer the quiet, the sit back and watch amused kinda lifestyle. But this, I had to put up. Was insane when it happened I tell ya.

For starters, I agree with most girls I know when they tell me that the flirting techniques most software dudes seem to possess (and seem to be convinced about it’s hit-rate) leave a lot to be desired.
for example, this is what happened today, this chap and me are walking down the corridor, and this lady who works at the client place turns up from the opposite direction. I go about the usual routine which has me midway between smiling and saying ‘hmmpfh’.
Anyway, our man goes “hi”
so she replies “hi”
he: how are you?
she: fine... (muted)whatev
he: that’s not a good reply
she: eh?
he: you should say, I'm always fine hahahaha

and you know that look people give right, when they think they’ve said something extremely intelligent or something, and they’re now giving you time to analyze whatever it is that they said, cause you aren’t intelligent enough to figure it out straight away... and so when you do figure it out, and you come up with a look of genuine appreciation, they’d have a kindly smile which tries to at the same time also be, marginally humble, consoling, encouraging and grateful (for the appreciation).

Well, he was trying to fit his face into the aforementioned look, and was beginning to seriously resemble a plateful of a cross between a scrambled egg and thick noodles.

Subtle... hahaha

And in the meanwhile, the lady looks at me like I AM SOMEHOW RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THIS.
I mean, lady, seriously, I don’t know if you got the idea from movies or something, but really, guys DO NOT discuss pickup lines (if you could call “you should say, I’m always fine” one).
I didn’t actually bother telling her that. I was more like trying to blend into the background, which being mostly glass walls wasn’t much help.

She probably was expecting a rational explanation from me or something. When she realized it wasn’t forthcoming, she decided to move on looking fairly amused.

And as we walked along, our man gives me the “now that’ll surely land her in bed” look.
I couldn’t help but retort with a “it’ll land her in bed alright, but not with YOU!!” look.

He probably was basking in his own glory way too much to be noticing second halves of sentences people’s looks are supposed to convey. So effectively, my look conveyed “it’ll land her in bed alright”. That probably glorified his achievements further. Made his day.
Or maybe he got the whole sentence and assumed I was just jealous. Similar results.

And the world goes round...

BAM

2008-03-21T06:18:00.004+04:00

First of all... our blog completes 2 years today. Yay!!!
We'll try and have a party sometime. Not sure the 3 of us are going to be in the same country at the same time anytime in the near future though. The party's on nonetheless... everybody's invited. Get in touch with one of the other 2 for details.
Other 2: make details up as you speak... should be fun that way... ok FUNNY at least... ok funny TO US at least.

There's also this other deal. Antya had forwarded one of our very old writeups a few days ago. The writeup is one our first few. Even before thinshark. Anyway, I dont think we'll be putting up that writeup here. Just that it was kinda nice in a way to see how much we've changed. We've really come a long way since...

This is more about myself actually. I wrote with a contempt then... even towards the reader. Without really giving a damn what he made of it. I'm not sure i care about it now either, it's probably just that i've mellowed down a bit... a lot...
I guess this has been pointed out by one of our regular readers once or twice as well. The good old bite missing and all that.

Anyway, i agree with the reader. i somehow prefer the old self. There was a joy to writing then... at least something to stand against... and vent. Now it's more like an air of resignation about things i guess... and the posts have gone a little too serious too.

So... to break the news straight away... i'm off... i'm taking a break. There are a couple more things i have to say... to question actually and that would be it for a while. Most probably a long while. Might even be permanent... who knows?

So for now, adios...

way to go

2008-03-17T06:30:00.003+04:00

Way to go Bangalore RC.

Red and yellow?
why don't you throw in some green? you can then call yourselves 'bangalore traffic signals'.

Should be marginally funny for someone watching you for the first time you know.

The sot-weed factor & misc

2008-03-06T15:30:00.004+04:00

That's the next book in my wishlist. The more i read about that book, the more i want to get around to reading it.

As for all those who thought this post was a joke with a reference to current affairs and all that, well, the joke is one you hahahahaha.

Have been reading too much heavy stuff lately. Time for something funny now...

See you around. Me heading out for some seafood in floating restaurants... ok not exactly floating, but they're on the sea and they kinda sway with the waves.
Man!!! Pasir Gudang is heavenly I tell you.

Make it a point to visit this place if you ever are in Malaysia, the food alone makes it worth it

The problem

2008-02-23T17:33:00.004+04:00

The major problem or one of the major problems for there are many...
ok lets not ape douglas adams here (again)

The real problem we're facing is that nothing of note has happened in our country in the last 20 years. Nothing major that could like occupy a significant portion of the average person's mind for significant parts of the day at least.

Everybody's bored.

If we make a list of people who're at a position of loss because of this, the first place would go to the media. The media's facing the brunt of it... hence the quality we're so used to.

The 'leaders' would be the next in line. Look at it from their point of view... You cant really generate a following unless you have people interested in what you're doing. And this isnt possible if everybody's bored.
I dont know what the best option a leader (or a wannabe leader) has available is. The option currently regarded as best by the people that be is embracing the absolutely ridiculous i guess.

How else can you explain northies being driven out of Bombay? If whoever's driving them out has a cause and a valid reason, then what was everybody doing all these days?
And then, if somebody's trying to get to power using a particular system, then doesn't the fact that he's imprisoned by that very system actually deal a severe, non recoverable blow to his chances rather than elivate him to the status of a pre-death martyr or sorts?
Incredible how people want to be imprisoned in the glare so that they get political mileage out of it.

Getting into prison doesnt make one a Gandhi or a Mandela. It doesn't make you Ed Norton either. But who's listening?

And then there's the left who's protesting against T20 cricket. WTF!!!! Where did that come from? What does T20 have to do with anything? Who are these morons? Who let them in? I'd love to know Ganguly's reaction to all this.

Anyway. This is the point where I (like everybody else in the country) get seriously bored... and also (like everybody else in the country again) ponder on the pointlessness of it all... and finally (like everybody else blah blah) realise that the everybody else I've been alluding to do not make the numbers in the country and hence are nobodys.

"The others" are happy. They're kept ignorant enough to feel they're a part of something and that they should form mobs and try and become deciding factors and all that. The chain's only going to break when somebody realises that the mob characters have been living tragic lifes for generations now and all their getting-up-in-arms-to-protest-aginst-the-system deals hasn't improved things one bit. But that's going to take a long while coming."Everybody" knows that.

life's not always good

2008-02-23T17:02:00.003+04:00

it's generally quite tragic actually... but then every once in a while, some insane person comes up with an idea like this and totally makes your day

anyway... more soon... gotta complete a tag as well

Shilpa Shetty anybody?

2008-01-10T11:28:00.000+04:00

I am quite sure 2008 is going to be one hell of an eventful year, considering the way it has started. With the Indian cricket team going through a rough patch and the Australian team facing severe criticism, we have already had our share of entertainment and drama. The Australian team should be thanking God and the ICC for conducting the series in their country because had it been in India, I am sure Ricky ‘So called aggressive’ Ponting would have had to face dire consequences. I am not a major cricket fan but have always enjoyed test matches and I witnessed some brilliant cricket the Sydney test, despite the horrendous errors committed by the umpires and the not-so-desirous attitude of the Australians. What was Ponting thinking when he walked down to the umpire and complained like a three year old kid? If the Australian sledging history is taken into consideration, then each of these guys should be handed over to Al Qeada for whatever they have done till date. I have no clue why one Mr. Andrew Symonds is obsessed with the word ‘Monkey’. Frankly, what’s wrong in calling a Monkey a Monkey? I would advise him to take it as a compliment hereafter as I am certain that given a choice anyone would prefer a Monkey to Symonds. Despite all the nonsense he created, I must admire him for being a real opportunist and using the word, which we supposedly gave him against us. Brilliant strategy there!

Now our good old angry young man Bhajji is in the middle of a controversy again. Looking at the footage, even a savage creature would be able to make out that there was nothing going on, on the field. And Singh’s startled reaction during the discussion with the umpire is a testimony to the fact. Add to all this a soft stand by the BCCI against the decisions. It is quite evident from this saga that commercial interests precede any other interests. The BCCI was more concerned about the eight crore that they had to pay as a fine if the tour was called off. Personally, I do not agree with the advice of canceling the tour, which was advocated by most of the ex-players. However, eight crore is as good as a drop in the ocean for the richest and mightiest cricket board in the world. This whole incident clearly brings forth the politician in Mr. Pawar, who is busy eyeing the chair of the CEO of the ICC and is unable to look beyond that. And why will he? He is after all one of the partners in crime. Thanks to the pressure from the public, the BCCI at least managed to retain whatever’s left of its already tainted reputation.

It is really sad to note that, despite being one of the richest and most powerful nations, we have never realised our strengths and have always accepted what others have dictated. This attitude is not just limited to the BCCI. Consider the recent nuclear deal issue. Everyone is cognizant of what the US did to Iraq and most of us are also aware that the all of a sudden friendly attitude the US is trying to portray towards India is to satisfy its selfish needs. India is a rich country and all the US wants is to suck the available resources out of this country. Well, it has been doing so since the last few decades when Americanization of this country started. Just give a thought to this. Would the US have done the same to Iraq if it were a cotton-producing or rice-producing nation instead of being an oil-producing nation? The answer is NO. I am not against the nuclear deal, but I strongly oppose the attitude of people who think we cannot do without the agreement, as if the nuclear deal is the only measure that can save India from drowning. We are looking up to a country that boasts of the being one with the highest crime rate. A country with more than 50% of the black population living below the poverty line. Sad situation.

We are highly capable! That’s the first and foremost fact that we need to accept in order to develop.

PS: Long time since I came up with an article. I have been at home these days. My employer offered me peanuts for every 12-13 hours in a day I spent at the office during the last one year and as advised by KD, I said “Sorry, I am allergic to peanuts”. Right now I am dedicating most of my time to pursue higher studies. Waiting for developments now. Will keep you guys posted.

Sorry times indeed

2007-12-02T11:46:00.000+04:00

Well for starters, I’ve been in India for over a month now. Got here for my brother's wedding and all. Will be writing about it sometime... the entire party, drives etc...

This first though... Also, let me tell you this isn't a sequel or anything. It does have "Sorry times" in the title and might have a passing reference to the ToI, but that's about it.

I headed out to a shuttle court last evening to get some of the old fitness back. Or rather to get rid of the layer of fat that seems to be clouding everything up... Jeez... never thought I’d ever want to shed weight in all my life... well u get to see strange days if u live long enough or unhealthy enough.
Played around 4 hours straight and by the end of it, seemed to get a bit of the old smash back. Damn satisfying I tell u... especially after the way i played in the first hour. I wouldn’t talk much about that as its real embarrassing.

Anyway, the court being down the lane parallel to my lane, i generally walk up to the place.
Scene's me returning home al close to 10pm... Close to exhausted turn into my lane. Now most of that area (down the lane) is kinda dark. Not many houses in that half and the usual Bangalore deal with street lights completely surrounded by tree branches. So the roads are mostly a bunch of shadows post dusk.
So me walking in the quiet dark road and from out of nowhere, a dog turns up and starts barking its head off. I decide to walk on ignoring it before it’s joined by another canine... and then a third which was right in front of me. So now I have 3 dogs within a yards radius of me... and a broken brick... and damn good aim (play a good round of shuttle and you'd know a thing or 2 about hitting the target). I picked up the stone (momentarily leaving my position severely compromised) and this got the dogs way more aggressive, and worse, they have damn good reinforcements. I was in no time surrounded by around 12-15 mongrels... all equally ready to bite. Me armed with a brick and a flimsy racquet. Made a few quick calculations, Figured I could take 3 dogs down at max. The rest - if the reaction to me picking the stone was anything to go by - wouldn’t run at the sight of an attacking aggressive human. So all I could do was walk along hoping not be attacked. Trust me it was hard to just walk along with so many dogs all around you and being real aggressive.
Point to note... I’m one of those fairly huge chaps. Meaning the dogs have had their day attacking kids and have now moved to attacking adults as well.

Back to the incident, I walked up in silence to the upper half of the road which has a few more houses and is less dark... all the while tapping the racquet against my shin for god knows what.

On reaching home, I asked dad about the whole deal and why nobody's done anything about it, which is quite surprising in the locality I live in. Most people here don’t take nonsense and are generally the types authorities hate, in that they demand their rights are a very united bunch. So most "requests" are signed by like 500 people and are brought to the authorities by a coupla arm twister type characters.

Dad tells me that there have been 3 complaints already about the state of our road. The first 2 having the authority characters telling them that there's no point taking it forth as the animal rights NGOs would eventually turn up and force the whole thing shut. The third time around, a man new to the place got bit pretty badly. This pissed the locals off big time. They got the authorities to get to work in spite of the warnings. As predicted, an NGO did eventually turn up and gave everybody a whole load of crap that had nothing to do with anything, they probably even threatened to go on a fast. That's how things work out nowadays.

Now why aren’t issues like this in the newspapers? Why do we have headlines like 'the richer get more sex' instead. Is it because the moron who wrote it isn't rich? or lacks a sex life? or both? Fine, it doesn’t matter what the newspapers say now, but shouldn’t what the newspapers don’t say matter. Or is it a bigger matter or concern for the editors that the people richer than them get to have more sex as against arbit innocents walking on the roads getting unnecessarily attacked by dogs?

As for the NGO characters, I’d love to have a few of them walking on different streets in Bangalore after dark... alone.

Oh and there's an NGO I know a bit about. This one isn’t even from Bangalore but I wouldn’t be surprised if most NGOs are almost the same in their respective lifecycles. This particular NGO was started by a few neighbors or something who were fairly passionate about animal welfare and all... the whole org was a part time thing then and voluntary. The problems started when it grew. Now it’s a full time thing. People work there full time and earn full time salaries. The initial members got pushed to the sidelines and people who were more interested in appearing on the newspapers seemed to take centre stage. The place is now filled with people who're either there for the pics in the papers or because they didn’t find a job anywhere else... u know this can be easy money if you’re so inclined. These people are terribly misguided and the ones in the know don’t make up the numbers and aren’t involved in the decision making.
I had been to a party with these jokers. The usual friday night speeches and booze. A whole lot of people bragging about their latest achievement. They had stopped the government from moving a herd of donkeys from a particular place where they were causing traffic jams. The reason for all this being, they (the ngo) believe donkeys get depressed on being forced out of their territory. I almost puked... quite a few times. It took a lot out of me to keep from laughing that day. I decided to never be stupid enough to be dragged to anything of the sort again.

oh yeah the killer statement was "if we allow these people to move donkeys today, god knows what they will do tomorrow" I probably laughed, if I did, it probably got covered up by the boisterous applause. If it wasn’t, who cares?
What do you expect the humans to do? Make out with the donkeys? And what's with referring to humans as 'them'? Ok u want to display love for animals and all... but calling humans 'them' is taking things too far don’t u think?

Not all animal rights orgs are as bad as I just described. But really, protecting animals that have taken to attacking innocent bystanders is real stupid...
Ridiculous times to live in... having such losers taking all the decisions. I wonder if most such people even know what animal rights stand for.
There a few smart ones who know what they stand for, but they are surrounded by political minded cheapos, morons without a clue... kinda similar to me being surrounded by the dogs. I guess it’s their compassion towards animals that keeps them going; lesser mortals would've quit or gone on shooting sprees.

Sorry times for ToI

2007-11-01T13:25:00.000+04:00

“He just knows how to press the right buttons, he licks me on my face , my neck, my stomach and I explode. I just lose control when he gets on top of me”. This is a statement by Katya Prudnikova or something .. some model of some kind on Chelsea footballer Claude Makalele.
And where did I find this confession??
This and a skimpily clad beyonce knowles’s pic on the Front Page.

Nope, this is not from a porn site or a pornographic confession diary.
Absolutely not, this comes from TOI our very own Times Of India

This is the regular stuff that TOI’s been dishing out for quite sometime now.
The once mouthpiece of the government is now resorting to basal tactics to sell the newspaper. Not so long ago , getting up in the morning and reading the newspaper was a pleasure, a non biased stance , clean to the point stuff which dealt mainly with happenings around us and the last couple of pages reserved for sport.

WAG’s (wifes and girlfriends) is the most common word found on the sports page these days. Followed by pictures of a couple of bikini clad babes. Who cares how many times Wayne Rooney sleeps around with his girl, who cares about the size of Enrique iglesias’s you know what… or rather who cares which spice girl is having an affair with whom.

Somebody needs to knock some sense into the Bennet and Coleman guys (if they own this porn show now) that a newspaper finds the first use in “Being Read for its news value” in the morning.

A neighbor of mine said he reads TOI these days for the following things necessarily in this order
Babes and boobs. (sports page)
Rape Stories (they abound in the middle pages)
Adverts of social groups, friendship groups and massage parlours. (steadily increasing)
And if anything in the above 3 don’t exist then he goes for the good old quotes and You Said It section (thankfully they still exist).

A sorry state the one time Mouthpiece of the Government is in.

-Antya
[accessibility issues, hence kd posting]

Government

2007-10-09T10:00:00.000+04:00

The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to dothe job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

[from the book "The restaurant at the end of the universe" by Douglas Adams]

Re-elections in Karnataka because one set of people 'promised' to transfer power after a few months and another set 'actually believed' the first set.

And what's happening in the centre?
Something to do with nukes and progress and the US of A i gather. You guys tell me. I'm too far away to know for sure.

The worst review ever

2007-10-04T14:23:00.000+04:00

Don’t ask y… but I ended up in a local amphi something theater watching dhoom 2.

Watched it for a bit… when hritik turns up for the first time, the girl next to me whistled… damn loud and shrill… my ear still rings. And I suffer an inferiority complex now… I cant whistle for nuts
And the movie went exactly as an old friend of mine had once summarized it.
Hritik wears his sunglasses, a chick sings dhoooom..dhoooom…dhoooooom
Hritik turns to the left, a chick sings dhoooom..dhoooom…dhoooooom
Hritik fakes left and turns to the right, a chick sings dhoooom..dhoooom…dhoooooom
Hritik walks towards the camera, a chick sings dhoooom..dhoooom…dhoooooom
Aishwarya pouts, a chick sings dhoooom..dhoooom…dhoooooom
Hritik flexes his biceps… a chick… u get the gist.

I cudnt take this after a while… worse, there was a kid to my right who wanted the ridiculously tall uncle to his left (me that is) to translate everything being said.
Like I can understand complex plots and all…

I walked out.

As for the girl to my left… We aren’t on talking terms now… or we probably are… not sure… I’m stone deaf to anything emanating from her mouth.

My mind's kinda clouded about the whole thing… u might get a better review someplace else.

congratulations

2007-09-26T12:53:00.000+04:00

congrats antya.

three cheers...

now, tell us more...

more than meets the eye

2007-09-21T13:47:00.000+04:00

Do u really think the Indians were so convincing in the do-or-die against SA courtesy their skill and fighting spirit? There was this incident that seems to prove otherwise. This was not broadcast to ur living rooms. The clipping off of the incident was possible because most cricket coverage is not actually live… we get it delayed by a couple of minutes or so. Check out the pic (which got accidentally leaked out) to know more about the incident.

Boucher displaying obvious angst towards Morkel with a visibly shocked Sharma looking on and Kemp rushing in to stop the already unsavory situation from getting worse.

Hahahah
Truth is, it was just a bad cam angle that’s all. You guys believe anything that sounds remotely controversial.

pic source (pic 4)

Nothing in particular

2007-09-10T07:10:00.000+04:00

Now Shoaib Akhtar goes hammering his buddies with bats.
I beat you to that sir.

That apart, it's sad that we never seem to get to see Shoaib and Asif bowling together. Cricket being the biggest loser.
And it was a valid point that Shoaib raised about the game getting very batsman friendly. It's becoming very one dimensional now... gradual but definite.

Ex: The six Hayden hit of Marlon Samuels was disgusting. You have a bowler who's beaten the batsman in the air and off the pitch and yet gets tonked for a maximum. OK Hayden is one of the strongest around, but mishits, one handed hits with the batsman in a tangle going all the way is ridiculous. Bigger boundaries please.

Hope the big people in cricket management learn from their tennis countrparts and get the game to go back a few years.
Watching tennis is real fun these days with real good players battling it out (if the last 3 grand slams are anything to go by). Compare this to the mid, late nineties when Sampras kept winning the wimbledon. He was good, but damn boring.

Bring back the good old days with big fast bowlers charging in and all.

And finally. Upul Chandana retired. YAY!!!
I heard from a source that they arranged a 24 gun salute for him or something. The soldiers were specifically told to shoot at the sky and not at the chief guest.

The source is not very reliable. So you don't need to believe the piece of news.

Duttography

2007-09-03T06:18:00.000+04:00

Words out… Dutt’s out. Dutt’s the word. In my last post I mentioned about Dutt getting out. An ardent fan of Dutt I may be but that doesn’t discount the fact that he assisted the perpetrators of the heinous crimes commited in erstwhile Bombay more than a decade and half ago. The yellow guys that run most of the software in the idiot box have this utterly disgusting habit of putting up people on a pedestal and then bringing them down. Same case with this fella too.

This is the same fellow who was propelled into stardom as a kid coz his dad n mom were superstars. He was famous even before he knew it. Many people can handle that .. some can’t . .. this one couldn’t. Got involved with the wrong set of people with the wrong substances. Forgivable.. totally forgivable coz all he did there was to harm himself.

Couldn’t act.. that’s forgivable too.. who can forget a sleepy Sanjay Dutt stuttering (abuubaaaa (actually supposed to mean abu baba)) in vidhata (if they’ve even got around to seeing the movie) .. Kicked the habit of drugs.. got divorced and the messed up his life. And then one fine day somebody said he could “Act” . Then started his golden period and he became a bankable star. But then that’s about as good as it can get.

The guy got carried away and got involved with the wrong set of people. In a bid to carry the tough guy image the “Khalnayak” types he just borrowed a banned weapon and gave it to the wrong people. We all know what they did with it. The Mumbai blasts bear testimony to one of the most heinous crimes in our recent past. That done he then tried to dispose off the weapon. For that he was caught and sent to 16 months behind bars. But then let off coz Dutt Sr was a politico. No matter he let a whole horde of Bangladeshis set up slums in Mumbai. No matter if he set them ablaze and got permanent houses made for those refugees. We have a pretty short memory here. Duttsaab as they called Sr Dutt affectionately was always highly revered coz he acted in a few good things.. stood by his dying wife and turned up occasionally in track gear for the “Mumbai Marathon”.

Coming back to Sanjay Dutt. The media started projecting him as a person who was “wronged”. Picture this
A guy helps the bad guys harbor a weapon.. the bad guys kill lots of people with that.. he destroys it.. and gets the slammer. How do you call him “wronged”. I would call that justice. The media further accentuated their claims by saying that nobody stood by the poor boy in his hour of need. The morons in showbiz didn’t have the corporate culture running in their veins then I guess.

A few successful movies over the years and an image resurrection thanks to the “Gandhigiri” movies the law has caught up with him again.. and I thought this time it would be for keeps. Indians are a sentimental lot and we do not realize that if we need movies to keep the Mahatma’s ideals alive then we are the morons. The guy was just using the Mahatma as vehicle to freedom. Just another one of the tremendous “good deeds” labeled by the fifth estate. And now we have the whole film industry rallying behind “good boy” dutt coz theres money at stake there. Money does the talking here they say .. and that’s what’s happening in this case.

In a list of more than 150 convicts Dutts hearing was reserved till the last. And for one I was happy to see justice being done when judge Kode gave him 6 yrs. “He broke down” they said in the news and asked the judge to have mercy coz his sis was pregnant and his daughter was studying in the US. I personally find this argument ridiculous. The Mumbai blasts would have extinguished many a dream of students and parents alike. Forget the US even dreams of their kids studying further would have gotten blown apart and the man in question here.. was a part of the whole act committed. So whatever it may have been I still personally feel the guy got less than he deserved. He should have at least gotten a lifetime.

Hats off to judge Kode for upholding the law. But on the other hand my better half argues that our esteemed house is full of people who’ve knowingly committed the crimes they did and still represent us unabashedly.. if they have been let off the hook coz they’re public figures then why does Sanjay Dutt have to suffer.

He wasted no time in moving the highest court and is out on bail till the end of September. I sincerely hope here that justice will be done and he gets the punishment he deserves.

Antya

Whingings and Happenings

2007-08-30T08:31:00.000+04:00

Another one bites the dust. So… who’s the one? Well.. if u ask me even I’d be at a loss to answer. The defunct parliament for one.. the esteemed upper house as well. Them biting the dust is no big deal. The moment the septuagenarian of the fairer sex was installed on the office that once boasted of the guy who made India a nuclear force to reckon with.. the credibility of the process of electing the first person in the country got lost on me. Many would argue that even the installation of “Giani Zail Singh” on the highest office was a similar situation.. but then theres a difference .. I wasn’t thinking or voicing my opinions at that point of time.

A group of good for nothings met and we got our nth president and the first one of the fairer sex for that. Pratibha Patil was installed in the “Rashtrapati Bhavan”. Nothing of note has actually been happening except work at my end and a few glances at the idiot box lets me know whats happening in the world. The most refreshing part in the last few days was that there was no HR or RS in the news (for those who didn’t guess it.. one is a singer that cant act .. and the other one is ??? well description fails me so I’ll let it out. RS = Rakhi Sawant”).

The eternal ciggy smoking puppet churned out a fourth film in the last 17 odd years in which he played the character and not himself , and in absence of HR or RS making news the media projected it as some sorta nationalistic crap. Jingoism at its best. It was a good movie but that’s about it. Are we so short of pride that we need such crutches to showcase nationalism or pride in our country? The idiot box isn’t any good either.. how else can u explain the box airing Rolnald Emerichs “Independnce Day” on 15th August. Its been reduced to just a couple of words now.The law finally caught up with a couple of bollywood actors but then there’s always a way out and so is Dutt.(he’s already out) and who knows the Khan may be out too…

Then the biggest one to bite the dust. “Club BCCI” has competition from another guy who’s got lotsa money. Wait and watch that one.. that’s gonna be interesting at least for some time.

The fifth estate have been giving us lessons in sleaze and grime for ages now. Ever since Rajat Sharma has got his own channel he’s gone haywire. But this time round after the blasts in Hyderabad they all went haywire. What were they doing showing decapitated corpses? I mean it’s one thing showing the scene of the incident. But then showing the gory details is just not done. What was being shown on TV was severed hands, a headless body etc.

The reality shows continue unabated with participants and judges unabashedly showcasing whatever they can. There’s yet another one called “The Biggest Loser” or something like “Biggest Loser Jeetega” the theme here is weight loss.. and the rest is the same old crap.

AHAK’s quit the organization for good in the quest for higher knowledge. Me n Komodo wish him luck in his quest in the journey ahead. So now its just me who’s remaining in the organization and I guess im gonna stay on for a wee bit more.

To round off on a brighter note... In the midst of all this coercion, apathy and chaos the ray of light at the end of the tunnel is in sight… Antya (Jr) will arrive in this world by the end of September. That’s something me n the missus are looking forward to.. Wish me luck folks..

Antya.

An Incident

2007-08-13T09:47:00.001+04:00

Firstly, a few opinions,
Friendship day: I somehow feel the entire friendship concept is a little over hyped these days. I do go around wishing my friends on that day, but somehow feel we don’t need a day for that… more like we don’t even need to wish each other. And then there’re always these people who I hardly even know who wish me and give me their opinions on what true friendship is… quite weird and unnecessary I tell u.
But then it’s quite harmless and people like it, so its fine the way it is.

Independence Day: This I’m clearer in my opinion about. It seems a big farce to me. All the pretense of patriotism, plastic (no biodegradable remember) flags and all. If you really are patriotic, then how about probably cleaning the road you live in? Or simpler how about avoiding chucking mint wrappers or cigarette butts anywhere you feel like.

The incident:
This happened when I was 8 yrs old and involved 3 characters.
A: a fairly huge kid (around twice my size then) but timid like crazy. I’d beaten him up more than a few times (and I left that place when I was 10).
B: the nice kid in that place, loved to talk to parents and all that. So was generally the voice of the group.
K: me. Generally quiet, shy chap except when it came to bashing ‘A’ up, oh that was fun heh heh.

OK, I had this habit of threatening to hit ‘A’ with the bat every time we had a fight in our cricket games. After around 4-5 such warnings, ‘A’ got his retort going. He used to stand in attention and ask me to take a swing. Now I obviously couldn’t do a thing after that.

The entire problem with all this was I was addicted to threatening him and getting my way. So it was real hard to stop that.
This one time, I threatened him and he stood in attention again and I decided to swing the bat real close to his head so he gets real frightened and realizes that I mean business.

I missed.

That is I missed missing his head.

“Clunk” Some good quality wood came in contact with some bad quality head and ‘A’ started yowling like crazy. I was stunned. Things had suddenly gotten real out of hand. I had just bashed a friend on the head with a cricket bat.

B decided to take control of the situation and dragged us both to my mom.

B goes… “auntie, do you know what K just did?”

Mom: What this time?

B: auntie, he threatened to hit A on the head with the bat and A told him to hit. So K hit him.

---------x---------x---------

Thanks mom for being such a bad actress. I mean yeah you put in your best efforts to avoid laughing. You tried to look angry and all and were fairly convincing. But you smile through your eyes mom and I knew it even then.
I don’t remember the other incident (which happened when I was 3), but I can imagine your expression when your cousin told me “hhelllelelelo… glug, glug goo…” and I told her that I know English and Kannada and please speak to me in one of those 2.

Happy mothers’ day mom (whenever that is).

Needless to say, I thoroughly deserved the thrashing I received that day (the bat incident I mean).
I mean had it been me in mom’s place, I’d have been paranoid. I’d have been more like “oh god, my son is showing signs of psychotic behavior. Will he grow up to be a psychopath?
I mean, who goes around clubbing people’s heads with bats? Something must be done… and quick.
Else he might end up like those demented people we read about…
Consider this, he might go on to perform anti social deeds like kicking out at fellow artistes in college plays, pretending to be a dad, getting caught, writing “mothers’ day” posts on some arbit date between friendship day and independence day
This is real frightening, mustn’t panic now…”

And so on… you get the drift.

-KD

Stupidity and punishment

2007-08-03T15:30:00.000+04:00

‘A deep look into the mind of a moron’

I guess most of this one is our usual.
Like I’ve said before, the entire concept of equating bachelors to criminals when it comes to letting your house out or being forced to living somewhere in their vicinity by neighbors who let their houses out to bachelors kinda annoys me.

And everybody knows our take on stupidity anyway. Check AHAK’s review of TDH for a glimpse of that.

But then the part of this one which is not our usual is that, we’re not hitting out at stupidity that’s generally displayed by others, this is more a take on myself… in retrospect.

And yeah, the attitude was displayed in India and not here.

Guess I might as well get to the bloody incident rather than put u’ll to sleep with my descriptions of its haves and have-nots.

Before which, something you all don’t know (even the other 2 sharks), I’m married and have a son who’s 3 months old.

I live in this part of KL which is infested with a whole lot of Indians. It’s more like the designated Indian spot in KL. And we fellow countrymen carry our prejudices wherever we go. So most decent condos are for ‘families wonly la’.

Now my company arranges for my accommodation and are really nice folks in that they put in the extra effort to get me a good condo and not one of those tragic ones which are meant to be inhabited by folks who swam across from India and survive doing odd jobs here.

Let’s be fair here, “thank you company. honest”

Here’s the scene… we’re walking to the flat I’m supposed to sign the papers for and start living in, and I’m told that the story presented to the landlord had me as the chief character and a wife and kid.

Oh btw, that entire deal about me being married or being a dad is a lie.
My word you all have a short term memory, remember the aunt trying to get me married?

Now I’m terrible when it comes to acting off stage.

I’m a good actor on stage btw. Why I once played a tree in one of my college plays. It was a sterling performance I tell you. I moved the audience to tears when I kicked out at that nut that played Yudishtira (Kannada pronunciation) for landing on the tree too hard when he was only meant to sit there... slowly. The audience found it odd to have 2 legs wrapped in trousers suddenly replacing the trunk of a tree. Odder still was the upper segment of the tree staying in place. The real tear jerker being the tree suddenly administering the then just dethroned king of India a severe hiding on the rear side with its left leg. They (the audience that day) still believe deforestation in India had started a long time ago… way back.

Ok back to the topic, bad actor off stage!!!

We walk in to this house. Me all sweaty about the part I have to play.
The landlord starts off… “Hello Mr. Dragon, I’m #LL name# ” (and the rest of the formalities… I didn’t handle that part well).
A while later, he hands me the paper I’m supposed to sign on and says “here’s the agreement, why don’t we celebrate, come over for dinner.”

Me: Thank you sir, could we meet up some other day plz. Need to shift in today, might as well grab a bite somewhere close by. (it was around 9pm then)

LLord: Fine, we can meet in a hotel then, I’d like to introduce you to my wife.

Me: Thank you sir, really. But I don’t want to bother you, I’d hardly be around for 5 mins, need to shift…

LLord: Oh OK…

He then starts showing me around the house.

Me: isn’t this washing machine tap working (I meant the connecting valve, it was leaky)

LLord: (his face suddenly brightened up) YESSS!!!! I tried to set it all day, couldn’t. Only my wife knows how to go about it. I’ll call her and she’d come over and get it done right now. Or you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the plumbers to turn up.

This is where I was real stupid. I said “Fine… if it isn’t a prob. Thanks”.

He was rejoicing. I didn’t seem to understand why until the LLady turned up. And when she did, it hit me with the full force of a Bombay local train hitting a brain dead clown (soon to be completely dead clown) who likes crossing tracks by running over them.

When you’re in a situation like this, she’s like a walking talking Murphy’s Law. Just walking and talking were still not bad enough, she talked a hell of a lot and everything she spoke was a question. She’s the kind who answers a question with another all day long if it’s her day.
And man, it WAS her day.

I won’t go into the gory details as it rattles my nerves to think about it. I’ll skip to the part where I finally got a bit intelligent.

After the initial banter (where I got grilled), LLord tells me he’s forgotten the screw driver downstairs and went to retrieve it (with a snigger).

So now it’s Murphy’s Law and me trying to do something about the damn valve.

Murphy’s Law: So Mr. Dragon what’s you wife’s name?

Me: glug glug… err hrmm Mrs. Dragon heh heh

She gave me a look that seemed drill through my eyes and tamper with the back of my skull. I resolved to cut down on pjs for the time being and thought up a name in no time. Phew.

ML: you have a… son or a daughter…

Me: Son

ML: (in Tamil... to herself. But loud) I thought they told me daughter. (then in english) you’re from Karnataka right?

Me: y…yeah.

ML: so u don’t know Tamil.

Me: No, hardly.

This is something I’m proud of. This was the point where I got a little smart.
(I understand Tamil quite well. Most Bangaloreans do)

ML: (to herself, in tamil, but loud enough) Let’s check the ego (in english) So, what’s your son’s name?

Me: #arbit name that began with the same alphabet as wife's name#

ML: (to herself) hmm he looks like a kid, is it possible that…

Me: Ma’am is there any laundry place around, she (referring to wife) might have a tough time, the baby’s clothes etc. (to myself) first bird: showing concern for the wife.

ML: Oh no no, i’ll fix this valve, it’s very simple really. Just need the screwdriver…

Me: (to myself) second bird: getting ML to get on with the work she’s here for. Heck.

ML: So you were telling me…

Me: (thoughtful frown) hmm this manual says… oh you were saying.

ML: no no tell me… what does the manual say?

Gave her a truck load of garbage till LLord turned up. And they got it done. Phew.

With all due respect, they seem real nice folk. But with my luck I’m not assuming too much here. And I have to also dream up excuses for my wife’s getting terribly delayed in coming here.

Things we have to do to live… wish me luck.

-KD

Paranoia

2007-07-03T10:11:00.000+04:00

Been immersed deeply into work these days but hilarious incidents do keep happening at the workplace.

Scene.
Me working late night at the workplace and at around 11:30 PM I decide to get some fresh air and proceed to the lift.
I enter the lift on level 4 and on level 3 another dude (the yo types) enters the lift all equipped with his hands free and staring into the mirror and german combing his hair.
There is a power outage in the building and the lift stops somewhere between the 3rd and 2nd floors. Pitch black inside the lift. We wait for 2 minutes in the hope that lights will come on and lift will start but that doesn’t happen.

He : What’s happening?
Me : We’re stuck, I think that’s what’s happening.
He : Now what?
Me : What?
He : Call up the electrician plz (out lifts are equipped with phones in case of
emergencies)
Me : I don’t know the number.
He : Now What?
Me : twice
He :??????
Me : Wait (and I dial the reception)
Me : (to reception) We’re in the first lift and stuck somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd
floors. Can something be done about that?
Reception : We’re working on it, actually lift has developed a snag and it’ll be almost 10-
15 mins before we get u out.
(the best way to get out would’ve been just to pry open the doors with my hands and climb out. Even reception suggested that. But this was a potentially interesting situation brewing and the other didn’t seem to know the way out. So I decided to stay put).
Me: Ok (hang up)
He : What happened?
Me : (I relate to him exactly what the guy at reception told me).
He : Now what?
Me : (slightly irritated) Thrice.
Me : nothing, now we’ll slowly run out of oxygen and pass out. We wont even know
when we’re dead.
He : (slightly confused) you mean?? We’re gonna suffocate?

He suddenly looks around and sees that there’s an opening at the top.
He looks at me with a grin of triumph (I can see his white teeth flashing in the pitch black darkness)

He : no buddy we wont suffocate. See there’s ventilation at the top.
Me : oh ok. Good for you.

All of a sudden the lift jerks up and moves up towards the 5th floor.

He : good they’ve repaired it.
Me : good for you.

The lift gives a jerk again and drops from the 5th at pretty fast speed without stopping and stops suddenly at the 2nd. The door still doesn’t open. I call up the reception again and they tell me that its gonna take another 5 mins coz theres a snag that needs to be fixed now. The door wont open as well. I tell him so.

He : this is scary. (now that the lights are on he’s back to german combing his hair).
He : Now What?
Me : fourth , nothing, at the most we’ll end up crashing on the ground floor, only 2 more
floors to go.
He : What are you trying to say?
Me : nothing, just trying to put things in perspective.

The lift suddenly gives a jolt and stops again

Me : there’s nothing we can do anyways anyways you’ll at least know what’s
weightlessness on our way down.. and then we’ll crash. Maybe tomorrow they’ll
come n pick up our remains. I just hope my skull isn’t crushed by the impact. Id not
like to die looking ugly or something.

He : (almost scared) is there no way out?
Me : don’t worry, if it happens it’ll be pretty sudden and you wont even realize. Just pray
that you don’t stay alive minus an arm or a leg.
He : (stopped combing his hair) we’re really gonna crash?
Me : no, if things go alright we have a really good chance of around 5% to get out of this
Alive.
He : don’t say that please. (Checks his cell and there’s no range)

Suddenly the lift comes alive and goes fast down, and stops at the basement with a jerk.
The door opens.

He : stumbling out. We’ll take the stairs.
Me : hey man this thing is workin.. come in we’ll go to the reception n u can go up from
there.
He : no I’ll take the stairs.
Me : hey no its big deal.. the damn things now repaired and you’ll have to walk halfway
round the building to take the stairs (this was just to persuade him to take the lift coz
the stairs to reception were just round the corner)
He : no I’ll take the stairs can u please direct me.
Me : ok and I tell him the direction to the stairs halfway across the building.
He : thanx I’ll go now. Lift door closes.
Me : bbye.. (door closes )

Epilogue:
I then had my share of fresh air and walking back to the building when he meets me again. He’s leaving the building.

Me : so.. leaving?
He : yeah, hey dude u didn’t tell me the gate at the other end was locked? I had to walk
all the way back to the front.
Me : oh is it? (trying not to grin) I didn’t know they shut it these days. Anyways I’ve
gotta go back to work gnite mate.

-Antya

The Good Guys

2007-06-28T09:53:00.001+04:00

Dodda Ganesh retired last week. Can someone in the first place tell me when was he hired? And then there is Anil Kumble blabbering “He was a great asset to Indian cricket and blah blah….”

Let’s talk about this city. Bangalore is a weird place. So weird that it’s got a circle named after Anil Kumble. Anil Kumble was definitely not an eligible candidate considering the fact that he only bowled straight through out his life. That’s me being the Antagonist, I guess. Anyways, people who have stayed in this city at least for a while would know what I am talking about. The early morning fights, the traffic on the road etc. etc. Btw, when I use the word ‘fight’, I mean it. I am not talking about arguments. And then there are autos, which make more noise than a ‘Sukhoi’ and the noise is probably the most irritating in the world. Why can’t these guys do something about it?

Of late, I’ve heard from few of the readers that we only hit out using the blog as a medium. Just gave it a little thought and concluded that that’s not true. We have just been presenting the facts, probably in a more Thinshark-ish way, if that can be a word. There have been times when we have praised something/someone for doing something sensible, but I guess we are not too good at praising. Hitting out comes to us naturally, especially with two of the writers being Capricorns and the third not requiring to be a Capricorn to hit out.

The reason for bringing this topic in picture was more because I was about to mention about the decent job being done by few people whom I have to see everyday. Traffic in Bangalore is becoming a global issue these days. Everyone seems to be talking about it including Osama. Now come on, how long can people talk about Pratibha Patil’s bank loan and her insane brother. There’s nothing new about a new case against the Big B. He seems to have got used to it now. So much that he is planning to acquire the land right opposite the Mumbai high court and this time he has decided that he would present himself as gardener who has been watering the Banyan tree in the ground since the last 43.67 years. No one anymore cares who the hell the coach of the Indian cricket team is.

Yeah, coming back to the point, the guys I was talking about are the traffic cops, who according to me are doing a great job here. Trust me, but for them, people would have had to travel almost 4-5 hours a day. Also, I can proudly state that Bangalore is the only place (as far as I know) where people do not cross the white line when they stop at a signal. The cops here are a bit crazy or probably they are being made to work day in and out. Even at 2 AM, I have seen these guys checking commuters. Well, one can argue that all this is happening to mint money from the public, but whatever the reason may be, one needs to applaud these guys for maintaining discipline. There have been so many occasions when I have seen cops switching off the signals and regulating the traffic manually. There is definitely a sense of responsibility and I think that’s commendable.

The government also, due to some weird reason, seems to have gained sense and is deploying cops in every corner of the city. Probably there’s a lot of money flowing in. Frankly, I have always believed that administration in this place is much better than most of the cities of India and also people here have a sense of responsibility when it comes to cleanliness of the place, environment etc. Otherwise, there would not be as many trees here in spite of the constant growth in infrastructure.

Quite a few measures that can be taken to improve the conditions though. But then, the govt. would not even give it a thought, forget about implementing. For instance, have no clue why the govt. allows every other company to build cars in India. How do these guys manage to obtain a license? Name a company and they have a plant here. Few like General Motors have more than one. Well, they are coming up with the second one actually. Every month there is a car launch…four companies planning on a one-lakh rupee car. Wondering what’s gonna happen when that’s launched. I just hope autos get replaced by these cars. At least I would not have to go through the torture of listening to the noise everyday. So many measures, but no takers and why would someone? After all, it’s a matter of money. It all starts and ends there.

Meanwhile, another controversy surrounding Pratibha Patil. Switched on the idiot box in the morning and there flashes the news “Few morons with absolutely nothing to do accuse Pratibha Patil of being an atheist.” Who cares anyways…

-AHAK

The looks

2007-06-27T14:11:00.000+04:00

Was having this discussion with roomies here about a colleague who’s gone far east. Further east than even I have. Around twice as east and much less south, in fact a fair distance north.
So there we were watching the rain and discussing. These guys were of the opinion that he’d have a real hard time enduring that place. Oh the place we were talking about was Shanghai btw. “I was like, Shanghai is a fantastic place (or so says discovery channel) and he’s only going to be there for a couple of months. So how hard can it get at worst? I mean, unless he’s out there counting down from day 1”.

One of my roomies suddenly comes up with, “hey, can you consider eating a horse’s tongue? Or a frog’s legs? Or for that matter, a snake?”

I gave it a serious thought, considered all options and said, “yeah… I wouldn’t mind.”
They gave me the stunned look.
I went ahead “There are people out there who eat this stuff, there’s got to be something about it that makes them want to eat it. It’s not like they’ve a shortage of stuff and that that’s forcing them to eat whatever they get their hands on.”

Come to think of it, I really meant that stuff. I wouldn’t go about trying to find some joint that serves snakes. But yeah when I get to the bridge, I’ll cross it.

Anyways, this entire attitude came over me quite recently. During the early days of my stay here to be precise. I was this average non-vegetarian dude who wanted to try out the local stuff.
I used to have ‘South Indian Meals’ on a more regular basis here than in south India and with all due respect to the meals, I got kinda bored of it.
So off we went one day, to a joint which isn’t exactly a house hold name or anything.

Saravana bhawan was probably the only joint which was a household name in my house anyways, and I didn’t know too many people who didn’t live in my house then.

So at this joint, I order myself a malay style prawn mee and the other 2 order an apple juice each.
I got this huge bowl full of what appeared like soup and tasted sweetish with noodles and prawns thrown in at random. Now the prawns (unlike back home) didn’t have the shells (or whatever) removed, they were more like picked off the oceans and dumped into the vessel to be boiled in. The locals use their hands to eat. I had learnt that on my way here.

Back to that lunch. Played around with the mee (thick noodles) for a bit and was about to pick the first prawn. When I noticed it had been actually put in to the bowl as is.

It’s eyes seemed to look at me with a “hey I’m already dead, you cant make it worse for me by eating me as well, can you” look. Not kidding, the eyes were close to tears I tell you.
I replied with a “Come on. You got to be kidding!!” look.
To which it came up with a “if you were as dead and boiled as I am, would you be thinking of joking about?” look.
I gave it an approving “you do have a sense of humor” look.
It tried cutting me down to size with a “is that all you think about? How shallow” sort of a look.
I swallowed my ego and replied with a “let’s be reasonable here, you’re dead already, what difference does it make to you whether I eat you or not?” look.
It tried another card and gave me the “do you know I had a family, most of whom are being eaten by the gentleman in the next table” look.
I gave it a “so?” look. (this was the easiest part of the entire ordeal)
It gave me a “we could’ve been reunited, and he’s at least from around here” look.
I gave it the usual, extremely cheap and currently fashionable, fairly easy to execute “ha… racist!!!” look

It gave up completely and seemed to be thinking to itself, “these humans are such pathetic creeps, they always…” it was at this point that I ate it.

Somewhere during all this, my roomie had very politely wanted to know why I was staring at the dish.
I had given him “gimme a sec, I’m in a discussion here” look.

He looked at the gentleman in the next table, who smiled back before devouring the last of the prawn’s family. Neither my roomie, nor the gentleman nor the prawns in his dish seemed to understand each other’s expressions and to be honest, none of them were bothered about it either.

My roomies, both being vegetarians, do not understand the sentiments between eater and eatee. I being myself got the point across to the prawn that the way to a man’s heart is via his stomach.

I really shudder to think about the consequences of me having failed that test.

But then they don’t call me the Komodo Dragon for nothing. The point, according to me, behind food existing is for it to be eaten.

All the veggies out there who got grossed out and all, I perfectly understand. I went through a stern test myself.

Please don’t tell me it’s a sin for me to consume what I feel like, I won’t tell you that it isn’t.

The looks: Some are born with it, some get it from prawns they wish to eat.

-KD

p.s. I still have my reservations about insects…

arbit pics

2007-06-16T09:16:00.000+04:00

right now

2007-06-06T11:50:00.000+04:00

Feel like listening to all these tracks right now. Today is a big day in a way… will tell you all more about it sometime…

1) Kishore - Rhim jhim ghire saawan (whiskey)
2) Kishore - Anamika (on the bike… outskirts of pune… late at night, us guys singing)
3) Travis – Afterglow (driving back home after a crazy day’s work)
4) Floyd – Cymbaline (5 am, drunk, hostel, winamp voiceprint)
5) Floyd – Flaming (anytime anyday)
6) Floyd – Lucifer Sam (can’t have floyd – piper without this track)
7) Floyd - One of my turns (that part of the wall… after the hits are done with, the vocals suddenly get distant, fading and the tracks get very rough in an odd way… man that’s trippy)
8) Tom Petty - Free fallin
9) Coldplay – Shiver (traffic jam and I’m hoping I’m stuck there for much longer, laughing at the annoyed people)
10) U2 – Bad (walking alone, headphones,dark, the jungle isn’t frightening once you’re used to it)
11) REM - Find the river (there’s a post about this one)
12) Clapton – Promises (rich stuff)
13) Coldplay - Clocks (KL, the pool, beer)
14) Aerosmith - Seasons of whither (haunting)
15) Green Day - Basket case (me heh heh)

And I feel like listening to these on an audio tape if possible (with voiceprint… weird)… amidst other tracks which don’t feature here.

-KD

solitude

2007-06-04T08:48:00.000+04:00

Mia: Don't you hate that?
Vincent: What?
Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don't know. That's a good question.
Mia: That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

(from the movie pulp fiction)

if you haven't watched the movie yet, watch it.

went on a trip to singapore over the weekend. and for some reason, ended up in indonesia as well (completely unplanned)... the discussion over whether to go or not lasting about a minute.
point behind all this being said here is, i was quiet through the cruise instead of the usual "yaking" and my roomies were like wondering if something's the matter.

Consider this, a lazy evening out in the ocean, tropical islands in the distance... now would you want to be talking is such a place?
and what's with us and wondering if something's the matter if somebody's quiet?
we have to open up to the concept of being blissfully silent.

it's hard to keep mum these days without having somebody getting worked up... even if you have a rep for being somebody who spends most of his free hours in his room with a book.

-KD

p.s. there's more about batam that i'd probably write about. probably...

eligible bachelor 2

2007-05-29T15:46:00.000+04:00

Frantic keyboarding…

Me: (to myself) wow now that’s a song I really like… not bad eh? To get to listen to this stuff after so long… and that on the monorail. And hey, the radio in this one’s real good. Hmm lemme see, this one’s coldplay definitely… the song… oh yeah… clocks… wow. Is something wrong? I mean why’re people staring me down? I’m sure I’m not humming. Giant or not, I don’t deserve to be stared at… more so considering that’s my main reason for loving this place, people here don’t interfere... they go about their lives without bothering you or bothering about you. So what’s with the stares?
Oh crap!!
That’s MY phone ringing. And here I am admiring the vocals. Heh heh.

Anyways, I receive the call and all... Deal’s that’s the deal with being in another country, your calls are so rare that u stop associating a tune with your ringtone.

Call’s from some number in Bombay that I don’t recognize.

I had had a discussion regarding morality and the dress code of the chicks here with a conservative person earlier in the day. If you can call him lecturing and me waiting for the ordeal to get over a discussion… so odd day and all… half expecting a murder or a kidnapping or some such, keeping in with the trend of the day.

Me: Hello?

Lady’s voice: haan… hello? Haan __________(real name) mr. software engineer… how’re you

Me: (to myself) sheesh if only it was murder… or kidnapping at least (out loud) oh… hello auntie… what a pleasant surprise… how’re you? How did u get this number? (to reader) yeah the same aunt from underneath the sofa. (to myself again) phew another half a minute and we’ll be at the station, cant take this much longer, the people’re still giving me the looks, aunt’s oversweet bellow which can be heard in Indonesia if a tad louder.

Aunt: So how’s life? (with a wink) Found any girlfriend there yet? (I guessed the wink… I know her quite well)

Me: Wonderful. No.

Aunt: eh?

Me: 2 questions, 2 answers. (got off the train… major relief)

Aunt: u just don’t change.

Me: neither do u auntie, u look the same ever since I can remember. (to be quite honest, she did look quite old during her heyday)

Aunt: u sweet-talker u… so tell me… how’re the girls there… u must be having a rocking time there

Now if there’s one thing worse than characters forcing their conservative opinions about girls’ dressing senses on me, it’s other characters pretending to be in with the times or ahead of it… “rocking” sheesh.

Me: oh yeah… (really couldn’t think up a better answer)

Aunt: ok listen… if you get some free time from all those ladies there…

Me: (cutting in, in a very definitive tone) not possible auntie!!

Aunt: oh don’t flatter yourself, you can’t be THAT busy either if you know what I mean (another wink)

Me: no, not that, I can’t meet some girl who’s ended up in this country for whatever reason… no.

Aunt: oh you and your assumptions… I wanted you to visit my nephew, he’s in a neighboring town… once you get introduced, you guys can catch up for company or something… and he can help out you know, if you need anything… he’s been there for quite a few years now.

Me: oh thanks auntie, you’re such a dear… you realize I was just joking all this while. Thing is I’m real busy nowadays… client end and all… I’ll see what I can do… thnx.

Aunt: His name is ______ (his name) I’ll sms his address.

Me: oh _____ (his name)!! Name sounds aweful familiar… he’s the one who’s sister is…

Aunt: yeah heh heh… she’s now left her job and is going to join _________ (MNC’s name) heh heh she’s now on a holiday and is visiting her brother heh heh

Me: heh heh how long will she be here heh heh

Aunt: heh heh for a month heh heh

Me: heh heh ok heh heh

Aunt: heh heh her name is _______(her name) heh heh

Me: (gesturing to a girl I know here to keep quiet (don’t want aunts thinking in those lines now do we)) heh heh thing is like I told you I’m real busy nowadays… I’ll catch up with _______ (prospective brother in law’s name) sometime, but not soon…

Aunt: hey hurry up no… heh heh heh heh

Me: I’ll try auntie... I really will. Heh heh

I’ve never heard of __________ (prospective brother in law’s name) and his sister… but you got to play the game to escape from it.

Aunt: wow this call’s going to be real expensive…

Me: yeah auntie, better hang up quick… nice to hear a voice from back home and all…

Aunt: hey you better visit them ok… heh heh

Me: b’bye… yeah… (can’t giggle like a nut any longer)

By the way… the noose’s tightening around me nowadays… I can feel my grip over proceedings loosening ever so gradually. Got to hold on to whatever I can grasp…

Anybody out there with an escape route that’d really buy me some time…

-KD

The city and the winds of change

2007-05-28T06:11:00.001+04:00

Was just reminiscing on the life I’ve led. Well I finally found time to do that, as I said in my last post its been a frenzied atmosphere at work. It’s a lovely Saturday afternoon and there’ll be a lovely Saturday evening and same ways a lovely Sunday but yours truly is gonna be in office trying to get his Project out of the red. Same old story, the firefighting continues.

Coming back to the point , I was just thinking about the city I decided to make my home 3 yrs back. It’s a good city to be honest, my parents are happy and my better half happier. What about me? Well I’m ok with it. It’s a good city, its given me my bread and butter. So I can safely discount the morons that control the place and get along well. Guys like komodo , AHAK , GAG, Watson, The wise one come like a whiff of fresh air in a place that reeks of coercion. That reminds me , the coming week is gonna be AHAK’s last in the city, he’s moving back home.

Coming back to the city, the locals call themselves “Punekars” and for me that’s worse than an expletive. The main thing that ails the locals here is that they insist on living in their “Glorious” past. Glorious no doubt it was but Resistance to change isn’t an asset these days and localites here consider it as a positive attribute. If that’s nothing to go by, they fall short by miles as far as adapting is concerned. Warming up to people around you is not an attribute you’ll attribute to a “Punekar”. They’re an intelligent crowd no doubt about that (quite a few of them at least) but then according to the average “Punekar” there can not be anyone else other than them or for that matter they all say “There’s no world outside Pune”. It’s this frog in the well attitude that I disagree with.

With all due respect to the city and its heritage, there are quite a few places of natural , man made and historical importance and beauty alike where you can go and unwind. These are a few places that actually grow on you and you feel at peace with yourself. You don’t need an OSHO for that.

Was just talking to a colleague the other day regarding the BRT system implemented here on some road. For purisits the BRT is a bus service that runs point to point. That isn’t harmful right?. Trouble is it runs halfway thru the road creating bottlenecks for the already congested traffic and the ever irreverent motorists find their way onto the BRT lanes and create an unholy mess. The civic administration has really come up with a novel way to reduce the population as daily almost half a dozen people perish in some accident on those routes. Slow , but effective. Now the civic admin is considering screwing other routes with their BRighT idea. They had a news item on that in the paper the other day. Now here’s the difference. If this was Mumbai or any other city such a lousy idea would’ve irked people no end and they would’ve taken on the administration forcing them to withdraw such a looney idea. Now this being pune, they’ll let the administration carry it out and then start shouting. That’s the way of the people here.

The “Punekar” is of the opinion that the city should be closed to all coming from outside , another aspect of the coercive attitude I mentioned at the start. Once such person happened to come across me and mentioned in exactly the same words and this is the conversation that ensued.

Him : People coming from outside have screwed up the city. They should be stopped.
Me : Sez who? Indian laws never say anything of that sort.
Him : They should make a law which bars people from entering and settling in Pune.
Me : And what would that solve?
Him : at least we’ll save our culture.
Me : culture? Where? What’s that? Where do I see it? And how are you gonna save it?
Him : don’t talk like that , you say it coz you don’t belong here.
Me : I pay my taxes to this cities Municipal Corp. So I belong here as much as you do.
And moreover I think its time you changed. You better learn to adjust to other people. You wont be able to withstand the wave then you’ll be swept away.

The gist of that conversation was probably what I intended to say. No matter how glorious your past was or whatever , lets leave it and set aside petty issues. With the kinda global village we’re developing into , its time we learnt to accept change. Coz the wave that’s coming if we don’t learn to surf then we’ll be swept off into oblivion with nothing but the vestiges of a glorious past to savour.

-Antya

Fortnightly updates

2007-05-23T16:37:00.001+04:00

Am back again.. I am tired of saying it again so much so that saying it time and again would give the terminator a complex. A serious one at that. Been too busy and all that sort of crap. God bless Komodo who keeps thinshark going.

2 weeks back I was asked to change my profession. I turned firefighter coz they brought me in for firefighting. Techie to solutions designer to firefighter all in a days work. Do it or Do It they said. And I chose Do It. 2 weeks I’ve been oblivious to whats happening around me. But while I was at it here’s what I picked up.

While I was at it some holy cow or should I say bull chose to impersonate a dead saint of a warrior clan. As we have it in our country anything related to saints can result in violence and this time was no exception. Up north they burnt and killed, property and people respectively. The dude who was caught impersonating did all that needs to be done, i.e he apologized and retraced his apology a couple of days later. They even had a Punjab bandh yesterday but the issue hasn’t died down. Probably after a decade or so the people there seem to have a lot of free time on their hands. The only positive outcome of all this mayhem was that I learnt a new term “Dera Saccha Sauda” loosely translated to “Lair True Transaction”. Whatever that means.

While they were at it our blue eyed band of cherry chucking models beat mighty Bangladesh in their own country. And as it always happens, we always eulogize a butcher for killing his cow. This time was no exception. The only exception that seems to happen these days seems to be in code ever since they started code cleanup here.

Then one fine day when I had a bit more free time I happened to switch on the idiot box. The nasal crossbow is coming out with a movie “Aap Ka Surrroooorrrrr” with an equally pathetic punchline (ask GAG he knows best). He was judging a once brilliant now crappy music contest and ended up quarreling as they always do on reality shows these days. A news channel proclaimed that he was doing this to generate TRP for the show as he’s being paid 14crores to be a judge on that show. But honestly the guy can act. He doesn’t need to act like a moron. At that he’s a natural. But he can act like a serious demented potentially parkinsonized person which can give any S R or K a run for his money.

More recently yesterday the most comic thing. Dawoods sister was finally produced before court and she came up with a brilliant idea. She sent 2 veiled women running towards the court and when the media ran after them she with entered the court in a veil. Media realized albeit a bit later and they said “she sent 2 lookalikes to fool us”. Moral of the story “all veiled women are look-alikes”.

Maninder Singh (former Indian cherry chucker who got hit for sixes often and hit a six once and now is an umpire in Super Sixes) was found with cocaine ½ gm they say. Well finally he’s got his place in the sun.

Firefighting is almost over at my end now which is why I chose this time to write. The gory details will soon follow. Will shortly be back with more stuff.

Cheers
Antya

PS: And just a bit from memory “The Norman Chief was called ‘Timandahaf’”

Gems & Misc

2007-05-22T11:54:00.001+04:00

Got to say we guys have been remarkably lucky about certain things. One of them being hilarious sentences/dialogues that we come across in our work place(s) on a regular basis.
As you’d know by now, we guys were in the same team and all… and there were quite a few unbelievable sentences that’d come out of nowhere during discussions, ponderings etc. We call them gems, and generally used to relive them one those rare occasions when we used to end up drunk somewhere and looking at the stars (or the ceiling fan if the party was indoors). Oh and we used to have many such which didn’t involve us at all but were spoken in our vicinity and qualified anyways.

And this series is for that,

Watson: (to PM) but ma’am why’s the data on 23-Apr being treated differently as compared to say 15-Sep
PM: that’s because we have a different treatment for the future and the past records. The records of the current day are equivalent to future records…
Watson: but ma’am, at some time the future HAS to become the past right?

Something that happened just now (not involving me)

Teammate: (to local net admin dude) Hey man, why’s the network gone all slow?
Net admin dude: hmm I guess it’s because the network is taking time.

Toocleverbyhaf

2007-05-18T07:10:00.000+04:00

Well yeah I’m an asterix fan. Absolutely love the puns there… Have been reading the comics since not sure when, but I still love them nonetheless. Started off with liking the bashing up part which was fun (way back I tell you)… then found the variety amongst the gauls interesting and then it’s the sarcasm that had me.
Oh yeah, lets not forget the detail in every pic.

Anyways for those who don't know much about Asterix, Toocleverbyhaf is a Norman character. All Normans have names ending with ‘af’. There’s this part where chief Vitalstatistix finds it damn funny and describes it to a whole set of gauls (naming them in the sentence) each of whose names end with ‘ix’.
Actually, you know what… just check it out... no point in me describing it here.

And if you feel enlightened or just extremely happy about having come across a work of genius and feel like thanking me for that, you can do so by buying me a set available in any of those bookstores. I kinda miss the comix most of which were extorted from me by extremelypompus aunts or overlyjelus neighbors. Damn.

Spurius Brontosorus is a roman legionary btw heh heh.

Anyways, that’s completely besides the point here. And kindly adjust… there are certain things I love and cant stop raving about…

back to the topic,

Was having this conv with an old friend of mine. He belonged to the crowd in poona I mentioned in the prev post.

It was about the enemy. The enemy nowadays isn’t a single entity. It’s more like a cloud or a fog which for some reason is infectious.
It’s about the toocleverbyhaf characters in the real world. No they aren’t the enemy. Every time I see a bright young newcomer in the job scene, I try and protect that person from the rest who’d be out to get his/her head by default. It’s more of an instinctive thing. To try and blunt out the sharpness for a while… until people begin to feel comfy around him… no lemme rephrase that…
To try and blunt out the sharpness for a while… until people begin to feel ‘safe’ around him.

It very tragic, considering things should actually be the other way round. We ought to be presenting such people to the world instead of hiding them from it. These are the people that end up doing something. Not the unworthy, frightened clowns who’re so steeped in the ‘cover my ass’ attitude that they’d find the normal definition of a job quite idiotic.

Ok I somehow don’t feel like using expletives at the moment.

On turning around and looking at the way my career’s progressed (I know it’s an odd time for that, I’m just 25 and it’s a Friday morning), I guess I’ve been real lucky to have 2 men who shielded me in a way. (the conv was with one of them)
Anyways, if toocleverbyhaf is a problem, then what isn’t?

Reminds me of a weird incident involving antya.

Antya’s all furious one day when a news site was blocked. He checked with the ‘blocking agency’ of the company (they probably did have a broader job description, but then blocking sites was the only thing they seemed to do). Now when antya’s angry, he’s quite vocal about it and very eloquent I assure you.

And the reply he got was… “We block the site with the max product of user count – time - frequency”
He was stunned. What completely beat him was the fact that there’s always going to be some site or the other that tops the results of the formula and hence has to be blocked. Does that mean they’ll drop everything?

In a similar sense, if they manage to eradicate one toocleverbyhaf, another one would turn up. If another one doesn’t, then one of them automatically qualifies as the toocleverbyhaf to be dealt with next. So will this last like forever? Will they keep trying to get rid of anybody who’s smarter assuming he’s going to replace them? (putting it bluntly)

I’m really not sure about that anymore.

KD

p.s. this one's for my first team in particular and anybody who assiciates with what's written here in general.

And after all we’re only ordinary men

2007-04-30T11:44:00.000+04:00

Getting straight to the point, It’s the word maturity that’s destroying us.

Anybody comes up with an idea which frighten us and out we pop with phrases like, ‘get mature, grow up’ the unsaid intent being, ‘stay the defensive lump that every other defensive lump wants you to be’.

You all have to agree that we as a country need to change somewhere… and all of us also agree that the change’s got to take place in so many places that we’re not sure anymore.
We also agree that a major change in our attitudes is definitely required.
Yet when Greg Chappel comes along and tries enforcing change to stem the rot that’s set in (as deccan herald would’ve put it in the days of non idiotic sentimental journalism) we all complain.

It’s society that teaches us to get defensive, go with the flow and try to become worthless losers, like say a dad teaching his 5 year old son to like the merc (it’s classy to appreciate class you know). We’re scared of somebody who seems to have a plan, because it reminds us of our sacrifice.

Remember the time when you switched your ideas off for a more conservative approach and called that phase ‘growing up’? You sacrificed everything you stood for and what’s worse, you didn’t even know it. You joined this huge mass that’s hell bent on getting nowhere. You worked real hard to get comfortable in there, and now it’s a half jealousy half fear that forces us to try and hold back somebody who’s trying to get somewhere.

Get out of that hold.

If you already have, thanks… I associate with you…

If maturity is what society defines as, then I’d gladly accept being a kid. There are a few people I’ve known (more so in the circle in pune) who believed growing up included opening up to the world and going after what you’d dreamt of and trying to keep from getting your mind clouded with crap, I really appreciate the whole bunch of them for being the people they are and being so easy about it.

Call me egoistic, but I’m proud of the contempt I have towards society and wouldn’t go out of my way to keep the bunch of losers happy. I’m glad I’ve come across a few who think along those lines, to hell with the rest.

-KD

(p.s. our prev post wass our 50th, even we didn't realise that)

Us & Them

2007-04-24T15:18:00.001+04:00

Boy! We are all back again. Good to see Antya penning something after a long time. Trust me, though I am a part of Thinshark, I am a big fan of the way the other two guys in the group write. You guys should take a look at few of the comments these guys had posted on some annoying blogs and then you would know what the art of hitting-out is. And then there was this article by Antya about the irresponsible attitude of the Admin guys. And another one by Komodo (that got him into a bit of trouble actually) on one of the local events. Man, if you want to explore the definition of sarcasm, you should get hold of these write-ups. We can definitely put the former here, what say Antya?

Anyways, there seems to be a sudden change in my life. I was busy all these days and now I don’t seem to have any work at all. Guess it’s all a part of the IT industry. One refreshing change is that I can get to ride on roads here. Something which I had completely forgotten in the last two years or so. Well, my ride (sometimes drive) to the office is more or less become a way of reviving the past now. Not the best of the past though.

Well, people in Mumbai would be very well aware of the so called ‘Eunuch menace’. Yes, I am referring to the times when you halt your vehicle at the Andheri fly over and within a minute you are surrounded by ten of these guys. Well, looks like quite a good number has migrated to Bangalore.

I still remember the reactions of people when a eunuch approached them. Frankly, even I was one of those trying my best to avoid them, probably more because I was a kid then and their looks annoyed me. Well, that was past. The other day I had noticed one of the eunuchs talk to a truck driver and trust me, there is no difference. Alright, I do agree that they are not educated and they certainly lack the manners to talk, but then I am of the opinion that they definitely do not deserve the treatment they receive from the people who think they belong to a higher class. I have noticed on more than one occasion, the way they get along with the not-so-affluent class is just amazing and that’s when one is forced to think that if we had ever given them the respect that a normal person gets, we would not have had to face them everyday.

Frankly, what I am talking about can never happen in a place like India because everything is considered a taboo. I do agree that Mumbai is a little different from the rest of the country, probably more because of it’s nature to accept everyone the way s/he is, but there would always be that difference in the way one looks at a normal human and an ‘abnormal’ one. I am not sure if these people receive the same kind of treatment in the west too, but I am sure it would be a little better than the state in India.

I guess we never gave these characters a chance to improve. Mumbai has, and that’s the reason you find almost a quarter of the lot talking in English, leading quite sophisticated and fashionable lives. I know not many would agree to this, but then that is the truth. We have always been biased in our opinions. No wonder we are progressing so much, but still lagging behind somewhere. Mindset is what we need to change. Else, we shall spend the rest of our life cribbing for no reason.

-AHAK

People

2007-04-24T15:12:00.000+04:00

Hi People, Thinshark’s been pretty much silent of late, the reason being KD’s flown overseas. AHAK’s gone back home, he’ll be coming back but he’ll be leaving for good then. Both of them however had a pretty common reason for not being active. For once however I have a reason, a perfectly genuine reason for being inactive. Legend has it that I broke my right hand, how that happened is a mystery of sorts but yep I was in a cast for better part of Feb. and march and then in April I fell into league with AHAK and KD. I simply got busy, courtesy my one-month absence from the workplace. Luckily they decided to give thinshark a bit of voice and have come back into action.

Yep, Komodo was pretty much right in expressing my angst in his words. The last few days the media were in some sort of frenzy. My hands itched for want of writing on India’s dismal performance in the WC (not literal) (for purists it’s the World Cup). But then GAG did a pretty decent job covering it on the fiteklub. Me and GAG were constantly in touch during each and every match played, me at home and him in the land far east. But yeah I reached one conclusion. Match Fixing is NON EXISTENT in cricket. How else would you explain India’s elimination in the first round itself? If they wanted to make the cup a commercial success India had to be there upto the Semi’s at least. Isn’t it? So guys, it’s a clean game, go ahead and watch it.

The media at it again and the last few days have been full of Abhi Ash (the bearded prince and the plastic maiden). As GAG mentioned or someone did I guess they married a banyan and a peepal tree to remove their manglik doshas and things like that. The less said about the matter the better so I’ll leave it at that.

Thinshark is more about the things that happening around us but then excuse me if I express my personal angst out here. For the first time in the last so many years Antya’s been had. Betrayed is a better word. Plain simple breach of trust if I may put it. I’ve my own ways of dealing with things like this. These things don’t happen much to me but yeah I am a vindictive person when hurt; I’m not called the Antagonist for nothing. But over the years I’ve learnt to live with a lot of things. Call it spirituality or whatever but I can feel the anger inside me much more controlled. So my being busy was mostly (its an ongoing process still) me trying to come to terms with the feeling of being stabbed in the back. I still haven’t decided what to do next and trust me at the back of my mind I am feeling real lousy. I’ll figure it out somewhere down the line but yeah it hurts and it hurts real bad.

These were the few things happening out there and I know and hope that KD and AHAK would not mind me airing my personal angst on Thinshark but then this is something I had to say someplace. The next write-up, however will be definitely more thinsharkish and more cheerful than this one. And that’s a promise.

-Antya

Antya's angst

2007-04-19T08:36:00.000+04:00

Antya’s been shouting himself hoarse about this for a while now and that includes tea time discussions and all that… Thought I’d say my bit about it as well…

The media and their general lack of having anything worthwhile to say is one thing, but then, even if they did, would they have too many listeners?

For instance, I read this piece of news from homeland the other day…
Some clowns that form mobs that generally make lives hell for everybody, themselves included, were annoyed about Gere kissing Shetty…
This apparently after Shetty didn’t really look annoyed or anything worth making a deal of…

Reminded me of another incident about the mika – sawanth liplock… there, Sawanth did protest, looked annoyed straight away and so on… and the same set of clowns went about labeling her a slut and what not…

What is it that they want exactly?

Anyways… I now prefer checking out the local news here… I don’t understand a word spoken or written and hence do not associate myself with the thousands that are really annoyed with the goingons… probably.

-KD

2007-04-15T08:58:00.001+04:00

Finally, I am back to home. Trust me; even your home looks different when you stay away from it for almost two years. That’s probably because everything in life changes…your daily routine, your food. I guess I am so used to eating tasteless food that good food causes indigestion now.

It’s been almost a month since I moved to the office here. This place is weird. Firstly, it is situated in some corner of the city, a corner which most of the people haven’t heard of. It’s a 30 km ride to the office everyday. So when you finally reach this place, you feel like you have traveled to Tamil Nadu; consider the fact that I work in Bangalore. A few more facts… to get a cup of coffee, you need to go to the fourth floor. Btw, I am on the ground. People here need the AC temperatures to as low as possible. I have no clue where these people have come from; definitely not Chennai. They don’t feel the cold at all. The security guy checks your bag everyday before you leave. Wondering if he checks for my stuff missing from the bag because there’s absolutely nothing here that one can flick. This is especially for Antya and KD – there are chairs lying all over the place. None of them occupied. This is definitely a surprise for people who have moved in from the Pune office.

People here yell on the top of their voice. The concept of telephone is obsolete here. You need to call out for a guy sitting in the other corner of the floor; all you have to do is shout ‘oraaaeei’. KD would understand this lingo better. And yeah..the conference calls…there is nothing called confidential here. I can tell you when the project guys next to me are planning for a release and who is the guy who messed things up last evening. In fact anyone on this floor will be able to tell you this.

Wonder how cultures differ so much within the same country. I guess it’s got to do more with our language and upbringing. Ever wondered, how it would have been if there was only one language spoken throughout India. I personally feel life would have been much better. Think about this, there would be no north Indian-south Indian discrimination and hence there would be less fights. We would all follow the same traditions, so no confusions there. At least I would not have had to pay 100 bucks to fill the form for a driving license (the form was in Kannada).

-AHAK

This and that

2007-04-10T10:03:00.000+04:00

Hi you all...
long time and all that...
apoligies, the three of us were like crazy busy all these days.

Anyways, firstly, Antya did nothing in particular, AHAK moved to Bangalore permanent and I moved to KL for a short while and that’s how things stand as of now.

Things are quite different here tell you, for one, I landed and asked this dude in the airport about the train to Sentral*, and he tells me where to collect the tickets, the cost of one, the place to board, the time taken to reach there and a whole lot of other info including the average cost of milk tea and he gives me all this Tamil.

I was stunned to say the least… I mean how could anybody guess that I’m Indian and more so, how could anybody guess I’m tamilian… more so, considering I speak kannada and not tamil.
Pretty interesting.

On my second day here, a local dude in the office gives me a friendly pat on the back 2 minutes after being introduced to me and calls me a giant and is wondering how I grew so much in only 25 years and how huge I might be when I’m say 40… people here grow till they’re 40 and hence the thought…

Anyways, that’s for them to know and for me to find out…

And something more thinsharkish next time…

*they don’t have a script here and here’s where they’re real smart… they don’t bother finding substitutes in the local lingo for newish English words like Taxi, they just spell it in an easier way, so Taxi becomes Teksi and Central (which isn’t newish, but still fits) becomes Sentral.

-KD

Enough

2007-01-19T13:30:00.000+04:00

Today’s probably been the first rough day in a while now… Woke up with a cold (which for some reason had kept away all these months) and then was stupid enough to pick the Bangalore Times and glance the first page before heading to the comic section.

Abhiash… I really didn’t read the rest of the headline… I mean, seriously, “Abhiash” WTF!!! (for the purists, Abhiash is Abhishek-Aishwarya)

Can we stop aping every pathetic gimmick the west (the USA in particular) seems to come up with?

And then there’s the other Shetty chick. Don’t know much about her racism deal yet (haven’t managed to read the newspaper much in the recent past). Some contestants indulged in racist taunts or something and everybody seems to rush in with their opinions when completely unasked for.
What does the TV channel do? They keep the show going of course… This is an international controversy, and we’re going to have loads of people wanting to watch this.

Apart from these two not-so-attractive-anymore-if-ever-considered-attractive damsels being from roughly the same part of the world and sharing a common mother tongue and being ‘bunts’ (widely regarded as Shettys, but Bunts is the accurate term for it), there’s a common thread running here.

We are subject to racism and all that outside our land because we are not proud of ourselves.
Just compare us to the Latinos. People make fun of our accent, our color etc, they don’t do the same with the Latinos. We’re roughly of the same color, and our accent is as different from the Brit or the American accent as theirs is, yet we’re subject to racism a lot more than they are.

There are a few reasons for this,
They stay fit and generally look a lot more attractive than we do. While we get into comfort zones and tend to gradually go the couch potato way.
They don’t give a damn what people think of their accent, we are always looking over our respective shoulders to check if anybody’s poking fun.

Consider this hypothetical situation, two of us (me and this latino dude) walk into this place where we’re supposed to like say a few words about ourselves and what we represent or something like that…

He’d go something like, “I’m Jose Enrique (and a few other such names, it’s the combo that’s important, the individual words generally repeat across names)… I belong to this culture that plays football, parties like nobody else, contains in it these real cool pieces of art like JLo’s butt, Antonio Banderas’s guitar (which I’m not sure he plays), stylish martial arts trained terrorists who prefer chucking grenades about anyways, and then there’s Shakira, Enrique and so on…”

What would I say? “I’m (real name) I belong to the subcontinent, we’ve had this terrific culture before hoards of goons came over and stole all that’s of material value from us and left us with ruins to live in and some abstracts to talk about and now complain when we return favor by taking their jobs and living in their land, anyways, let’s not live in the past, here’s our present. We got stupendous talent in our country you know, we are probably the only folks in the galaxy that can copy both Brangelina and Macarena. And that’s not all; we copied the term Hollywood as well.”

And finally, this is something I’ve intended to say for a while now.
They laugh at our accent? What are we pissed off about? We laugh at each other’s accents. We seem to hate each other like crazy, why would anybody from anywhere hold us in high regard? We don’t hold ourselves in high regard even.

If we really can’t tolerate being racially victimized, then how do we explain our pride in regional biases? Racism is just a global form of regional bias. What happens at our end is just a snapshot of an inadvertently bigger picture. Rationalists should be coining a new term here “pettier than thou”

How many people from Calcutta protested over Kumble or Laxman being dropped? (or even felt bad about it)

We don’t deserve to be a country. In fact we’re a lot of this and that (read factions/tribes) who don’t gel together. Can’t blame a whole lot of others for the things that we do at home.

Drifted quite a bit I guess… The intended point being, One Shetty chick basking in her apparent glory, inadvertently gave the reason why the other one’s also making the headlines. The channel in question however is laughing all the way to the bank.
The hot debates going on will soon mellow down and all will be forgotten. Lots of people will have gotten their share of sunlight till then and the issues will be put on hold till .. lets say next time.

Talk about irony.

-KD
(with seasoning by Antya)

Dhon With the wind

2007-01-12T14:03:00.001+04:00

“Dhoni enjoys a special status. He is known internationally. He faces security threat and he should not be treated like a common man,” Chief Minister Madhu Koda, said. This is reason simple enough for the transfer of Traffic sub-inspector Saifuddin, who has been transferred to Bahu Bazar from Albter Ekka police station. Sources may say that this was a routine transfer, as routine as Dhoni or Sehwag scoring some runs.
All said and done incidents like these make you think about what’s happening? Is the use of clout (political or apolitical) the way of life? I was reading Kiran Bedi’s biography just last night and couldn’t help wondering the trials and tribulations that honest (idealistic) people have to face just to do their jobs. Kiran Bedi from what I read was almost hounded by the higher ups coz she stepped on their toes.

I can cite a million such cases when real criminals are getting away scot free , however space and time constraints force me to cite a glaring few

1)Laloo Prasad Yadav, the king of the lot who enjoys supercelibrity status nowadays due to the turnaround that the employees of the Indian railways did for him. He’s now basking in the glory of all that he’s not done whilst everybody concerned including the fifth estate seems to have forgotten that he’s still got cases pending against his name
2)Ex PMs Deve Gowda and PV Narasimha Rao to name a few who got bag loads of money and are still outta prison and leading a good life and having their share of public naps. (except for PVN of course… he isn’t leading much of a life, let alone it being good, but you get the gist)
3)Narendra Modi still enjoying celebrity status in the state of Gujarat, inspite of having the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people on his hands
4)The 11 models who were actually selected to play ball but didn’t have the balls to face a few rising deliveries.
5)The fifth estate , for demeaning the word news and pulling it down to an all time low.
6)Ekta Kapoor for screwing the nocturnal habits of millions of individuals.
7)Biti Mohanty the son and his copper dad who’re still outta prison.

No, I am not trying to be pessimistic. With incidents like Santosh Sharma getting convicted and Navjyot Siddhu getting to serve his time albeit after a decade , theres still hope on the horizon.

-Antya

The subtle differences

2006-12-18T17:54:00.000+04:00

A possible series again… Deal’s all of us have lived in all sorts of places at different points of time in our respective lives, so much so that it’s quite a surprise that the three of us were together at the same place for so long a time. Well we aren’t now and that I guess kinda restores the balance a bit. Anyways, living in different places helps you notice those small differences and all that and that’s what this possible series is about…

KD’s Entries:

Pune-Bangalore:
1) When somebody in Bangalore tells you that BSNL CellOne is annoying, he could actually be talking about a person called BSNL Selvan.
2) Asking for directions in Hindi in certain parts of Bangalore would lead to replies like; “siddhe jako right leneka” and when you meet the same dude about 5 mins hence courtesy the unusually curved right turn and not so fast moving traffic, you’d get something like “kaa baa? Maine bola na so? Lephtich marne ka… ab tu reverse maar”

Bangalore-Pune:
1) When you explain very patiently to someone that there exists a state called Karnataka and that Bangalore is in it and also that Bangalore isn’t the capital of Chennai, that person could be stunned.
2) That person (point 1) could also get the feeling that you’ve got all your facts wrong and might take it upon himself/herself to educate you.

Antya’s Entries:
Delhi
1) When somebody gets hit by a speeding car (that happens once every 2 hrs) people generally speed off leaving the poor guy writhing in pain.
2) Insist on calling it “Dilwaalon ki Dilli” (wonder where the heart is).

Indore
1) A city where if you stretch your hand from your compound wall you’re sure to touch the other persons front door.
2) Praise the legacy of the city to all and badger it up behind closed doors.

Nashik
1) Backbiting is the favorite pastime of the people.
2) College is a place where you enroll to escape joining your family business for the time being.
3) Any place except pune and Mumbai does not exist on the map of the world.

Ratnagiri
1) You are either a farmer or a retailer or work in the collectors office. If you are not any of this you drive an auto rickshaw.
2) Revenue dept in the collectors office is to be pronounced “Revni”.
3) The jetty is the only place to hang out.

Ahmedabad
1) When you hear somebody talking about a “hole” be rest assured that he’s talking about his hall (the frontal part/room of your place of residence).
2) If you’re a bachelor and living alone in ahmedabad then the time beyond 10 is a time not to go to discotheques or anything but to infest some eating joint and gorge yourself.
3) One of the few cities in India to have 24*7 cyber cafes.
4) The phonetic sound “h” does not exist. It HAS to be replaced by “s” for eg. “Shaishav” is to be pronounced as “Saisav”. Thus tongue twisters like “See sells sea sells on the sea sore” don’t exist.(no points for guessing the original).
5) You happen to know more about the local streets in belgium and Kenya than any other place in india.
6) Every guy is a “bhai” and every woman/girl is a “ben”
7) Walk into any shop and expect to be treated like a king.
8) You’ll never starve in this city.

Pune
1) Courtesy is not a part of the pune psyche, and the local people are proud of their “frog in a well” attitude
2) The only people who are supposed to feel hungry beyond midnight are the ones living near the railway station.
3) Ask for directions and you are sure to end up in the wrong place.
4) Ahmedabad doesn’t exist as far as the local populace is concerned, for the people here anybody coming from Gujarat necessarily comes from Baroda.
5) Shopkeepers or retailers do you a favor by keeping their shops open.
6) Everyone here from businessmen to beggars alike, love their afternoon nap.
7) Don’t be frightened if somebody ever asked you what’s Noida or if the north east means some part of china.
8) Taking pride in one’s culture is a good thing but people here insist on living in the past.
9) If Jumping signals, cutting and changing lanes were an Olympic event, puneites would’ve won gold hands down.

Mumbai
1) Your bill is brought to you even before you’ve finished your cuppa chai coz even the waiter knows you’re time bound.
2) Talk about resilience and bouncing back every time the infrastructure crumbles.

AHAK’s entries:

Hyderabad:
1) You drive here, you can drive anywhere in the world.
2) There exists only one traffic rule – Drive on the left; and sadly no one follows that either.
3) Hyderabadis firmly believe that one should use the brake only when s/he reaches the destination.
4) You ask for directions and you get replies like “Seedha chale jao”. And you ask “seedha kahan?” considering the fact that there doesn’t exist any seedha, you get replies like “ek kaam karo…25 number bus ke peeche chale jao”. Now where the hell do we go searching for the bus?
5) Best place on earth to eat.
6) Over-friendly people.
7) You get to here Hindi which is out of this world. For e.g. “Kya bhi nakko” which supposedly means “I don’t want anything”.

Mumbai:
1) Amazing people. Real fashionable.
2) Consider every city other than Mumbai a village.
3) Any south-indian is a madrasi for the people of Mumbai.
4) People feel Hindi is what they speak. Hindi for “I shall pick him up from the airport” would be “Uthata hai na main usko airport se”.
5) Only place where ladies cut vegetables in the train while coming back from work.
6) Only place where timings of lectures are 11:23 am – 12:08 am.
7) Only place where you can see multi-storeyed slums. And doctors, lawyers living there.
8) Taxi drivers consider their Premier Padmini to be Ferraris.

Bangalore:
1) The funniest place on earth.
2) You get to watch people fight on the roads and no one knows what the reason is. Not even the people involved in the fight.
3) There doesn’t exist an intermediate variety of people here. Either they are highly cosmopolitan or they are highly rural.
4) Get to hear the craziest names of places. For e.g. Chikkabommasandra. Don’t try pronouncing that unless you are a bangalorean.
5) One place where you have the boys’ surrounded by the best girls’ schools.
6) Suprisingly, still a very clean and green city.

Pune:
1) Always compared to Bangalore and that’s criminal.
2) Waiters serve you as if you are the waiter and he is paying for you.
3) All restaurants have the owner’s daughter’s name. For e.g. Sumitra, Pavitra, Vaishali, Roopali and the list goes on.
4) There are no roads in this city.

Talk about originality

2006-12-09T19:23:00.000+04:00

This is one of our less documented sides. All of us (all of us sounds much more powerful than the 3 of us right?) believe that women in our nation still do not get the right of equality that they thoroughly deserve. We in fact strongly mean this. We as a nation have a very very long way to go before women see anything close to equality in our country and we ought to be ashamed of this fact.

We can state examples to drive our point, but then everybody knows it (the inequality) exists, so why bother. If required, each of us can individually point out at least 3 incidents where inequality has been displayed in even the IT scenario, but then again, why bother.

This has nothing to do with the government or the rules or the organizations or firms or whatever, the rules seem fair when seen from a distance, yeah you’ll can point out flaws and all, but honestly, the rules are quite fair in the broader perspective, don’t you think?

It’s the attitudes of the people that inhabit this country that needs an overhaul. I mean women are instinctively given secondary treatment in the tiniest of things, not to forget huge differences in other things.

For instance, the ‘eligible bachelor’ article was all fun and all from my point of view, but then the girl could’ve had it bad. In fact most girls that age have it real bad.

Anyways, these are all things that everybody knows about, so nevermind them…

Here’s something not many will have noticed, so here goes.

Names are a big deal right? I mean most people really give importance to their names.
How many female names can you think of right now that do not end with either and ‘a’ or an ‘i’, or to look at it in the perspective of the Indian languages, how many names aren’t pronounced ‘ah’ of ‘e’ at the end? (so that includes ‘y’ and in some cases ‘e’)

And genuine Indian names plz, not Marilyn or something.

I can’t think of too many.

-Komodo Dragon

Now that KD has brought the attitude in picture, thought it would be appropriate to add a few lines on the same.

Well, to start with, we Indians are a very different lot. I don’t know why, but we get some kinda pleasure in doing wrong things and the worst is that we are genuinely proud of it. For instance, stopping when the signal turns red is a crime in India. And if one ‘abnormal’ person decides to do so, he is looked at like an alien. Why just traffic rules. Let’s talk about the topic in hand. Women have always been taken for granted in India. And we carry this sick Indian mentality which does not allow us to think beyond.

I don’t understand what we are proud of. Are we proud of the fact that we feel women are weak and dependent? Now if we stress our minds a little, we will realize that women have also played a major role in creating such a mindset. How many women in India believe that there is more to their life than just the house hold chores and bringing up kids? How many of them are practical and not emotional? How many women actually want to change? The count would be meager.

The other day a friend was upset because one of her cousins was being troubled by her in-laws and goes on to explain me how things don’t work in India and how you got to adjust with whatever you are going through. Common guys, enough of finding excuses to cover our short-comings. Try to find one excuse and you get thousands.

-- AHAK

Holy Apathy

2006-11-22T14:03:00.000+04:00

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

2006-11-21T14:58:00.000+04:00

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

2006-11-15T12:47:00.000+04:00

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 !!!

2006-11-09T13:32:00.000+04:00

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

Of Actions and Reactions

2006-10-24T11:09:00.000+04:00

Wishing a Happy Diwali to all our readers. This is what we say every year, regardless of whether or not We or the Other Person is happy or not. Well honestly we humans as a race are more often than not conditioned to respond in a particular pattern.
Most of the people have a fixed set of responses to a fixed set of situations or circumstances. Are humans such a highly inefficiently programmed species?

Well to begin with, let me state why I brought this up. I for one have always been labeled as “Predictably Unpredictable”. Komodo and AHAK would definitely vouch for that. To a lesser extent Komodo and AHAK would also fall in that category. But then I have always prided myself on this ability. This is something that constantly keeps me surprised as well as the people around me on tenterhooks (much to their chargin). My better half initially would get frustrated but now after almost an year she’s sufficiently experienced in dealing with me and may soon come up with a book “Managing an Antagonist” which in turn may turn out to be a best seller if people do eventually make up their mind to pick it up and read it but then that’s another part of the story and we’ll deal with it when it comes out.

This Diwali right on Diwali day a maternal uncle of mine expired and so for us it was a rather sad and gloomy diwali. This would be more often the standard line.
Check this out. This Diwali right on Diwali day (at night post 8:30 after cracker time and all that) a maternal uncle of mine did expire but then that was it. No gloom for the departed soul. In a way he escaped suffering that he was subjected to by an alien force (more often called god) for the last 2-3 months. Its only the happy memories that count so it wasn’t a least bit gloomy diwali . Definitely a bit subdued and somber but definitely not gloomy. In situations like these the normal reaction of people coming in is “Bura hua”.. shed a few tears and make life miserable for those in the household and then go back home and chill out having made sure they’ve screwed someones happiness. I guess only 1% of those people visiting the family of someone who has died come with real grief. For the rest is just programmed as in you come to a place someone has died, and add to the gloom and then scoot off.

A few years back I was at a relatives place and a kid I knew who’d gotten real bad marks in 12th came looking for sympathy. Now again when I got bad marks in my 12th I never went looking about for sympathy but I got loads of it and had any tom dick and harry giving me sympathy I didn’t need. I guess that’s why I learnt surfing probably to get over sympathy waves. That apart, flashback to the time when this kid came to me with a look that deserved an oscar for the most tragic role. I asked him like what happened and he told me. And that’s it. All he got from me was “Oh that… chuck it”.
Few minutes later I realized that he was staring at me with a plea “gimme my quota of sympathy” which I never did. But then even that time I was wondering “whats the big deal about all this programmed reactions??”

Life has a habit of screwing around with me when I least expect it probably that’s why I’ve taught myself to be the way I am. Komodo’s best trait comes very handy to me here.. “If you cannot convince.. then confuse”. I guess that’s what I do.. (the erstwhile team had a term for this behaviour “Arbit” and I was supposedly a master of “Arbit”) when life wants and expects you to lie low.. refuse to lie low… that confuses the eternal confuser.. maybe that’s my way of looking at it.

A hilarious incident comes to mind when I mention this. Me and komodo were once coming out of office and one dude coming from a floor above as asks me as soon as I enter the lift “is the server gonna be up today” I simply answered “ nah not today” . I didn’t even know what he was talking about but this was one spontaneous reaction that came out and I guess it didn’t harm anyone as well.

As a kid I was told by my parents not to talk to strangers coz strangers had this way of getting to know about you and your family and then kidnap you. So while I was in class 8 once I was traveling in a state transport bus from the city of “Bapu” to the city of “Bapus” (take a guess). And then one dude got pretty friendly with me and my sis. My sister , being the obedient conformist that she is didn’t talk but then I got chatty with him and in the end the dude happily got down at his station having spent the last hour and half having talked to “gautam kakkar” from delhi going to the city of “Bapus” to participate in the junior national chess competition.

Life is really so much more fun when you don’t know what gonna hit the other person Next.

Cheers and Happy Diwali from Antya , Komodo and AHAK

The Antagonist

The 'Brangelina' Formula

2006-10-17T15:25:00.000+04:00

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie aka Brangelina. The media has this way of making up names. Then why only those two.

If we apply this as a rule i.e almost half (or more) the alphabets of the guy’s name and the girls full first name lets check out how a few celebrity couple’s names would’ve looked like.

Brangelina – “Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie”
We all know about them so for the time being we’ll leave them alone. We’ll surely give you more on that sometime later.

Braniffer – “Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (ex wife)”
For all we know if the 2 had stayed together for sometime more then their new pet dog would’ve been called that.

Bremi – “Bruce Willis and Demi Moore (ex wife)”
My favorite couple till date who stayed together for a substantial amount of time. So let’s leave them alone.

Ashemi – “Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore”
Reminds me of our very own serial kisser. The kutcher dude’s no less anyways though a shade better.

Tomicole –“Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (ex wife).
A poem we recited as a kid. Ol King Cole.

TomKat – “Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes”
A caricature as the name suggests that’s what poor tom’s turned into since he started seeing his current wife.

Bilary – “Bill and Hillary Clinton”
The ‘S’ stands missing else the combination would’ve been a bit more useful (bisleri).

That’s a few of our overseas celebrities now if this rule was to apply to Indian celebrities here’s what it would look like

Shauri – “Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan”
Remember a controversial paki missile???

Sharan – “Shah Rukh Khan and _________”
Our readers are intelligent enough to make out this one.

Salkat – “Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif”
Change the S to an H for more effect.

Amran – “Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao”
No comments, we don’t comment on apes wearing watches and giraffes with spectacles

Other examples.

Marmila – “Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore”

Sarita/Samrita – “Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh”

Shareena –“Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor”

Ajol – “Ajay Devgan and Kajol”

Aaja/Aaya – “Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan”

Josha – “John Abraham and Bipasha Basu”

Dhema – “Dharmendra and Hema Malini”

Viksha / Sharam – “Vikram Bhatt and Amisha Patel”

And finally the Unholy Trinity

Visaish : “Vivek , salman and Aishwarya”

You guyz are definitely welcome to pitch in with your own.

-- Antagonist

Into The Void

2006-09-28T16:55:00.000+04:00

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?

2006-09-20T15:39:00.000+04:00

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?

2006-09-14T15:00:00.000+04:00

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…?

2006-09-11T13:52:00.000+04:00

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

2006-09-11T13:38:00.000+04:00

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

2006-09-11T13:02:00.000+04:00

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

2006-09-04T16:05:00.000+04:00

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 !!!

2006-09-04T15:30:00.000+04:00

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

Untitled

2006-08-31T17:19:00.000+04:00

All you ever own
Gets to own you in return
Emotions enslave

- Komodo Dragon

Customer Care and Territorial Pissings

2006-08-30T16:10:00.000+04:00

I had this cell, which is of a make that’s made by this company that’s famous for making sturdy, durable, brick-like cells except that they sort of let that reputation go once they shifted to color-monitor mode. Anyways my cell was one of those color monitored dainty things that got all ill in case of a rain.

Heck, this is leading nowhere, the cell was a Nokia 3230 and the only point driven so far being, the cell WAS and not IS.

We guys went on a trip to Bhimashanker, which is this hill amongst the clouds where it generally rains and we went there in the rainy season. Cell got wet and hasn’t started up ever since.

Went to the local Nokia dealer as the main one in the city was like an anthill with all customers all over the place. The local dude was one of those who deserve a paragraph.

Local Dude:
He was real unfriendly, and one of those characters you meet who seems to hate everybody who’s from out of town. Bloody sadist. Anyways, he takes my cell, chucks it into one of the drawers in his tables and starts conversing with the next client, I had to bloody interrupt him to get my form filled and had to do most of it myself. Add to that, he chew pan and makes it a point to tell everybody that he handles a hundred cases a day and is hence a big guy.

Anyways, my entire transaction with that lousy peasant was over 4 phases and a showdown.

The first time, I called 3 days after giving them my cell (he’s promised to get it done or call me in 2 days’ time) and he tells me that it might cost me a tad more than the 450 bucks estimate they had initially churned up. The tad was about a grand, so a total of about 1400-1500 (they’re not exactly good in arithmetic). The best part was, they figured out that it might cost me more than expected and hence did nothing about it. Anyways, I tell them to PLEASE inform me the next time anything turns up and also that cash isn’t an issue, as I need my cell desperately and as soon as possible.

The second phase was 3 days after that and this time they’d figured out that they might not be able to repair it in that small joint of theirs and might have to send it to the main joint in town. Now they didn’t know whether to send it over or probably just try repairing it in house. So they decided to go to the third alternative, which was to sleep over the problem and hope it auto-fixes.
I told them to bloody send it and again that cash isn’t an issue and for God’s sake, PLEASE PLEASE let me know in case on ANY development. And they told me that they’ll try some crap out and if not possible, will send it to the main joint, and will let me know in any case in 2 days’ time.

Note: All this happened whilst I didn’t have a house and was riding all around town in those rains.

Third phase. The only time they weren’t absolute morons. I called them and they told me that they’d sent the piece over and also were willing to lend me a stand-by piece if I took the trouble of coming over. Well, in his lingo, it was more like “get here and take it, now that you ask for it you son of a @#@#$ outsider”.
They told me that it should be done in 15 days’ time for sure. Considering cash isn’t an issue and it’s going to the main joint where they can replace every part of the piece if they feel like it.

Well I needed a cell like crazy and had to agree to whatever they offered and ended up with a real pathetic old brick. What’s worse the 3 button didn’t work and 9 and 0 were a little hard to use.

Can you imagine 3 not working!!! That button has ‘E’ in it and ‘E’ in the most commonly used alphabet in English. That was horrible I tell you.

Fourth phase. I call them 20 days later and he tells me with a smirk that the main office can’t repair the rotten thing and that I can return that jalopy they provided me with in exchange for my fantastic cell with camera, Bluetooth, player etc etc except that the fantastic piece doesn’t work.
Yeah I didn’t get the humor there and was damn near boiling point to really acknowledge jokes from the friggin peasant, especially with the joke being on me.

There’s me without a house to stay in, with the bloody 16 hrs a day work schedules and having to deal with all this. It’s bloody sacrilege.

The showdown. I pull Viru paaji (who’s damn good at handling such bloodsuckers and is also from around here and speaks the local lingo) along and head straight to the joint all fuming and all.

Open the conversation with “I’m the guy who questioned your morals, lineage and basic manners on the phone a short while ago, now you wanted to talk to face to face (he pronounced it pphase and I did it too, just to get him annoyed), well, here I am, in your face and way taller”

Yeah everything (except the lineage part) is true and I had had a nice cozy chat with him on the phone before going there.

He tried being cool and all and asked us to sit down, which was not required as we were already seated.
He asked us for the job sheet (crappy jargon for a bloody piece of paper with nothing relevant printed on it), now like I said, Viru is damn good at this stuff. He waves it at the moron from a distance and doesn’t let him touch it.

This helped our cause in 3 ways.
1) He couldn’t tear the sheet to pieces or anything
2) It reminded me of the times I used to wave a biscuit at my dog and make it shake its head. Got me to cool down a bit.
3) The dealer got to know that we meant business this time.

Viru starts off in the local lingo to show that we really really meant business. I don’t know most of what they said, but the gist was Viru telling him that the treatment meted out on me wasn’t fair, and him telling that he couldn’t do anything about it, and Viru telling him that he should’ve at least called and let me know and him telling “It’s happened in the past, it’s alright, forget it”

This is where I entered the conv.

I mean how can HE forgive ME for him not having called me up… Also he’d given me this past line quite a few times already.

I told him that.

He goes,
“What can we do now sir?”
Me: “What can you do? Well you could give me my cell back and I leave and return this brick you’ve given me when I get my cell repaired or when I feel like it”
He: “No that’s not possible, you have to return the cell”
Me: “No to your no, I’m going to keep this as I need a cell even though it’s pathetic”

What follows actually happened. No kiddin’

He: “Hello, I gave you the stand-by out of courtesy”
Me: “Courtesy? You? Explain…”

He actually went on to explain… whadda moron

He: “I didn’t need to give you the cell, but I felt I should help you, so…informally…”
Me: “In which case, why did you informally write the battery number, model number and that other identification number on the job sheet” (couldn’t remember the abbreviation then, still can’t).
He: “That’s for my safety, I could use the entry made…” (attempted threat)
I waved my hand around like a teacher does when drawing attention to himself
Me: “Let’s think logically, how can you use something that YOU have written in a sheet that I am holding against me?”
He: “I can use it” (utterly confused)
Me: “No, you didn’t get my question right… I asked you HOW can you use it, not if you can use it or not”
He: “eh? I can use it…” (stunned as well)

The crowd was having a blast out there. This was free entertainment.

Me: “How How… that’s the keyword, How can you use it?”
He: “aaah?? Gargle gargle glug gik bark Nick Carter” (and other such garbage)
Me: (I swear I said this, Viru was there trying real hard not to laugh) “Here, read my lips (pointed at my mouth) HOW HOOOW, how can you?”
He: “gargle gargle why?”
Me: “I’m getting tired of this, can you or can’t you answer this? How…”
He: (finally regained some semblance of sanity) “wh… wh… why?”
Me: “Nevermind that, why didn’t you even call me?”
He: “phew… I have a 100 customers everyday, I’m a big shot” (he was real relieved)
Me: “So?” (I was big time tempted to tell him that my client serves a big part of a country and hence I do so in a way)
He: “Sir, that’s in the past… Forget it”
Me: “Yeah, quit talking about fogetting the past, else I’ll be a big part of your future and you won’t like it”
He went about his usual “I don’t know what to say now, so let me imitate a fish” mode.

Viru who’d been having a healthy laugh all this while pops in and asks him if the joint belongs to a Mr. ________ (he had apparently seen the name on the board as he entered, he’s brilliant)

He goes, “Yeah he’s my partner” (he was close to shivering)
Me: “Fine… thanks guess I got to make my calls now”

Anyways, I’ve spoken to Mr. ________ (a very polite man… let’s be fair) since then and have gathered that he’s the single owner of the franchise and has no partners (that’s how he puts it). He’s told me he’s going to go to the main joint personally and find out what went wrong and all that jazz.
He’s going to return my cell and I’ve got myself a new one in the meanwhile.

I might be sending parts of this post with other details to the Nokia guys as well to help them keep tabs on their dealers

I’m going to send the old one home and get it checked by folks who wouldn’t have problems with the owner being where I am from. Yeah they would have a problem with people from other towns there as well.

We’re in a real pathetic country with these slimy louts getting cheap sadistic thrills out of irritating outsiders. What patriotism if we can’t stand people from our own country? It’s the same people who buy flags, paint themselves etc on Independence Day? How many of them even remember it as of today (same month, we’re still in August).

I’m proud I do, albeit in a cheap, defensive, complaining, antagonized sort of a way. I do remember Independence Day.

It’s a damn long post, I agree, but I had to lay the facts down before you all as they were.

- Komodo Dragon

Just Pondering...

2006-08-28T15:24:00.000+04:00

A few things about astronomy actually. I’d found the subject sort of interesting in school, but then being the stereotype Bangalore kid, I decided that Computer Science was the most interesting thing I’ve ever come across. I suddenly (when about 17) felt she’s like this absolutely interesting subject and that I’m willing to spend the rest of my life in her arms and all that poetic stuff (Pardon my language, I’ve been reading ‘The catcher in the rye’ and listening the RHCP all this while (oh what phenomenal bass guitaring)). Anyways, here I am, all in love with comp-sci and all that. Wow the arranged marriage deal suddenly doesn’t sound quite so alarming (and no, I’ve already formally met a couple of other chicks and am so completely over that tall chick and that funny aunt). Where was I, oh yeah, comp-sci, deal’s I got lucky in that I was decent in algebra and all (heh heh I love that book… The catcher in the rye).

Anyways, back to astronomy, we got to agree we’re not advanced in our study yet. It’s the brilliant scientists that are getting us places, not some mind-boggling instrument or something. Not sure about the moon deal and am fairly convinced that we haven’t gone too far into space as such. So, there is a possibility that there’s another planet that revolves around the sun in the same orbit, direction and in the same speed as Earth. The deal with this planet being it’s diametrically opposite the earth along the orbit. Try picturising this, two planets in the same orbit, opposite each other. Something like one of those atom diagrams we had to study in school, 2 electrons around the nucleus and on the same orbit. Now in this case, we couldn’t see the other planet because the sun’s in the way. No telescope can look past that explosion I assure you. If we’d have to see this planet, we’d have to travel quite a distance in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth virtual line. Just making it to the moon is no good; the sun is way too big to be seen around by just going to the moon. We have to go real far. And all this might just lead to us not finding anything anyways, so it’s a huge investment that’s most probably not going to payoff.

Now this planet might have some intelligent characters on it cause none of them have tried to contact us (absolute cheap in that this line was kinda borrowed from one of those Calvin strips). Or they might have. Contacted us I mean. They might have figured out that Americans are the morons the rest of the planet is obsessed on listening to and aping. So they went there in disguise (cheap antennae and all) and went about walking around some drunk farmers. They must’ve even taken a few of them farmers to their crafts and stuck some wires up all sorts of odd places in their (farmers’) anatomy that can’t be described here. Now these farmers go about shouting “abduction, alien-experimentation, Hritik Roshan…” and other such stuff.

Man did the aliens have a laugh checking our news out the next day!!!

The wiring was for the heck of it. Like they really want to know what we think. Did you ever bother finding out what a rabbit thinks? And also, we as a species are fairly ugly, let’s face it. They’s rather study some charming ostritch than study us.
Even we don’t study ourselves. We study rats, pigs, Saurav Ganguly etc.

The dudes in the other planet (let’s call it Earth I (our planet being Earth II)) are definitely more advanced than us. We are still bloody stuck trying to push the Earth backwards in order to move forward. With all due respect to Sir Isaac Newton (thank you for everything sir), we waste a lot of energy in all that push backward to get forward confusion. Haven’t you noticed most of the real quick running animals spend most of the running time in the air (between leaps), and even we (humans) when we try to sprint real fast, spend relatively more time in the air.
The only time we tried pushing forward in order to get forward was when we used the sail ships and even then we had to use the wind to do the pushing and some odd 45deg angles and Bernoulli’s theorem to move against the wind, real shoddy.
Also they ought to be more advanced than us because we have Deve Gowda and they don’t. Nevermind God and all that, but it’d be really disastrous to have 2 Deve Gowdas in the same galaxy and somebody with morals would make sure that didn’t happen.

Anyways, if there’s a check as to who’s more advanced, Earth II comes a clear runner up. Time we did something about it rather than pride ourselves in being the most intelligent species around and go about burning holes in the Ozone to prove it to ourselves. We were better off in the caves, except for Music of course.

Unrelated: Read in this book somewhere that RHCP were initially the “Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem” before they decided RHCP was better. They’re a trippy band nonetheless.

- Komodo Dragon

Lots of Time, Nothing to Do, Cash in hand

2006-08-28T09:01:00.000+04:00

Blissful state to be in? yeah probably, but then you know how it’s with everything, you got some you want more, also the usual old man’s comment on the rising prices et al. In short, I want to make some extra moolah using whatever it is that I already have. I’ve thought out a few ways as well:

1) Become the Pune mayor, threaten to quit if the roads don’t improve in 4 days time. Charge 100 per interview during those 4 days and 25K per interview after that.
2) Make Ganguly/Himesh/Salman the next Indian drag-flick (that’s a hockey term, if in case you got ideas) specialist and shoot him in the butt and claim it was an accident. (this won’t give you moolah, but should be worth a try anyways)
3) Tell the newspapers that you saw Amitabh Bachchan in a pink suit.
4) Place a bet with a friend, collect 10 bucks from friend every time the vegetable vendor in the market place scratches himself, promise to pay a 100 bucks if he (vendor) doesn’t scratch himself for a whole half hour.
5) Place the same bet with many friends.
6) Open a ‘Hygiene Oriented’ vegetable stall in the same market place.
7) Get Karan Johar to man the vegetable stall.
8) Tell the press that you’re happy to do art movies.
9) (a little difficult) Collect all the water being sprayed in Delhi and sell it in Gujarat at exorbitant rates.
10) Organize a party, invite Amrita Arora.
11) Get hold of a girl you know who’s willing to flash a smile for no relevant reason. Go on a ride to the PM’s residence.
12) Call yourself a Pakistani and enter any Indian reality show.
13) Hire a few thugs and beat the crap out of the real estate agents all over town. Now start your own agency and charge the same rate.
14) This one’s a bit of social service too: Kill himesh, chuck him into a dry well and call the press. Tell them that he’s alive and you’re the first one to report it.
15) Tell the newspapers that you’re the new man in Karan Johar’s life and the romance flourished in the vegetable stall.
16) Shout “BOMB BOMB” in a Bombay local and get someone else to film the people charging out. Speak a few words about the spirit on Mumbai and send the video to the news channel that’s willing to pay the highest.
17) Killer: Get a shop anywhere in Pune, keep it open between 1300 hrs and 1600 hrs and also between 1930 hrs and 2015 hrs everyday.
18) Killer continued: Install secret cameras in the shop, and rent it out to the “makers” of MMS videos in the remaining hours.
19) Open a boutique that sells garments in all shades of pink (all the way to lavender). No other colors need be sold.
20) Go to a Pub, invite all the Floyd fans to a contest, charge everyone of them 10 bucks to take a peak at the question. Pay them a hundred if they get it right. Ask them something like What’s the next line after “Flash the red is wots...uh the deal”.
21) Wait a few months, pay some chemical freak give you some odd report, accuse the cola giants of selling pesticides, contraceptives etc in their bottles without paying the relevant taxes. Reopen the issue.
22) Tell a few new friends to keep the fact that the chief minister of J&K is your cousin a secret. Then deny it vehemently when asked about it.
23) Tell somebody that you’re tired of being an item girl.
24) Start up an astrology agency, Get in the revolutionary concept of 12 houses instead of the existing standard of 9 (People who don’t know about Indian astrology, get in touch with Narendra Hirwani, and while you’re at it, ask him for corrections in Sachin Tendulkar’s technique), tell your clients that the scientists have discovered 3 more planets and that changes everything, right?
Note: The idea for this one has been shamelessly lifted from ToI, Douglas Adams’ H2G2 Part V: Mostly Harmless and another blog.
25) Now this requires a bit of honesty: Charge the readers a 100 bucks if they went looking for the lyrics of ‘Obscured by clouds’, 200 bucks if they went looking for the lyrics of ‘Wots uh the deal’ and 300 bucks if they directly (again shamelessly) copy-pasted the part in point 20 which is in Bold-Italics on to google.com
26) Advice people who are about watch KANK not to do so.
27) Tell people that the water in the river Narmada is salty and that it has traded places with the Arabian sea.
28) Place an underfed cow next to a God’s statue, go about telling things like, “It shrunk, the milk was sucked out of it like it happened sometime last decade”.
29) Place bets on the number of Pakistanis Sunny Deol kills per movie. There’s a risk of losing here and also, you’ll have to tolerate quite a bit for a few measly bucks.

How about a small wager of our own? I’d say MAK Pataudi is a better hunter than Sallu. He’s got experience and a naturally shut eye going for him. What say?

- Komodo Dragon

Good Bye

2006-08-23T14:19:00.001+04:00

“End of a legend’. This was the message that flashed on my TV screen on an early Monday morning, informing us of the sad demise of Ustad Bismillah Khan. Im sure it would not have been very shocking for people who followed his life, as this was expected. But what made me think was the message that was constantly flashing. Wonder if there can ever be an end to a legend.

Two days back, when a news channel broadcasted the news of his illness, I was kinda happy to see that at least someone bothered to cover his life for once. If I can recall well, I had been to one of his concerts almost 6 years back when I was in Mumbai. He was made to wait for hours to play and the monitors were never adjusted which eventually got him frustrated. How can you disrespect a man of that age and stature? I had not given this a thought then but now I wonder what importance does great music get in our country. 2001, he received the Bharat Ratna. He was 84 then. Where was the government all these days? And where was it when he was severely ill two years later. Would a Shah Rukh Khan have got the same treatment? John Abraham suffers a stomach ache and it hits the newspapers!

The scenario has always been the same in our country. We always agree that what’s famous is good. No wonder musicians like Himesh are topping the charts. (I pity that guy. He is always our target but I guess he deserves it.) Im not sure how many people in this country have even heard of Ustad Bismillah Khan or for that matter any other Indian musicians. The world respects these people but we don’t and the worst is that we are very proud of it. The other day, I happen to over hear two people talk about music. “Arre who kya raag-waag sunta rehta hai din bhar. Boring life hai teri.” is the way one describes our own music. I agree that Komodo and I are too much into international rock but then, that’s classic rock. We would never appreciate any hardcore guitaring with lyrics that sound more like a tribute to Eminem. And also, the three of us respect the music that people like Bismillah Khan created. That’s nothing but pure music. In fact, I have always been lucky enough to be amongst people who appreciate quality music. Be it my cousins, family or team-mates.

It was two days back when Komodo sent me a TOI article on Floyd. Over a thousand weeks in the US Billboard magazine's top 200 albums of all time. At 28 million copies sold, it’s the third largest selling album till date. The next best being ’The Wall’, also by Floyd. Man, what a band! Can anything get better than this? All these records prove that the people all over the world love their own music. Can one imagine a Zakir Hussain or a Jasraj featuring in any of our countdowns? Never has it happened and I can bet it’s never gonna happen. More because we will never allow it to happen because most of us are mesmerized by the scratch effects used in today’s songs. I guess one in a thousand people actually take the pains of understanding a song. And also that one in hundred tracks today have different lyrics. There seems to be a collection of words (Not more than 50 in number) and a permutation-combination of the same results in a song. Not sure where the Indian music industry is headed. But as long as musicians like Bismillah Khan and Floyd exist, existence of quality music is assured.

- AHAK

While I was watching the news about the demise, one of my room mates walks down to the hall, stares at the television and asks “Isn’t he the same guy who sings?”. “Is it? I thought he played guitars for Himesh.”….I replied sarcastically.

Why - Part II

2006-08-22T10:43:00.000+04:00

Firstly, this is totally different from the previous Why. This is something even I wouldn’t expect from myself. Anyways here goes.

I’ve been having a bloody rotten time over the past few weeks. Being chucked out of the place I lived in for over a year and a half isn’t something I found amusing for starters, anyways a threat, a notice period of 10 days of which the first 8 having been spent loitering around town looking for a new place in the crazy heavy rains – unsuccessfully, forced us into thinking about alternatives. Got into doing things I don’t like… more about all that, the law, corporate support etc later. Well we’re in a place where you sometimes HAVE to get rough and we were forced into it and we did get rough. On retrospect, I’m glad all of us had the sanity to avoid using our muscle unnecessarily and the luck to find a new place, which is fairly convenient.

That apart, it’s the little things like a bloody power cut forcing a cold water bath on me in the rainy weather and a running fever, cell breaking down and staying that way to date (4th week of repairs), bike going for a toss as well and 16hrs a day, 7 days a week work schedules…
Yeah enough cribbing already…

Deal’s new place now, the rotten phase seems to have passed and so on… As of now, there’s no cable TV and we’re kinda relegated to watching stuff from Gag’s VCD collection. In Gag’s case, rewatching for about the 40th time, but then, he isn’t complaining.

Anyways, his (and the third roomie’s) taste is generally along the mainstream Hindi music/movies. It would be a crime to subject either of my roomies to the music I listen to, so it’s me tagging along (occasionally forcing them into some U2 or Queen and them hating it).

All the bloody rotten luck (both natural and manmade) has made me immune to almost anything... Including Hindi movie soundtrack videos...

We were watching this set of videos last evening, songs from some unheard of movies (Unheard by me. They could be massive hits for all I care) and it occurred to me that Sohail Khan (Salman Khan’s brother) resembles Sunny Deol (Bobby Deol’s brother). Why??

Any ideas?
Time to get artistic guys.

p.s. Notice their hairstyles (post all that weaving in Sunny’s case), jaw line, nose etc… incredible similarity.

- Komodo Dragon

REM – Find the River

2006-08-16T12:44:00.000+04:00

Before I start, let me warn you, this is an article that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. So unless you’re a true music fan, don’t bother reading this one.

Not sure if many people associate with this. I very rarely like a song straight away. The first few times I hear it, I just try to understand it. Not the lyrics alone, I try to understand the feel of the song, the music. Not sure if I’m making much sense here. I’m not exactly a music man, just that I’m crazy about the art.

The song seems to gradually gain form over the first few initial times that I hear it. It’s only gradually that I begin to actually like it. Now after this while, I just cant remember what the song’s first impression on me was. I can’t remember what went through my mind on hearing the song the first time around.

After the initial period, the song could become an absolute fav. It’s probably more about associating with the song.
This doesn’t necessarily happen with only a song. For Ex: I was absolutely hooked on to Black Sabbath’s initial albums for a year or so in college.

Over the past few months the song that I’ve been hooked on to is REM – Find the River. I have no idea what it is about the song that I like so much, but there’s something for sure, and it’s there every time I hear the song.

I don’t know much about the band, except for probably their greatest hits which everybody knows about… and word of mouth reviews by a few critic friends I know.

Anyways, here’s the lyrics:

Hey now, little speedyhead,
The read on the speedmeter says
You have to go to task in the city
Where people drown and people serve.
Don't be shy. Your just deserve
Is only just light years to go.

Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
Ocean storm, bayberry moon.
I have got to leave to find my way.
Watch the road and memorize
This life that pass before my eyes.
Nothing is going my way.

The ocean is the river's goal,
A need to leave the water knows
We're closer now than light years to go.

I have got to find the river,
Bergamot and vetiver
Run through my head and fall away.
Leave the road and memorize
This life that pass before my eyes.
Nothing is going my way.

There's no one left to take the lead,
But I tell you and you can see
We're closer now than light years to go.
Pick up here and chase the ride.
The river empties to the tide.
Fall into the ocean.

The river to the ocean goes,
Afortune for the undertow.
None of this is going my way.
There is nothing left to throw
Of Ginger, lemon, indigo,
Coriander stem and rose of hay.
Strength and courage overrides
The privileged and weary eyes
Of river poet search naivete.
Pick up here and chase the ride.
The river empties to the tide.
All of this is coming your way.

Don’t know if I’ve even understood the lyrics the way it’s supposed to be understood, but then I can associate with every word. Odd eh?

Also, I don’t think this song features in their big hits. Not too many people would know much about this song. It’s probably not meant to be liked straight away either, and not too many people bother with songs that aren’t meant to be liked straightaway.

If you’re the kind of a person that likes to actually listen to the music being played and not just probably follow the beat and other such, then check this song out. It’s real good.

Unrelated:
I woke up the other day and all my roomies asked me if I knew Robert Plant (before I’d gotten off the daze). I replied, “Yes, he’s the Led Zep vocalist…” with a trace of fear. After all the Himesh bashing (sheesh, him again, I’d really tried to avoid having him featuring in this post, he’s more regular in our posts than Pink Floyd even) they have to put up with everyday, I’d really expected them to absolutely rip his vocals apart. They kinda surprised me with saying nothing about him, just that there was this program about him on History channel (talk about being historical when you’re alive).

I smiled to myself.
Good music is really inaccessible in some parts of the world.

It probably does make sense to decide whether you like a song or not straightaway rather than actually take the pains to think about it. Probably. Just that I prefer Floyd.

-Komodo Dragon

Why?

2006-08-09T13:01:00.000+04:00

As Douglas Adams had said in one of his books (can’t remember which one… I guess it’s one of his unfinished works) WHY is the best question possible.

He went on to give some fairly brilliant examples. This is one I remember:

He: Will you go to bed with me?
She: Why?

He also went on to give reasons like ‘Why’ is the only question, which has an alphabet named after it. (Not the exact words, but similar gist)

Then he said the best answer to the question ‘Why’ is actually an equally elusive phrase ‘Why not?’ A question with a question for an answer.
Again, not the exact words but somewhat similar.

Anyways, that apart, it occurred to me to come up with this ‘why’ series, just questioning the ways of the world in general. Artistic answers expected.

Here’s the first of them:

Was watching TV sometime last evening and was on one of the news channels. There was this funny dude in a police uniform who was midway between threatening us and cautioning us of dire consequences of God knows what. He’s damn funny I tell you.

Somewhere along the way, he told us about the capture of some thug in Nepal who was a henchman of quite a few of the regular Bombay honchos who’re accused of currently residing in Dubai, Pakistan, Satyamangalam forest and other such places with which we don’t have an extradition treaty going. Wow.

Back to the point, this moron is in Nepal and is caught. We also got a brief glimpse of his career. Boy, looks like the underworld has a HR dept and a recruitment policy of it’s own. This guy has really switched sides quite often.

They showed us some footage of him caught and being accompanied to an about-to-come-apart police van. His face was all covered and he was quite short.

Now the question. Why did they cover his face? If he’s ashamed of having done whatever he’s done, then why did he do it in the first place? Or Was he ashamed of being caught?
In any case, he’s caught and people who caught him don’t like him (apparently), then why accede to his requests of having his face covered?
Also, they go about all the hard work of sketching out his face and developing it further and then putting it up (with other info) in the ‘Wanted’ list (still comes on DD) and then they allow him to hide his face.

Same deal with the local dudes who get caught committing frauds and all that. There are 2 reasons their face ought to be shown:
1) We’d know that we’ve got to avoid doing business with this person. (if we bother remembering)
2) The insult would frighten a few others from trying out something of the sort.

I don’t see any benefits to society in general with having their faces covered.

Why the cover?’

Do we have the rights to be lenient towards people who’ve wronged us?

Ask the friends/relatives of those who died in Bombay. And thank you media, for praising the “Spirit of Mumbai” and promptly forgetting everything about the people who are suffering.
Guess Prince in a hole is more important.

-Komodo Dragon

Good Evening

2006-07-22T10:53:00.000+04:00

“Good Evening , and welcome to the World This Week.”. This was Prannoy Roy in The World This Week in a not so connected world around more than a decade and a half back. These were the times when we clamoured in front of the telly sets to get a glance of what was happening around us. No news channels , no entertainment channels, just news in hindi at 9:00 PM and the news in English at 10:00 PM.

And all of us used to wait in earnest for Prannoy Roy at 10:30 PM on Friday nights for “The World This Week” where he would give us the happenings around the world. That’s when we used to see Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeni fighting it out in the middle east. Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev moving towards ending the world war, the wars in the Honduras et. al. This was the time when “News” and TV Journalism had real meaning.

Then came the satellite revolution, with channels streaming in from all quarters. There came Zee and thus started the era of the Soap Operas. This was followed by 24*7 movie and more recently news channels. And so out very own endearing Prannoy Roy of yore ends up launching a 24*7 news channel himself and with it the old adage of responsible media flew out of the window and by now I guess its even out of orbit.

Today we have numerous news channels, and honestly switching between any channel at any point of time doesn’t make you feel that you’ve switched to a different channel altogether. Yeah its true that the faces change, but the kind of silly journalism that exists today spans across all news channels.

Firstly due to the advent of so many news channels, the concept of “News” being a valuable commodity has disappeared. News is more or less like air, waiting to be inhaled, its there whether you like it or not. The only difference between air and news is that, you can choke a person and cut off his air supply and he’ll die ,that’ll become news, but try to choke news, again that becomes a news, its that persistent, too bad it doesn’t become air. That would’ve been more useful.

The channels have to keep running 24*7, so to fill in the slots they need something to air. That’s called Breaking News, some crap that keeps scrolling at the bottom of your telly screens whenever you switch on a news channel. And when a hapless reporter goes to the place where maybe deve gowda kept his eyes open for a full minute , he goes on interviewing people and asking relentless questions like ‘what’s the shape of his eyes? What’s the color of his eyes? And how does he look like with his eyes open? Whilst making claims that his channel is the first to bring you that piece of crap that you may call news.

You get bored of this and switch on to another channel where you find another dude going with a secret camera to a place and telling you that the guy lives in the house has been guilty of trying to force his way into his own house (now that he’s lost the key to his own house and is trying to break open the lock is immaterial). Now the media runs to the local police and try to round them up for not stopping the guy for entering his own house.

Then a channel decided to come up with a crime round up and others followed suit. So now across the whole plethora of satellite junk you have a host of funny guys making funnier gestures whilst trying to warn you all the while that you’re not safe. Of course we’re not safe and we don’t need to be told that. Watching all those gestures makes you wonder whether he’s choking and you may certainly die of boredom if not laughter. Yeah, I agree we’re not safe.

Now like that’s not enough they decide to spook you, and take you to places which they claim are haunted with B grade music from Ramsey moves running in the background, they visit places at night and claim that nobody visits those haunts as they’re haunted. Poor ghosts (if they do exist) would already have run for their lives when they knew what kinda idiots were coming upon them. Believe me its these guys that are scary and not the ghosts.

As if this was not enough each of the channels have their own reality show. Now watching any of them any time makes me wonder whether a person crying or going hyper just because he’s on camera can be termed as “Reality”. Also someday I’d like these satellite buggers telling me how much of “Real Cash” was paid to those people to get that “Reality” done.

The funniest part of it all, the sports capsules whenever any match is going on (be it cricket , football or any other sport). The funniest part being cricket as it’s the national pastime of the country. We have the likes of Maninder Singh and a Syed Saba Karim telling millions of viewers how Yuvraj Singh should improve his footwork or Rahul Dravid should play the hookshot. If I remember correctly, the same Maninder Singh was a person (national waste /discard one should say). Who never got up to a cumulative score of 51 in his entire career. Saba Karim was a super expressway right behind the stumps. The less said the better and the less he says about wicket keeping, still better.

Sometime back , a news channel tried to play peace maker between a wannabe singer and a wannabe wannabe. The wannabe singer on his birthday kissed the wannabe wannabe and she went ballistic on international television shouting “Hindustani nari “ and stuff like that while Mr Lucky Lips was licking his lips in gusto all the time. Well jokes apart there’s one thing I’d like to say , people have better things to do, so they just don’t care who screws around with whom.

The most pathetic displays of crappy attitude of the reporters comes during the natural and man made calamities when they run about asking questions like “Aapko kaisa lag raha hai”. Now hell, is a person with his hand blown away in a blast supposed to feel ecstatic” for god’s sake, when will these guys learn? Honestly speaking these media junkies should be cordoned off from those areas during the calamities.

Yeah, the media does a fairly good job sometimes bringing us news on time and other informative stuff. There are channels like CNBC TV18 who still know how to do that. But its time the others understood that they have a responsibility towards society, and running a news channel is not all about entertainment and glamour. It’s more about discharging your debt to the society that you are responsible to and get the people to realize the same.

:: Antya ::

Dogs of War

2006-07-19T14:38:00.000+04:00

It’s been quite some time since we came up with an article, thanks to various reasons that kept the three of us occupied. Komodo and Antagonist still busy with their work, I thought I’d take this opportunity to update the blog.

Last week was quite eventful. The Mumbai blasts being the most talked about of all the incidents and that’s justified too. Everyone in this world did expect this to happen someday, probably more because of the fact that Mumbai has got everything going for it and any such incident would create a huge impact on each and every individual.

It was disappointing to see the pictures of bodies lying all over the place and train compartments ripped apart…. the same trains I traveled in for almost a decade. I still remember cursing the trains and all the pushing and pulling I had to go through on any given day in Mumbai. But later when I shifted base, I realized the attachment I had developed to such a life style and it might sound a little weird but I actually started missing it.

Anyways, back to the blasts. The news channels never wasted a minute to capture as much as they could and come up with their own versions of the story. There has always been this talk about the resilience of Mumbai, which I till date feel is a bit too hyped. And 7/11 was no different. Even before the bodies were cleared and victims were admitted to hospitals, the media had started debates and discussions on the ‘resilience of Mumbai’ and the participants??? Don’t ask.

I still fail to understand what’s the agenda behind such discussions. Firstly why was that topic brought up? What are we trying to convey to the people responsible for the blasts? Are we trying to invite them to ‘You kill my neighbor, I go to work tomorrow’ game? And what’s with someone blaming Pakistan for the terrorist camps established there? Terrorist camps are there all over the place and blaming just one country for it is no solution. Let us first look into our back yard before putting the blame on someone. We ask our neighbors to shut down terrorist camps in their territory and they ask us to do the same. This saga never seems to end. What do we mean by banning these camps? These camps are not cola drinks that can be banned by a certain George Fernandez in power. If the people whose main aim is to kill others were so civilized and followed govt. orders, then this problem would never have raised. I have no clue why people are given the publicity they don’t deserve. The media has consistently failed to prioritize things and this is a perfect example. A certain news channel quickly grabbed the opportunity to interview Ms. Bhutto (where was she all these days) and ask her as to what she would have done if she were in power and Ms. Bhutto being the opportunist she is, started the blame game. Agreed such interviews make a good watch but then, is this really required at this point in time. We have better work to be done for better people.

The blasts could have been avoided but I guess it’s easier said than done. Fine, the blasts took place. But now what? The media could have definitely tackled the situation in a better way than asking irrelevant people to talk on the resilience of Mumbai city. I personally refuse to accept the fact that people of Mumbai are resilient. They are just too busy to be even thinking of such incidents. I have seen sights when a train runs over an individual and it takes just five minutes for the surroundings to return to normality. I do agree that people are helpful but such a nature also has its boundaries. This whole concept of resilient Mumbai is inviting trouble. This is neither 1947 nor the people responsible for the attacks are British against whom such tricks will work. We are just trying to cover up our shortcomings and resilience is the name we are giving to our inabilities.

I am sure a month later, no one would even think of 7/11. The only time the masses will remember the incident is on the same day, next year when again an issue is made out of it, there would again be a debate. Nothing’s gonna change because we have got used to the ‘chalta hai’ attitude that we have developed over the past decades. History will definitely repeat itself, not sure who the victims would be then. What’s sure is someone’s gonna lose badly and the rest will get back to work the next day.

-- AHAK

Rounding Off The World Cup

2006-07-11T08:21:00.000+04:00

Sunday's final was one of the greatest games played in this world cup by far. A phenomenal game as komodo sms’d me in the middle of the game.

Going back a few games from yesterday..
2 of the 4 quarter finals were decided by penalties. Germany getting the better of Argentina, which was nothing short of a heartbreak for me, but the way germany had been playing in this tournament was something of a consolation that the argentines got beaten by a good team.
Italy then beat Ukraine in the quarters 3 – 0 with striker luca toni scoring twice.
England were beaten 1-3 on penalties. Thus Portugal setting up a semi final clash with France.
A Thierry henry nudge from a zidane free kick ensured france a victory over brazil, well deserved as the brazillians looked lacklusture throughout the tournament with the only exception being the match against japan. The biggest letdown in this world cup has been ronaldinhio and also kaka to an extent.

The semi finals were an interesting affair. The hosts Germany were ousted by the Italians in easily one of the best performances put in by both teams. The match was goalless at full time, with italy doing what they do best. DEFEND and as always cannavaro being the star of the game. Grosso and Alessandro Del Pierro scored in the dying moments of the second half of extra times to deny germany a place in the final.

Portugal were ousted by france with a solitary goal to set up a gaul vs roman showdown as TOI put it on Sunday morning.

On Saturday Oliver Kahn leading germany for the last time ensured that germany got a consolation 3rd place with a 3 – 1 win over Portugal.

Sundays final meant Zidane’s comeback finally bore fruit, with history against them the Italians settled down after a nervous first few minutes. Malouda earned them a penalty by faking a dive with zidane scoring a rather peculiar goal.
A Materazzi header meant that italy equalized in the 19th minute. The Italians raised their game after that and the score still read 1-1 at full time. The first half of extra time passed without incident but with 10 minutes remaining in the second half of extra time Zinedine Zidane headbutted Materazzi in his chest and got sent off, thus rounding off an illustrious career with a not so illustrious act. The Italians were unable to capitalize on zidanes absence as there was not much time remaining as well. The game finally went to penalties with david trezeguet from france missing his chance and thus giving italy their 4th title.

The Italians it seemed had a plan for everyone, Gattuso negating any magic that Zidane would have worked , which probably ended up in getting Zidane frustrated. Also all air play with passing the ball over Vierra and Makelele’s heads.
The trio of Gigi Buffon , Cannavaro and Genarro Gattuso can be probably made out to be the heart of the Italian Team.
It was a great sight to see the Italians win, they played some real good football in this tournament.
A few greats have called it a day, Zidane, Kahn, Paultea and Figo. Also maybe ronaldo, carlos, del pierro, cannavaro will not play another world cup.

It was a great world cup all in all with a fitting finale and a deserving winner.

AHAK's Weekend Sojourn

2006-06-26T16:03:00.000+04:00

Finally, an end to the three-month long suspense. Now that it’s all over, I wonder what the hell was going on for the last 100 odd days. I was under the impression that the finance guys were calculating the figures using their fingers. But going by the content of my appraisal letter, things looked a little different. After all, how long does it take to add 100 to a number? Never mind that.

Weekend arrived and I took the first bus to Mumbai. A visit had been pending since a long time, and also the fact that I needed a break from this place added to the list of reasons.

Alright! I get into the bus and find that I’m the only one. The bus leaves, takes a little less than an hour to reach the next pick up point. It was relieving to see 10 odd people get into the bus. All this while I was thinking about the Infy guy who was hijacked on his way to Mumbai and never returned. That’s an old story anyways. The radio was on and who else but Himesh on it. That guy doesn’t seem to tire at all. Put my headphones on and started head banging to Eyes of a stranger by Queensryche (Amazing vocals, drumming and some great bass guitaring), just not thinking about what I was getting into.

Done with the song, I open my eyes to find ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ (If anyone’s not heard of it, It’s a Hindi flick about three guys who are good for nothing) being screened. Why cant these guys spare the passengers? And god knows who selects the flicks that are to be played…. even the ticks are any day better. Tom, Dick and Harry according to me, is an institute of pathetic film making. It can probably be used as an alternative to scarecrows or make Osama Bin Laden watch this movie and he shall surrender. Hope a particular Bush is listening! Man, no point digging the whole world to find your friend.

Coming back to Tom, Dick and Harry. The script of the film…there’s none…so no point talking about it. Wonder if the director wanted to prove his mental illness with this movie. The film has some good looking leading ladies but then leading what…. probably leading a bunch of constipated jokers. And as an icing on top of the cake…Mr. Reshammiya’s music. God, can anything get better than this! Mr. Reshammiya is here to prove to the world that he composes music only when he is getting banged by a bison that looks exactly like him. The strange noises and scratch effects makes one wonder if theres something wrong with the speakers or probably something wrong with the ears. Enough of Himesh now. Lets talk about Gulshan Grover. What was he doing in the movie? He looks as desperate as the chick who sits in the cubicle next to mine. Btw, shes on the phone right now giving everyone around her the looks that can scare one to death. Back to Mr. Grover, he’s made to look like a despo pimp who keeps begging God for girls every now and then. Pathetic. Tried my best to avoid the movie, but just couldn’t. It just kept getting on my nerves and I could do nothing but just admire the insanity.

Inspite of all the non-sense that I had to go through, the trip was pretty alright. Mumbai rocks and its unarguably the most amazing city in this world. Theres something about it that attracts you and the fact that people go through so much in a day but still prefer the place explains it all. I’ve had the privilege of living in four different places till date and undoubtedly Mumbai stands tall among the rest.
Sunday evening, I headed back, filled with reluctance and the fact that the Canadian Grand Prix was about to start just served as a consolation. A hardcore McLaren and Kimi Raikkonen fan, I hoped his bad phase would end but it was just not destined. Inspite of a great start, he failed to hold on to his position. Im not a major Schumi fan, but I must admit that no one other than him handles pressure with such ease. He’s never been an aggressive driver but the way he compels others to make a mistake is phenomenal. No wonder he is the greatest. Have to mention this, though I don’t want to.

AHAK

Footnote by Antya:
Having said all this AHAK is now back at office and as his luck would have it he’s just had a die hard HIMESH fan moving next to him in his cubicle. With me out of the team this weekend, here’s wishing AHAK all the best in his quest to steer clear of further torture (read: Himesh).

The Fifa World Cup 2006- Week 2 (16-25th June)

2006-06-26T12:28:00.000+04:00

With the first week out of the way it was time for more fun in the world cup.
16th june saw the argentines in full form when they destroyed Serbia and Montenegro 6-0. Now this was a match to watch even though the former Yugoslavs are definitely not the tops. The Argentines enjoyed themselves against a rather weak opposition.
The Dutch beat the Elephants (guys from the ivory coast) as expected and this killed ivory coast’s chances of making it to round 2 in the world cup having lost both their matches.
Angola held mexico to a dull 0 – 0 draw. There was nothing special about this match except that Angola now needed to beat Iran if they were to go to the second round.
Portugal beat Iran 2-0 in another encounter with second half goals from Deco and Christiano Ronaldo thus qualifying for the second round.
The Italians were held to a 1-1 draw by the US now histrionics by the Azzuri here.
In a rather major upset Ghana beat the Czechs 2-0. This was a major upset in that group which meant that the Czechs had to win the last one against Italy to qualify.
Brazil still not having found their form were quite unimpressive in their performance against Australia. The Brazilians however won 2-0.
The croats drew with Japan 0-0. There was nothing worthwhile in that match.
France with the likes of Zidane controlling their midfield and with strikers like Theirry Henry could only draw with South Korea , the final scoreline 1-1. France still look unimpressive, a far cry from what they are actually capable of.
The Swiss defeated Togo 2-0. And spain looking as threatening as ever defeated Tunisia 3-1 winning 2 in a row and thus making sure of a place in the last 16.
Ukraine looked rather good against a insipid Saudi team and won 4-0 with andrei shevchenko getting into the scorebooks.
After 2 matches each, germany ,Ecuador, brazil, argentina, spain , italy and Portugal looked set to enter the last 16.
In their final matches in the league stage Germany again proved their might against Ecuador winning 3 – 0 with Klose netting and getting to become the contendor for the golden boot.
Ecuador however looked good when they were attempting long distance shots. But the sheer size of the germans seemd to intimidate the Ecuador players.
Poland beat costa Rica 2-1 but in that case none of the teams did qualify for the round of 16 as Germany and Ecuador had already qualified. Germany with 3 wins and Ecuador with 2.
The final round matches in group B saw Sweden holding the Englishmen for a 2 –2 draw thus setting up a showdown with germany in the last 16. This meant that the Englishmen now face Ecuador in the last 16. The bad news however being that Michel Owen was injured which ruled him out from the rest of the matches.
Paraguay won their first match in group B defeating Trinidad and Tobago but this didn’t mean anything as both were ousted from the world cup. T & T did manage to showcase some real talent to the world.
The final match in group C saw argentina holding Netherlands to a 0 – 0 draw with nothing spectacular that we’ve come to see from both teams. Maybe this might be because both teams had already qualified for the round of 16. Ivory coast came from 2 goals down to beat a 10 man Serbia and Montenegro 3-2 however failing to make it to the next round. But Ivory Coast did manage to win many fans in their first ever outing at the world cup.
Group D saw Portugal beating Mexico 2 –1 and thus qualifying with all 3 straight wins.
Iran being held to a 1 – 1 draw by Angola meant that Mexico went through to the next round thereby setting up an encounter with Argentina. And another mouth watering perspective being a next round encounter between Portugal and Holland.

Group E now deemed as the group of death saw Italy beating the Czech 2-0 to eliminate them from the world cup. Ghana beating the US by 2 –1 thereby qualified for the second round setting up an interesting encounter with Brazil from Group F who looked their best so far in the world cup with a 4 - 1 win against Japan. In this match ronaldo came back to life with 2 goals thereby equaling Gerd Mullers record of 14 world cup goals, 1 more against Ghana and he goes on to become the highest scorer in world cup history. This match was vintage brazil even though it was against a weak opposition like Japan.
Another match in group F saw Australia drawing 2-2 with croatia thereby knocking the croats out of competition and setting up an encounter with Italy.

Group G finally saw France beating Togo 2-1 and the swiss beating south korea 2-1.
Group F saw an overconfident spain managing a 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia. The star of the match definitely the Saudi goalkeeper Zaid who was kept busy for most of the match. It was the Spanish overconfidence which saw spain win with a 1-0 margin a match where the result could and should have been a bigger margin. The Spaniards meet France in the round of 16. And with Ukraine winning 2 –0 over Tunisia they meet the swiss in the next round.

The first round did see the germans comfortable at home. The English insipid as ever but lucky. The argentines and Spaniards in good form and the brazillians coming into form.

Round 2.

This round has been interesting till now.
In the first match. Germany won courtesy of 2 early goals by Podolski. The Swedes did try but couldn’t get past the german midfield.
The second match in Round 2 had Argentina beating Mexico 2-1. The first goal was scored by Rafael Marquez who was virtually unmarked by the Argentine defense.
Argentina counter attacked and hernan crespo scored just 6 minutes later. This actually looked like a Jared Borgetti own goal but finally hernan crespo claimed the goal. The match looked evenly balanced and went into extra time when Maxi Rodriguez scored a beauty and sealed the match for Argentina.
England have qualified for the quarter finals with a Beckham free kick finding the Ecuador goal. This match was highlighted by the virtually absent much hyped English midfield.
Lampard, the star of the english premier league has had the maximum chances in this world cup but has failed to score yet.

The most interesting match in round 2 yet has been Portugal Vs Netherlands which was marked by 4 red cards 2 each to Portugal and Holland.
Maniche returned to haunt the dutch scoring the only goal of the match and the dutch were rather unlucky not to score any more. Also later the match witnessed a lot of fist fights 4 read cards and yellow cards going into double digits.
With most of the Portugese players carrying a yellow card into the quarter finals England may be having some feeling of relief.
Germany have set up a mouth watering prospect with Argentina in the quarters. Its really sad as I personally would have liked to see these 2 teams in the semis. But then such is life. England against Portugal would also be something to watch out for but again out of sheer bias against the English midfield I would like to see Portugal go through.

With Australia and to take on Italy later this evening and Spain to take on france later this week this world cup seems poised for much more thrills than those that have been provided yet. It has definitely been a pretty high scoring world cup and real good action in the middle.

p.s. Joke on the Football pitch (while relaxing after a real hard practice session)
England vs Brazil played at Old Trafford. The English complain about Brazilians having too many stars… So the Brazilians decide to get drunk in a pub and let Ronaldinho play alone.
The drunk Brazilians hear on the radio about Ronalidinho scoring the first goal in the 7th minute with the commentators complaining about an unfair onside decision (with only one player)
The Brazilian team (minus the great man) has a real good party and on their return, sees Steven Gerrard being presented the man of the match for scoring an equalizer at the 88th minute. The match ended in a 1-1 stalemate.
The Brazilians go ahead and console a rather forlorn looking Ronaldinho and praise him for having held the opposition for so long.

He replies, “The bloody biased ref red carded me in the 11th minute!!”

More on the controversy

2006-06-23T08:14:00.000+04:00

Again, some info before I start. I do not belong to any OBC or any other such which would get me reservations of any sort. I’m where I am on merit and am damn proud of the fact. Also there’s nobody who I’d want to help who gets to use the reservations.

So that out of the way.

Now, for the entire reservation deal. Everybody has an opinion about it. Here’s mine.

Firstly, we have to agree that the current software boom bringing in all the money to the country is not necessarily a good thing. The middle class (economically) is slowly fading out and the difference between the higher and the lower classes is quite large.

Now it’s easy to say we don’t care about it and that it’s survival of the fittest and they ought to work their way up like we did. But honestly, if the gap keeps growing, the obvious jealousy and contempt of the one class toward the other also going to increase.

The recent Rajkumar incident in Bangalore being a good example. The people fighting there were not the original fans, they were just the lower classes giving vent to their frustrations and also making good use of the opportunity to loot a few people.
This has been happening over the years. Same deal with the Kaveri water issue. I remember seeing folks from Kammana Halli standing on the ring road and stopping cars. Now, if the people in the car spoke Kannada, they spoke Tamil and vice versa. (They were fluent in both languages). Only the local familiar faces were spared.
Same deal with religions and Pakistan. As long as Pak stays poor, there are going to be people who are driven by the religious cause to do something drastic, and there are going to be people taking advantage of it. All the communal fighting that’s happening in India is also generally in the lower classes (economically) with a few opportunistic leaders and the upper classes are just probably getting into discussions about it and doing nothing.

Now poverty is definitely lack of opportunity. And without opportunity, the gap is only going to grow and the existing problems aren’t going to leave.

Is anybody doing anything to bridge the gap? Screw the government and taxes, everybody knows about that.

It’s easy to say nice things about merit when you know that’s good enough for you to qualify. Let’s face it; there are people with a handicap with education. Not all families give priority to education. That makes a huge difference. If you have people behind you pushing you, you tend to do better (especially at a young age). This wouldn’t be the case if your folks at home were always hinting at you taking up a manual job somewhere.

(Considering most people reading this being from educated backgrounds) you might have noticed somebody who didn’t do well enough in his studies and yet got placed somewhere by some relative or friend or somebody else. Now is there a possibility of this happening in say, the slums?

So there should be some assistance provided to people of the lower classes. Not caste based, just economically backward. But then if this becomes official, there would be plenty of misuse, going by the pressure for education here. This is not going to help the people it was intended to help.

I’m not sure if reservation is the right way forward, but suggest an alternative way out.

Let me also remind you, the midday meal scheme was a flop and did nothing for anybody, it continues doing nothing for anybody to this day.

Financing some kid’s education is not enough for the family; they want the kid to be a source of income, not an extra mouth to feed.
You can’t pay the family extra to probably cover for the child’s prospective income. This would only increase the bloody demand in the methyl-alcohol market and local village brothels.

So again, reservations are probably not the right ay forward, but bridging the gap is necessary for our sakes and if not reservations, suggest a better way. Don’t just protest, suggest as well.
Nobody is suggesting yet.

BTW, I didn’t vote for the party that's currently in power, don’t think I’ll be doing so next time either, but that’s for other reasons.
And I hated Rang De Basanti, pathetic movie.
I hate moral science class as well… this is more about our comfort than anybody else’s life or whatever. Them staying backward isn’t good for us.

Komodo Dragon

p.s. Definite fall side of reservation: Till my 10th STD, I had no idea who in my class was SC or ST or OBC… it’s during and after the boards that I got to know, and I did have a feeling of contempt towards them. It didn’t seem fair.

Mr. Dragon: the (forced) eligible bachelor

2006-06-19T08:43:00.000+04:00

Firstly lemme tell you a few things about my family, it’s quite a huge family, resembles the Greek family in “My big fat Greek wedding” as one of the cousins puts it. I don’t know, I haven’t seen that movie. Anyways, huge family and the whole crowd get together on some occasion like a marriage or an anniversary or something of the sort. The frequency of such occasions is quite high courtesy the numbers.
By family, I meant parents, their siblings, cousins, siblings’ kids, cousins’ kids, and their kids and so on… There always is somebody meeting somebody else for the first time in his or her respective lives.

There was one such function recently and I was a part of it. This time around, I tried my hand at looking at things in the clichéd corny way that most aunts seem to possess by nature. I was forced into it actually.
Like they say, join the system to beat the system.

It all started off with an aunt trying to set me up with a sweet, blushing college chick. That can easily be the most annoying thing to happen to you (the entire process, not the chick), believe me. They introduce you and then hide behind doors or sofas or tables in some cases and see how the two of you are getting along.

Don’t you dare saying something funny then. The girl’s generally either shy and taking in all this nonsense much worse as compared to you or big time annoyed with having to go through this again. Now when somebody’s all strung up because of something, it isn’t wise to go about your wisecracks. They generally wouldn’t understand the humor there and (if you’re sarcastic enough) might take offence or start wondering about your mental stability.

It’s even worse if the girl’s neither shy nor annoyed, she might laugh at your joke. Now that’s a killer. There’d be a lot of rejoicing and other such stuff going on behind doors, sofa sets, tables, vases, bushes and other such.

So, to cut things short, no jokes, in fact, nothing funny. Try something drab, like the relationship between OBCs, Led Zep and the Bombay locals. Keep it serious though. The deal with the bizarre topic is she’ll figure out that you’re nervous too, that helps some people who seem to get intimidated at the drop of a hat.

Anyways, getting back to the topic at hand, the girl I was introduced to, was neither the shy nor the annoyed kinds. She wasn’t intimidated either.
Worse, she laughed.

And yeah all the advising is courtesy the wisdom I acquired POST the damn intro. I walked in all naïve to the house after the conversation (we got introduced in an apartment balcony of all the places in the world), and out popped aunt charming from under the TV set (honest). She goes… “So how’s she? How did you two get along? How do you like her? even she’s tall no? She’s very intelligent, and very nice.”

Now, I could answer the fourth question quite easily. She definitely was tall (we wouldn’t have been introduced if she wasn’t… cheap but true).

How did you 2 get along? Well, nothing out of the ordinary, it was quite the usual. It was the first time we met for God’s sake. And if it wasn’t the usual, I wouldn’t have said so either.

How do I like her? Same answer.

The last part was said and not asked (thankfully). In all fairness, she seemed fairly intelligent as well, and had the skin tone and figure that’d turn my head anywhere any day (c’mon, I’m a man). But, how you gauge somebody’s intelligence in about 15 mins of uncomfortable conversation is beyond me.

As for the first question, how do you answer when somebody asks you that? An aunt of all people.

I was tempted to come out with a detailed description in hostel or soccer pitch lingo, but sanity prevailed and I refrained.
I came out with, “She’s quite nice actually, nice kid ”
She goes, “You and your rotten humor, she’s doing her engg, remember how you were in college, all grown and tall”
Me: “I love the way you avoided the ‘thin’ word in your description auntie, I’m touched. But what’s with height and age thing anyways?”
Aunt: “Oh don’t pretend, you’re blushing, I can see”

Now I wasn’t known as stone face in college for nothing!! I wasn’t blushing I know it.

To continue,

Me: “Oh auntie, you don’t miss a thing, but honestly, when I was in college, I kinda kept away from people in jobs, people my current age to be precise.”
Aunt: “What? You’re talking like you’re real old or something. Anyways, the boy always has to be elder than the girl. It always works out that way.”

So there, I got it from the horse’s mouth (she didn’t speak the words, but it was quite blatant). I’d known this girl for 20 minutes and they were planning on me spending the rest of my life with her. What’s more, even my parents didn’t know about it. Cool eh?

Continuing,

Me: “Auntie, there was a survey conducted a few years ago which says the average age of a man is 80 and that of a woman is 84… remember it?” (Might have been 78 for men and 84 for women, but Aunt wouldn’t have spotted it in 86 years)
Aunt: “Yeah I read… So?”
Me: “Marriage is generally about living your entire lives together right?”
Aunt (suspiciously): “Yeah, so” (most people who know me get suspicious when I ask two questions with obvious answers, in a row)
Me: “So, if the husband is elder and going by statistics, he’s bound to die earlier, that would leave the wife alone for a few years right?”
Aunt: “Oh God! You started your odd talk again. How can you talk about something holy like marriage and death at the same time” (cheap getaway when cornered)
Me: “No auntie, I was just being practical and concerned about the ladies in general, yeah the sentence was a bit off heh heh”
Aunt: “Oh you kids are all the same… weird concepts you carry, think you know everything”
Me: “Kids don’t marry…”
Aunt: “Shut up, I have to talk to (*mum’s name*) about this (giggle)”
Me: “true true” (mum doesn’t venture within a mile’s radius of me on such days)

At this point in time, an equally heckled cousin sis of mine turns up with a smile broad enough to accommodate a dolphin. Aunt, recognizing the signs of danger decided to scoot and on her way to the door met a cousin (brother this time, who was laughing at me all this while) and dragged him along to meet somebody else she knows.

Some people are relentless. Long live their tribe.

The Fifa World Cup 2006- Week 1 (9-15th June)

2006-06-16T10:33:00.000+04:00

The world cup, kicked off on 9th June 2006 with a colorful ceremony in Berlin, It was great to see the members of the world cup winning teams Klinsman, Mattheus, Sir Bobby Charlton and the legendary Pele . a sole personality missing was the Argentine great and the architect of the 1986 win Maradona.

By far the first round of matches have finished with each team in each group having played at least one match.

Germany hardly looked impressive in their first match against Costa Rica. The 4-2 scoreline in the end was showed a gaping void in the German defense (almost non existent) and the 4 goals scored didn’t boast of a good German attack but definitely another non-existent Costa Rican defense. Barring one goal from Frings from a distance the match did not have anything spectacular to offer.

Ecuador, one of the minnows did have a fantastic attack against a rather stoic polish defense. Poland, the favorites to win the match eventually ended up on the losing side with a scoreline of 2-0 in favor of Ecuador.

Then we had the much-hyped English team playing Paraguay. Now, England playing the FIFA world cup is always like India playing the cricket world cup, always tipped to win but the performances suggest otherwise. A Beckham free kick getting deflected into the goal by the Paraguay captain Carlos Gamarra himself ensured a 1-0 win for England but in particular England had nothing to be proud of in this match.
The English team minus the commentary and the hype is pretty useless. They’ve got 3 good midfielders in Lampard, Gerrard and Cole. Somebody replace Beckham, he doesn’t know what the left foot is, doesn’t head the ball, doesn’t hold play, doesn’t fall back. Anything else that’s needed of a midfielder?

The Swedes were held to a 0-0 draw with 10 man Trinidad & Tobago, and yeah both the teams looked good, particularly the Swedes.

Argentina, one of the least talked about sides in this world cup defeated the Ivory Coast 2-0, the Argentines showed an overall good game both in attack and defense.

The Netherlands won by a solitary goal courtesy Chelsea’s Arjen Robben over lowly rated Serbia & Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia), which did boast of names like Mateja Ketzman and Dejan Stankovic. Nothing worth notice in that team as well.The Dutch, however , in form can be deadly dangerous.

Mexico came in late to defeat Iran 3-1 with 2 goals in the dying minutes of the game against Iran. But again, the Asian teams barring South Korea are weak as compared to the European and South American teams.

Portugal played their former colony Angola and defeated them1-0, now here the commentators were predicting a goal fest when Pauleta netted in the 4th minute or so. But a stubborn Angolan defense prevented anything of that sort.

Italy as clinical as ever, were brilliant in defeating Ghana 2-0. The legacy of Italian defense still lives on even after Maldini and Co.
The scudetto kinda confirms it, these dudes are just brilliant. Cannavaro and Nesta are by far the best international central defensive pairing you can get. They’ve been so for years now (since Maldini Baresi). All that hype about Terry and Ferdinand is just a load of Brit commentary…

The Czechs led by Pavel Nedved decimated the USA 3-0. The Czechs were always in command of the game and showed a lot of grit
Was wondering why the commentators were going gaga about Rosicky being the star of the team. Agreed he had a good game and scored 2 goals as well, but he’s not quite as good as Nedved (injury or no injury), it then struck me that Rosicky is one of Arsenal’s latest signings. Brit commentary…
Fall side for the Czech, their defending especially in the later parts looked more like just clearing the ball. There weren’t many buildups from the defense, they all seemed to happen from the mid.

Brazil with all its big names looked, to say the least, listless in their 1-0 win over Croatia. Ronaldo was seen walking (literally) all over the park, the only spark in that match appeared after Robinho substituted him in somewhat around the 69th minute.
Brazil, watch them for the joy of it… Don’t bet on them.

The French again choked against Switzerland, with a goalless draw, Zidane and Theirry Henry had no ideas against the likes of Phillepe Senderos in the Swiss defense.
The French got to get their act together else the world will miss out on a lot. This is a team with real talent and major ego

South Korea, the only Asian team worthy of a mention came from behind to beat Togo 2-1. Again nothing worth a mention here. This was a known result.

The best match in the tournament so far came when Spain decimated first timers Ukraine 4-0. Andrei Shevchenko from Ukraine (the AC Milan star) hardly got a touch.
Schevchenko has moved to Chelsea, one of the worst things to have happened to Football in general. He’s going to realize soon that Lampard and Ballack are not quite as good as Kaka is, it’s again hype and the same Brit commentary factor

Germans having gone thru the non existent Costa Rican defence in the opening match ran out of ideas but still managed to beat a strong Polish Defense 1-0
The Germans, So far… Rubbish. No ploy at all

From all the matches played so far it’s the Spaniards that are looking dangerous, the Argentines, Italians and Czechs have been playing good football and could definitely make it to the last 8 at least. Brazil with all its big names might not have got the start they wanted but it would be unwise rule them out yet.

Of the African countries making their debut’s Angola and the Caribbean team Trinidad & Tobago look to be decent and maybe , some players from these teams, will rouse the interest of some of the managers in the English Premier League for the next season.

This world cup has definitely been interesting with quite decent scorelines and high scoring matches. We for one would like to keep a watch on the Argentines and Italians.

The Argentines look damn efficient, Spaniards, Czechs and Italians look awesome and quite intimidating. Watch out for the Dutch and don’t let the Brit commentary sway your judgment.

As the 2nd week kicks off with the 2nd round of matches for each of the teams we shall keep you updated of the happenings as the week passes. Till then. Enjoy your football.

Authored by Antagonist and Komodo Dragon.

PS: If you find any of this on the wrong side of anything Brit, this is because Komodo (the harcore AC Milan Fan that he is) and Antagonist (A Juventus fan) both dislike the English team as the englishmen play real uninspiring football. Also even during the world cup, the commentary is pro brit , to put it in simple words , it is biased. Simply put the English Premier league is sluggish and drab as compared to the Italian or Spanish leagues.

SHEEP

2006-06-12T14:30:00.000+04:00

An odd chain of thought that happened (chains of thought happen, right?) on the journey from Bombay to Poona. The return journey didn’t quite have the charms about itself that the Poona-Bombay journey had. For one, there was a lot to look forward to while going Bombay-wards (there always is). Then the co passenger in this case was an annoying moron (the kinds I’m allergic to) and not a pretty, interesting and chatty chick like the one I’d met the day before (on the Poona-Bombay journey again).

The movie not being played was an irritation of sorts, as this dude would want to talk to me cause he had nothing to do. Not that I like movies in the bus, especially on the expressway journey, but with co passengers like this you’d rather have a movie on.

I decided to get on to my second line of defense. Out came the headphones and the cell with a few mp3s stored. Started playing the tracks and looking out of the window deliberately avoiding eye contact with the moron even. Things were rather peaceful until the moron in a fit of stupidity asked the bus crew to play the radio. The music from the radio kinda distorted the stuff I was listening to and I was forced into full concentration mode.
Gave up after a brief struggle.

I was then forced into listening to the appalling stuff they play on radio in a program called top 20 hits. (If they are top 20, they ought to be hits… whatever). Real bad stuff with Himesh in roughly 2 out of every 3 songs.

Set me thinking. Down the memory lane of sorts. When I’d started listening to music big time, there were the backstreet boys on one side and a few bhangda clowns on the other (Daler Mehndi headed the list there). There were the few wise ones who generally went hammer and tongs at these characters, but they were the minority. “Why listen to 'The Doors', they are over 30 years old?” was the retort the wise ones had to face. Music is timeless and Floyd and U2 are relatively deeper than all boybands and Mr. Mehndi put together… whatever.

Then came Britney Spears, man she’s horrible. And as if all that was not bad enough there was Aqua with ‘Barbie girl’ and some cheap band singing something about Tarzan and Jane and bananas and elephants et al. Cant remember the name, they were terrible I tell you.
Same story all along, the wise ones stuck to hitting out at the music coming out and listening to their own stuff and the majority crowd went about worshipping the nonsense being dished out.

Like a whole lot of sheep. With the marketing dudes being the shepherds. Advertise a track/band/movie/item number well enough and all them sheep will come flocking to it and get you your moolah.

Now it’s hip hop there and Khajooor here. The whole crowd goes gaga over them because the marketing dudes told them to. And I’ve been told “he’s not so bad, everybody likes him, he’s famous” and other such, quite a few times.

Being famous has nothing to do with being good at something. And how many of them sheep even remember the super hit tracks of last year?
The album “More” came out in the year 1969 that’s quite a while ago, and every genuine Floyd fan would know “Cymbaline” and “The Nile song” inside out.

Why blame the elders for hypocrisy, are we much better? Do we even know what we like? Are we sure we’re not being fooled into liking something somebody else wants us to like? Aren’t we just walking with the flow and assuming we like it? Aren’t we just a flock of sheep?

“It’s alright we told you what to dream…”
(Floyd – Welcome to the machine (Wish you were here))

p.s. AHAK and me had gone to check out the company rock band practice. They were playing U2 – Where the streets have no name. The vocalist in one of the initial attempts missed the line, “I want to tear down these walls that hold me inside”. We were talking about that line alone having more to it than all the hindi tracks (Euphoria, Kailash Kher included) in the year 2006. That just our opinion btw.

Komodo Dragon.

The Addition :
The name of the post reminds me of two things. One, the evergreen Pink Floyd anthem and the other, the Indian mentality or rather call it the Herd mentality. It was precisely during my pre-university days when I realized what music is, though music had always been there in our family. Those were the days when I moved from the bollywood numbers to Floyd. Phew..what a change ! Its only when you listen to Floyd that you realize that music is for the mind, not for ears (As mentioned by Komodo in one of our earlier articles).

Coming back to where I left, the Herd mentality. Over the years, I have met a lot of people who listen to a particular kind of music because that’s supposed to be classy. I sometimes wonder how many Floydians actually take the pains of getting into the lyrics and analyzing what they meant. Do people know that Floyd numbers are supposed to be heard in a particular order? Lets keep Floyd aside and talk about the bollywood numbers most people listen to these days. One Mr. Himesh comes up with songs that make no sense and its all over the UK charts. I thought music comes from the instruments. How many music composers today prefer keyboards or drums to DJ consoles. Their count might not even be in double digits.

AHAK.

p.s. Octopads have almost completely replaced drums in bollywood, now it’s DJ consoles and scratch effects doing their rounds.

Gentlemen

2006-06-08T16:25:00.000+04:00

That’s what they call themselves, right? And the game’s called the gentleman’s game, right?

Then what’s with the annoying behavior? Why jump up and down like retards every time the ball so much as touches the Pads?

Let’s face it; the Indian team is really annoying with all the appealing and genuine lack of any bowling talent whatsoever. We generally play a real irritating brand of cricket. Terrible pitches with nothing for the bowler, teams loaded with batsmen, bowlers whose only motive is to get through 10 overs conceding less than 50 runs. The batsmen will handle it from thereon. (Real glad Mick Lewis got hammered for 115 that day… he’s an Aussie version of an Indian seamer).

Chappel seems to be a sensible one here, with the 5-bowler policy. Getting some sense into the game and the entire crowd starts yelping about wrong strategy etc. Grow up guys.

Anyways, we can easily stake claim to be the second most annoying team around.
Sri Lanka with their Chandanas, Dilshans and Lokuhettiges are by far the most annoying species ever. They don’t deserve a place in this planet.
Add to their players, they have KT Francis and Asoka DeSilva… Lesser said about the whole bunch of them, the better.

Back to the topic, yeah Sehwag deserves what he got. Watch one match and you’ll know how much these dudes get on your nerves with their appealing. It’s like he’s a Parthiv Patel wannabe or something.

Yeah Sehwag got what he deserved and Lara didn’t. How could anybody get away with something like that?

Cricket is run by bloody racists.

Look at it this way.
1) Wasn’t Lara also appealing excessively (an appeal that went on for 15 mins is kinda excessive)? So why punish Sehwag and spare Lara?
2) India was temporarily relieved of the ex captain and fantastic player of short pitched stuff courtesy his taking too long to finish up the overs (six match suspension). Fine that was a favor of sorts, but it wasn’t intended. Now Mr. Lara wasted a whole 15 minutes with his ranting and probably that time, if added on in the end would’ve meant a different result.
3) Slater on a previous occasion and now Lara have both been in heated discussions with the umpires and have both been spared and 6 Indians were once suspended at the end of a SA tour by an English match referee.

Apart from point 2, in all places the Indian team has been made a victim hasn’t it?
(Suspension of ex captain helped the team almost as much as his eventual firing. Thank god for small favors)

The one positive point to note here was the way Dravid handled the whole situation.
Brilliant.
He stayed to innocent onlooker when Lara went about his nonsense. He didn’t bother sending any word across all the while. He just watched on as Lara seemed hell bent on being a disgrace, and when Lara finally decided to let play continue and Dhoni got all emotional and decided to leave (man!! This doesn’t happen in street cricket nowadays, ask Mohammad Yousuf (erstwhile Youhana)), Dravid decided to declare. So he didn’t stop Lara from digging his grave of sorts with an earlier declaration.

Just too bad politics is streets ahead of natural intelligence.

Speaking of Politics, Has Salman returned from Dubai? Nevermind that…

Sticking with Politics, Has Mr. Ex captain been selected for the next Lanka tour? (whenever that is). Or is he still scared of having to face Dilahara Fernando and Lasith Malinga?

Question:
How does Chandana bowl when the ball is bigger than his entire palm and fingers of both hands put together?
And the commentator once said, “he has to learn to bowl the googly…”

May Fever

2006-06-07T12:44:00.000+04:00

“Theh heh heh.. heee heeee heee.. hyuk hyuk” these were some of the sounds missing in my cubicle for the last week or so.. the reason.. the exponent of the “orgasmic laughter” a former moron..(Read our previous post Newsies.. newbies …)… now somewhat less of it since he began working…

The month of may thus ended peacefully for me… the very heights of ecstasy having gone home.. All that remained was on my left side a gaping depression (for those who came in late.. the depression has a name… this one’s called Rajwada or Tall Palace the second moron from our previous post (newsies .. newbies…) .. still the same moron… in fact evidently more from last time).. getting deeper and deeper by the passing day… now this guy has very tall claims as Komodo and AHAK would agree.. He’s an exponent of transparency in personal life to an extent that would make Fidel Castro in Cuba and the socialists in modern day West Bengal and erstwhile USSR proud. Every one in the team now knows whatever is to be known about him.. and a few of us .. handpicked for torture happen to know all that is not to be known as well…

All in all the month of May did turn out to be quite sensational..

The Atlantic remained peaceful.. and a certain meteor that was supposed to have crashed into it .. didn’t keep its date with a certain channel (which in fact was the only channel that aired that news) .. the most probable and plausible reason would have been that the channel didn’t offer it enough money…”Money” they say “makes the world go round” so why not comets… no money… so the comet went round the earth instead of directly thru it..

Other than this.. there was a sensation that spilled over from last month.. when finally a boisterous and vociferous politico happened to run out of words and luck… he was a good man they said.. who spoke up his mind.. all due respect to the departed soul.. but all news value (or maybe nuisance value) was lost the day he died and they showed him being cremated by his son.. who himself now happens to be in hospital. With the media junkies all over the place trying to decide among themselves whether he did or did not take substances that would have caused him to be stripped of a gold medal in the Olympics..

We simply could not , not mention a damsel who “showed” that she had “the balls” (literally) to evoke interest from local moral groups somewhere in southern maharashtra.. this got the media going ga ga over her and yeah for a day or 2 even she got her place in the sun.. what happened after that is anybody’s guess.. any guesses??? Thinshark will definitely give you an inside story on this controversy if you fail to come up with any guesses.

Then there were a bunch of eleven models along with an aussie with a white cricket hat that went partying to the carribean and played a game which involves throwing a round object mentioned previously in this write up (leather this time)… at another guy holding a stick in hand and trying to stop 5 sticks from licking the dirt (3 vertical and 2 horizontal balanced finely on them). Needless to say the money been given to them for endorsing Caribbean beer and beaches for the expat Indian community there ensured that they ended up with a score of 1-4. However the aussie did say that they did get a lot of positives from the games they played (money to be precise)..

Finally we had a certain actor who’s gone beyond 40 and also been married twice.. but still insists on playing a yuppie and saying that he thought he was right when half a million people did not get water and another few thousand acres of land went fallow because of lack of water… because he wanted his day in the sun… all said and done.. this he did in front of another million people all the while sipping water .. and then it’s a spate of tv interviews on every possible channel justifying his stand and asking people whether they wanted to see his films.. Now how watching a movie is related to people dying of thirst is definitely what we'll investigate and let you know soon...

All the time while this was happening.. back at the workplace the orgasmic laughter continued that finally stopped at the month end which brings us back to where we started from…

With only 2 more days before my wife turns into what they call the “Football widow” theres lot of talk going on about Rooney’s injured leg and Zidane’s second retirement… (remember he came back from retirement coz he wanted himself to see france lift the world cup)…
Thinshark will surely give you all the latest takes on the world cup matches week by week (courtesy to komodo being a winger for his company , me an ex player now turned critic, and AHAK still to play)…

Keep watching this space for more…

Antagonist
(with footnote by AHAK)...

Eye

2006-05-02T13:34:00.000+04:00

Smriti's post served as a reminder to the puzzle.

it looks like a girl's eye doesn't it? any ideas why?

real confused regarding this... no definite reason for this to be a girl's eye, but everybody seems to perceive it that way.

inputs?

Newsies Newbies... and 'out with the old'

2006-04-27T09:13:00.000+04:00

We had this team party last night, my last in the team and for all practical purposes ‘the last supper’. There were exactly 13 people there as well. (2 morons not included while counting). Antya and Me we rather quiet for a change, The Desolate One did make an attempt to enliven things, but then it was one man's efforts, not three... it's me to pack my bags in 3 days and Antya to pack his bags in another coupla weeks and move on...

And then today morning (during the bus ride) my phone for some reason hangs while mid way through ‘Wish you were here’ and I had to tolerate Himesh for a whole 2 minutes.

Also the Antagonist , with a splitting headache since the morning found a magical cure in Himesh’s voice.. the voice makes you so numb that you forget your headache.. that’s what actually happened to the antagonist.. try out for yourself if you may (*** at your own risk).

Wish I were as optimistic as Antya… this dude’s music gives me the headaches (creeps apart).

AC Milan (the team I back) is out in the champion’s league semis. I’m perilously close to depression now although I have to concede that Barca definitely deserved to go through to the finals.

Quite a few hints…

And then there was Sallu scooting to Dubai and getting praised for it.

Aamir deciding to keep ‘rang de basanti’ (that confused movie) character he played to the movies just when most of Gujarat was about to take up arms and lynch him. Its time somebody told the pint sized moron that taking reel life to real life is not worth it. Moreover if he thinks that a few thousand villagers getting displaced is not worth a few million villagers getting water then he needs to be buried in the pitch at the Abu Dhabi cricket stadium with only his head sticking out as stumps and a himesh concert going on for company.

Vivek Oberoi just shutting up.

And suddenly pramod mahajan isn’t that important a piece of news anymore… why?? Ask it to the news channels and newspapers.. they may be having an answer.
He’s still critical btw. We wish him a speedy recovery. (there are times for reverence and this is one of them)

This country is seriously devoid of action and things are getting boring here.

Oh yeah the ToI had this front-page pic of a medical student chick all wet and on her knees courtesy mob dispersal water spray (just in case anybody got ideas), with all the trees and gawkers around, it did look a bit like something taken from a Hindi movie.

Honestly don’t bother fighting or protesting guys, this isn’t Nepal where you got somebody listening to you. Yeah if you like to have a good shout and it kinda soothes you or something (like the Vogons or varanata Dr. RajKumar avaru’s fans), then go ahead, but don’t expect anything.

We guys have gone through the grind during our college days as well, the jokes in the mobs are pretty alright, but then leave it at that, don’t expect anything to ‘happen’. It’s mid summer as well, so carry the glucose while you go on those marches, you’ll get the water supply anyways.

And medicos, what’s with the awkward nurse looking white coats? You’re on a strike or something like, not trying to show the world that you’re going to be doctors or something… frankly, nobody cares

Good news is, I’m just leaving the project this weekend and Antagonist’s gonna do the same in a couple of weeks’ time. But then ThinShark will continue to live on, no worries there.

Oh yeah, flip to Pune times and you get some cheap reason for Ayesha Takia (the initially pretty chick who’s now bloated and with a physical structure that leads to imbalance) to be happy.
No Calvin either.

Good news, there’s this friend in Bombay who makes it a point to mail a Calvin strip across every morn.

So much for supper…

Komodo Dragon
(with seasoning by Antya)

The Appraisal cycle

2006-04-18T10:50:00.000+04:00

is on, and is in the way of our reporting...
All that filling in forms our achievements and why we're indispensible genius' and opinionated in the right directions and flexible to ideas which agree with our points of view and other such

Anyways,
The point here being all this has got in the way of our reporting, all we can do now is go about gathering info regarding the reunion and all that Aamir and water etc.

we'll be back shortly

Sallu Jailed

2006-04-13T16:35:00.000+04:00

“Salman Khan arrested in Jodhpur” and a lot of gibberish following that.
How about that on the newspaper first thing in the morning?
When Floyd said "The lunatic is on the grass... The lunatic is in my head" they definitely didn't mean nincompoops being in jails. They were anti ridiculous news in that era, and that compared to the present seems quite golden, what?

Anyways, we, the keepers of the faith, the moral police, the unnecessary meddlers in things that don't concern us, decided (like all others of our type) to delve into the matter and come up with our own conclusions (derivations actually) based on all the on-field knowlege we could gather.

Nevermind the process we followed and such talk, here are the results:
Firstly lets inform you that none of the stuff you get to read on TOI is true, but they do really leave you with plenty of hints. (a la “The Da Vinci Code”)

Katrina comfort blows in – Alwar rapist gets 7 yrs in jail
(Just in case one thought Salman was bad ‘taste’)

This is the real story:
Salman walks in and meets Mr. Mahesh Sharma.

“Hi, I’m Sallu… me in for buck killing (probably)”
“Hi, Mahesh here, I kill only humans (definitely)”

There was a definite sobering down after that.

Elsewhere, the winds of change seems to have reached Mithu Lal Chauhan (jailor in Jodhpur)
He stated “Salman khan behaved well and has given us no cause for complaints”.

We didn’t have to go looking much coz there was a flood of news every minute, right from who lived with him to the 50 gms of “chana” and 20gms of “gur” he consumed for breakfast.

We can assure you that in the midst of all this mayhem, Mithu was looking a little blown (complimentary services by a certain Kat ).

With so much news flowing in by the minute thank god we were spared the glorious potty details.

In pop constipated Bro and up to now unheard of Sis (Alvira) married to a certain unheard of erstwhile star now a black hole (buck???). For purists… try exerting your memory to remember a certain Atul Agnihotri (not Kulkarni).. no points for guessing.. He’s not worth it anyways..

What next? Himesh does a show for jail inmates with that torn cap of his?
Now why that torn cap.. is anybody’s guess. (Curiosity kills the KAT… She went after the wrong head to blow.. but he got LUCKY )

Now more news, which hasn’t been disclosed as yet:

Bro and Sis together ran off to Ajmer to pray . You already know what the newsies told you. What you don’t know is WHY?? The buck killer graciously offered bro and sis to trade places.. and off they ran. To Ajmer to pray “God now that he’s 40+ time to give him some brains (and a shirt). You promised that many years ago.” For the fans of the shirtless wonder already know that he’s blessed with a Brawn .. a heart… and that’s about it.. The brains been missing all along.
Meanwhile, at the hospital in a metro.. MOM got sick. And guess who turned up?? Vivek Oberoi of all the people. Big Question WHY?????

What about the Nagapattinam deal? Did the amma of all tsunamis drive him back?
We didn’t bother finding out. Too much irrelevance anyways.

And wait.. before u guyz think that we’re not upto the times.. let us also tell you that the Buck Killer has just been bailed out… (no kat service this time… we definitely smell a RAT here)….
So now .. no more KAT service.. Mahesh has killed 1 human less.. and Mithu has had one too many..

Also..

There’s this big Reunion coming up (way up).

Definitely gonna cover all that. By hook, crook or Ivory.

More on that after it actually happens. Half the reuniting crowd is still on it’s way up.

Handover Activities

2006-04-13T08:21:00.000+04:00

If it's of any significance, there's news. I'm handing over the blog to three souls viz. Antagonist (Antya), AHAK (AHAK) and Komodo Dragon (Komodo)
I had a nice time writing and all that jazz... it's now up to the pros to keep this going

cheers,
The thin one

Floyd

2006-04-05T14:12:00.000+04:00

Go back about 3 years in time, open winamp’s voiceprint visualization option. Play a Floyd mp3 and experience heaven.

Make sure it’s pretty late at night and you are a little drowsy. Also make sure there’s nobody that’s going to enter the room and disturb you. This has to go on for about 4-5 hrs at least.

It’s better if there are 3-4 people with you and each of them should worship the band as much as you do.

Now this is music. Not the stuff that plays on the music channels these days.

If you’re apprehensive about the time travel part, get hold of a version of winamp that has voiceprint visualization. Don’t think the newer versions have that option.
Music is for the mind, not just the ear.

Music??

2006-03-21T14:04:00.000+04:00

The early morning bus journey to work is generally a quiet one. There’s hardly any traffic on the road and hence no noise. The passengers too are generally quiet with a few of them dozing off and most just enjoying the early morning weather. The radio in the bus is generally off or (if on) playing at a low volume. All in all, it is a pleasant journey, except on certain days. Today was one such day.

For some unknown reason, the driver decided to play a cassette instead of the regular radio or nothing today morning. The cassette seemed to one of those ‘All time greatest hits’ of a star performer of the current generation.

The Star:
Also known as ‘Kkhajooor’ among certain circles has a style of his own. Firstly he looks like a boar, which inexplicably ran into a tree while running at top speed. As if to add to it, he wears a ridiculous cap for all occasions and for god knows what, doesn’t shave (cost cutting probably). He talks absolute rubbish every time he’s allowed to talk (most people go crazy with a mike in front of them, so that’s forgivable). He somehow has a bad dressing sense (if any) as well.
Anyways, he’s a music man and hence isn’t expected to look good (though he appears in all his videos anyways), so let’s get to his music. Everybody seems to know about his nasal vocals and how much they leave to be desired. My personal opinion is that he’s among the worst singers to have hit the country (if you get the feeling that singers of nowadays are like thunderstorms, it’s intentional). A friend once dared me to sing like him instead of commenting, well I can’t sing like him, I can’t sing like a crow either, but that doesn’t mean a crow is melodious does it?
Pran’s Comments: His singing is perfectly very bad. You can’t but sympathize with the girl who rebuffs him in one of his videos.

Now his music: He seems to have hired a woodcutter to play drums. That guy thrashes out at the drums at irregular intervals and makes you nostalgic. You remember the days when such music wasn’t around and begin to feel suddenly old. Absolutely no guitaring, but a guitar features with him in his videos. Some odd DJ scratch effects, I couldn’t comment on this because I don’t know the good from the bad when it comes to scratch effects. I don’t even know if a good scratch effect does exist.
Most of the tracks seem to be Sufi or Indian classical fused with boy band style music with increased pace. The tunes are ordinary to start off and bad with the increased pace.

He’s supposed to generally compose music for movies starring a
1) Shirtless wonder + buck killer + roadrunner + stalker + a bald jail inmate (current status) and a
2) Certified serial kisser + truck driver.
Guess that explains a lot.

Guys, please watch RDB, get inspired, watch a news report and kill him accusing him of having bird flue. This would definitely be social service (Better than killing ministers and chicken for sure).

Sunil adds: The killing would be an incredible contribution to music.Sunil adds further: At least send him to Congo where he can live with the apes. They’ll accept him as one of their own as he looks, dresses, sings and acts like one of them.

nothing

2006-03-21T13:45:00.000+04:00

more to say