Thursday, December 31, 2009

U say g’bye n I say hello

Don’t question me on the title of this post…well OK I’ll still say it. There’s no particular reason, it’s just that the moment I sat down to think that I probably writing the last post of 2009, the Beetle song “You say goodbye and I say hello” started to play in my head. It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to it; I love the song. Though some might say it’s a silly song, it’s a great melody of very simple words that express the situations that I experience almost everyday. I also feel that the New Year is singing this song for me as I bid farewell to 2009 (Duh!) So what’s been the big north-east-west-south these days. Here are a few that caught me attention:
Rathore’s still being chased. New information is being revealed almost daily and today I learnt that a CBI official advised the complainants to “fight their own battle” and not rely on the state. He said that it wouldn’t take Rathore a stitch of an effort to tip things in his favor; this was truly emetic.
Tharoor, our tweety bird, is at it again. His attack on the corrective measures in the form of visa restriction is nothing but logical. They’re taking steps to restrict any two entries into India with at least a minimum of two months gap. Tharoor says that’s a silly step because the perpetrators of 26/11 never had any visas. While the visa restriction rule should also be welcome, stringent steps need to be taken to curb the way in which the terrorists actually planned their act and gave it life. If I have a heart condition and the doctor starts treating my brain, I’d call the doctor a nut case just as I call SM Krishna a nut case. Tharoor is one guy who calls shit as shit in front of everyone and gets the bastinado. Though I don’t fancy being referred to one of the cattle class, I still feel the hog-wash of ministers traveling the cheap way is…hog wash. There are bastards of bureaucrats who don’t vacate their official palatial homes when they should, don’t pay electricity bills to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees, molest women, indulge in violence and other crap. It is these people who should be brought to task and removed from the system and the rest, who have the ability to do their jobs, be allowed to travel business class. Up Tharoor, the charming iconoclast.
Well well well, look who’s landed in a sex scandal, ND Tiwari. This guy should wear the Gandhi cap on his crotch, not his head. I wish I could lay my hands on the video of this old leather bag making out, haven’t seen comedy in a long time. And hey! Look at the newspaper, he’s being welcomed in Dehradun, his hometown. Who’s welcoming him I wonder? Porn stars? No no, it’s our Hero-Worshipping Indian public. I must admit I tried to locate a pic or video of the scandal and just got to see three tiny pics. Ha ha ha ha I fell off the chair laughing. Had I not known this was ND Tiwari’s scandal photos, I might have mistaken them to be of a daughter kissing her father’s dead body on the cheek (well there was just Tiwari’s head and neck and some portion of the girls face in it). I mean come one, there’s Tiwari lying phut like a dead duck and…ah! Like I always say, it would be heart-wrenching was it not so gut-wrenching. I must not make fun of an old man like this, who knows I too might want to do the same at that old an age. I mean come on, if my legs are hanging in the grave, I am the Governor of a state, I have children who’re settled and married with kids and testosterone is still nudging me and Viagra is still available eh!! Heh heh heh heh!! And don’t need to do the sweaty job when you can just lie dead and let things be done to you than vice versa…I mean come on, the guy’s governor not a laborer…heh heh heh heh! (hey Paul McCartney’s shouting “we’re gonna have some tonight” in my PC speakers…what a situational song)
I recall the editorial in The Tribune I read a week or so ago that cerebrated on the issue of legalizing prostitution. Well the Dutch and some Aussies are paying legally for pleasures. It mentioned that studies have revealed that the advantages, the Aussies thought, were going to follow the legalization never followed. Illegal flesh and drug trade still flourished, mafia never budged and the condom enforcement was shrugged off by people who wanted more skin contact. Of course the repercussions are quite thinkable, more young minds growing up thinking that it’s all too normal (fought with your wife? well there’s always the brothel around the corner), more STD cases (Soon there’ll be a need to “celebrate” instead of “observe” World AIDS day…happy happy…one more festival). I know the names of at least three people who would love to back the legalization of prostitution in India: SPS Rathore, John Fernandes and our very own ND Tiwari. Of course Rathore might even want wish to legalize pedophilia. I mean c’mon, then they would just pay (the tax payer’s money) to buy some pleasure. In fact that’s what NDT did.
Down with these people, down also with morons that welcomed Tiwari…Tharoor should be allowed to travel in business class, I mean come on man.
Last but not the least, there’s China! Always in the Indian NEWS, like a hungry mad wolf, glaring down at my land, howling every now and then to remind me of it’s ominous presence and sending shivers down my spine. Tell me something, with people like NDT, JF and SPSR amongst the people running the show, do you think China has anything to worry about…it’d keep sending shivers down my spine for I know my guns are empty and so does the wolf.

HAPPY NEW YEAR SUCKERS!

Whisk-me

Of course it doesn’t take much alcohol anymore to get him drunk, I guess his liver’s sad from all the years of torture, unable to detoxify his blood alcohol the way it once used to. A year or two ago dad got a LFT (Liver Function Test) done. It revealed that his liver was perfect, so I guess it was a thumbs-up signal for him to go on. No he’s not an alcoholic otherwise, only on two occasions: Christmas time and Easter. I guess dad took the mention of wine here and there in the bible too seriously. “Water into wine” now I know why he loves Jesus. I drink socially; only that my society likes to drink more than the amount I personally approve of. At times friends are too pushy, this has been happening of late. I’m developing a small amount of repulsion towards alcohol. There’s just one think I’ve grown more tired of than ‘coke and whiskey’…Diet-coke and whiskey.

Diet coke I hate you but I’ll still consume you; you’re like a beautiful but dumb wife…err actually vice versa would be more appropriate here.
Lastly I apologize to my father for turning him into the subject of my jokes. No offence daddy, I love you (please don’t throw me out of the house if you ever read this) and I even love a little alcohol once in a while.

By the way, it's been in the news that alcohol, in whatever small amount, has NOT proved to be of any therapeutic use, as has been the belief till date. Like all such studies, it has been specified that the study holds good for Indian population. The following is an article from THE TRIBUNE:
A Tribune Exclusive
Alcohol good for heart? Not really
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service


First-ever study in India dispels alcohol myths
No evidence to suggest alcohol is good for the Indian heart
Avoid sudden and excess drinking
Drinks need to be taken with full meals

New Delhi, December 27
Who says moderate drinking of alcohol helps the heart? The first ever study conducted in India, not yet published, now claims that there is no evidence to suggest the firmly held popular belief that a drink or two protects the heart.

Dr KS Reddy, the Prime Minister’s personal physician who now heads the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), told The Tribune that earlier studies in the West claimed that moderate intake of alcohol protected the heart by enhancing insulin sensitivity and elevating high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, which helps cardiovascular health.

But the claim has failed the Indian test, with the first-ever study on the subject in India showing that alcohol, irrespective of the quantity in which it is consumed, is always harmful and never protective at all. In fact, Indians drinking alcohol have been found to be at two to three fold higher risk of heart disease than non-drinkers.

Led by Dr Reddy, who recently oversaw Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s heart bypass surgery at AIIMS, the study was conducted on employees engaged in 10 major industries across India and their family members.

“We have now shown in the Indian context that alcohol does not exhibit gains to cardiovascular health. Indians who drink face three fold higher risk of heart disease. The belief that moderate drinking helps the heart is not true for Indians,” Dr Reddy told The Tribune while pointing out that doubts are being voiced in the West too about the alleged protective properties of alcohol.

In 2007, the American Diabetic Association had claimed, “In individuals with diabetes, light to moderate alcohol intake (1 or 2 drinks per day; 15 to 30 ml alcohol) is associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease…”

But Dr Reddy’s study, initiated when he was still at AIIMS, looked at people in India with evidence of heart disease. “We found that people with heart disease were more likely to be drinking in the past,” said Dr Reddy, who looked at population from industries ranging from machine tools in Pune and cycles in Ludhiana to the tea estates in Assam.

“Many etymological studies in the West have shown that alcohol is good for the heart. This has something to do with the high fat intake in the food of westerners. While fat is known to increase the tendency towards blood clotting, alcohol is known to reduce the same. But we wanted to study a population where fat intake is not very high, like in India. We concluded that alcohol intake among Indians tended to fuel more electrical excitability of the heart which in turn led to fatal events like heart attacks besides de-stablilising diabetes control,” Dr Reddy said.

Indians also have a tendency to drink at festivals and over weekends. Warning that the ‘Holiday Heart Syndrome’ was extremely pronounced in India, Dr Reddy added, “Sudden and excess drinking must be avoided. Whenever people drink, they should take care to drink with full meal to delay the absorption of alcohol.”

The trend was confirmed by Dr Balbir Singh, chairman, cardiology, Medicity: “We are seeing more patients these days. It may have a relation to binge drinking over festivals. We can, however, say that the incidence of heart attacks is 20 per cent higher in winter.”

Acceptance

I want to come to terms with death. It’s the biggest truth yet we’re never taught how to deal with it. We have to take our lessons first hand. Why do people get hysterical when their loved ones die? Talk about parents, we all know that they’re gonna go and we’re gonna go too. Daljit uncle’s daughter was hysterical; she kept shaking the dead body and urging the father that was once in there to come back. So is there a soul after all? Does it leave the body when a person dies or do we just cease to exist when we die, no soul nothing, total termination? Without a system of belief backing me up, I’m confused about it. Had I followed religion, I would’ve believed that there was no end, there’d be eternity. To me the idea seems fanciful. What will I do for eternity? Will I float around like a cloud of air forever in a beautiful place called heaven or will I burn in hell? Without a body sensing it, will I feel the heat of hell? Will it hurt me if someone would whip me? If in all probability it won’t, how would it matter if I’d be in hell? I’d still be doing nothing much for eternity. What can eternity feel like if these thirty years of my life already feel like eternity? Would the pleasantness of heaven mean anything to me either? I talk about a couch being heavenly, a bike being heavenly, a sight being heavenly only because I have my five senses in place. I know that they’re connected to the brain that makes me respond to stimuli. Without all this, the senses and the brain, how would it matter to me if I’m being lovingly caressed or being punched, smelling the fresh air or putrid stench, watching the stunning milieu or a ghastly one, tasting a cake or dung, listening to music or cacophony whether for two minutes or for eternity. I remember the time I was 6 or 7 and that seems to be two millions years ago already…what is eternity? The other extreme though more logical, sounds sad; final termination, I will cease to exist. I do not wish to deliberate too much on it. Of late, I’m just possessed at the thought of training myself to accept death as a normal part life (or end to life). Something that’s never talked about till it happens. Of course a statement from dad like, “hey son, these are the papers of the house and I’m keeping them there. You know where to find them in case I die today” would sound ridiculous. But I just want to come to terms with the fact that my parents will die someday and very possibly not together. What will the other parent go through in such an event? How will I react? Will I be like Daljit uncle’s daughter, shaking the dead body shouting, “wake up dad, you can’t go away” or will I be quiet, sad and accepting of the fact that he’s gone for good? Heaven or hell, at least for my near and dear ones, I will cease to exist as a person when I die. The man/woman will go, the memories and works will live on. Anyway, no matter how much I prepare myself, I’d never know what it feels like till it actually happens.

I remember the time my dad was waiting to be operated upon. He was on a stretcher and I was sitting next to him on a small stool. I thought they’d take him in soon but it was a 12 hour wait. When I felt the energy sap out from me, I put my head down next to his and held his cold hand. I couldn’t help but think that he might die. I couldn’t hold back the tears so took deep breaths and just let them flow. I thought he was unconscious, he was almost so. I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t imagine being in his place, having a foot run over by a bus. It was mangled beyond recognition. When they opened the bandages for preliminary examination, I couldn’t believe I was looking at a foot; I couldn’t see sole, I couldn’t see toes, just mangled flesh. They assessed the situation and re-bandaged his foot. Then they sent him for operation which was carried out 12 hours from the time he was sent. Here I was sitting next to my dad, the guy I’ve disliked most of my life, the guy who roughed me up almost everyday when I was young, the guy who I feel is unreasonable many a time…here I was shivering at the thought of losing him. I wept quietly. He reached out with his other hand and placed it on my head. That was the time, I wanted to hug him and howl my heart out. I wish I had the power to make him alright. I wished I was the doctor and would take him into the OT that very second and make him alright, I wished I was a magician, I wished I was God and would touch his foot and make it as it was before it came under the bus. I felt helpless, I felt angry, I wanted to lash out at everyone around me. Then I saw guy covered in a bloody white sheet, he was shivering. He was taken into the OT a few hours before my dad. The next day when my dad was in the recovery room, that boy was shifted next to him. He was staring blankly at the ceiling. He was a thirteen year old Nepali boy. He was traveling without ticket in a train and on realizing he was about to get caught, he jumped out of the moving train. He was lying there with two stumps that were once legs; amputated knee below. The world is real, it was real for me, it was real for that boy, what was to happen had happened, we’d just have to accept it and make the best of it; we didn’t have a choice. The Emergency Room is hellish in its own right only that this hell had angels tending to bodies damned by accidents. There’s no one scolding you for being reckless, for not being careful despite knowing the dangers, they’re just out to save you. For me, that makes this world better than any Heaven.

For reasons that I will one day cease to exist for the people who know me, I must do constructive work, something that’s gonna make at least someone happy.

Control yaar

John Fernandez, in the Indian context, the name seems to have come out of a 70s Hindi movie of some nondescript alcoholic servant/taxi driver, who’d sell his soul for another bottle of whiskey. The caricature of such a Christian characters is often depicted with a small bottle of alcohol in his coat, talking in a slurred Hindi, English mixed language. Oh! We Christians with Christian names have never had it easy in here. Since I was a kid, my peer used to wonder and often ask me about what food I eat at home and presume that my dad would be a drunkard with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and rosary in the other. I was considered a motley clown with the skin of a black man, the name of a white man and the life of a…they didn’t really know, just thought it would be different from theirs. Different it was but out of helplessness more than out of religion. Anyway, let’s get back to John Fernandez, this one’s no poor Jesse Samuel; he’s a high profile politician from South Goa. I saw his interview on TV in which he was giving clarifications on the accusation of him having raped a 25 years old Russian girl. His speech was slurred and he fumbled as words rushed out of his mouth like bullets out of a misfiring machine gun. Thank you John Fernandez, now they’ll presume that I’m a sex addict too, crouching to ambush my next victim heh heh heh!! Ah but politicians are loyal to no religion but to each other. You see the brotherhood between politicians, Mr. Shantaram Naik and Mr. Digambar Kamat came out in your support. They way they defended you by counter-attacking the victim saying that she shouldn’t’ve been out late in the night with men, can be aptly interpreted as following:
“When we see beautiful women at night, the normal faculties of our brain cease to function and our bodies are taken over by testosterone. We turn into robots that have been programmed to do only one thing, have intercourse. We are least bothered if the woman is uninterested or even repelled, she has already sealed her fate by being in our vicinity. All women should understand that.”
These are politicians speaking? These are the people we’ve chosen to run our country/parts of it. Now I see why there’s opposition to increasing the number of women MPs, these men would find it difficult to work in the parliament. They might molest somebody in there too.
In our modern city of Chandigarh too, a ride in the local bus any working day would reveal the extent to which school/college going boys, middle aged and old men go to “touch” and “feel” young girls (many of them school-going). It’s gut-wrenching more than heart-wrenching. I’ve been a mute spectator like the hundreds like me that see but are maimed. Who do you go to? The police? They’re the biggest reprobates of them all. How do you fight alone against a group of 10 guys that have ganged up to trouble women? I wish I had a gun but then two wrongs wouldn’t make a right. The popular belief amongst these men is that if you can’t express it the way they do, you’re impotent. They say “it nudges us so we indulge.” Well? Does it mean that I have teeth so I must bite? I have nails to I must claw? I was never taught to be decent so I can’t be. Duh! I also don’t have a brain so don’t expect me to think!! I guess that’s fair enough.
So I keep walking through the dirt and disorder in my room till I trip over the grimy shoes myself. Till it happens to my sister or my partner, I, like a decent Indian man sitting in the bus, not wanting to get into trouble, should put the headphones on, whistle and look out of the window and ignore the events occurring a foot from me in every direction. It’s kinda difficult but I manage, if only with a raised blood pressure. By the way, John Fernandes is obsconding, please check out his photo on the net and be on a lookout. Let’s catch him wherever he is.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

THERE HE IS!!

The hound just spotted him, the chase is on.
Rathore's on his feet. The unconscionable smile he wore, after being gifted six months and one thousand rupees, will wear off soon.
The hounds comprising the public, the media and now even the politicians (heh heh heh!! Always game for cheap publicity eh?) are after the maneater. Will he find his mates on the way and chase the hounds back or will he succumb?
Let's see what how the chase ends.
WE'RE WATCHING!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Thirty

Shit!!
Today I turned thirty.
When I was twelve and my sister eighteen, I used to wonder if I'd ever grow up to be eighteen. Puh! Silly of me to think so.
Today just happened to be one of the busiest days. It was self induced!
I planned a ton, only because I was superstitious enought to think that today success was ready to kiss my forehead in all my ventures. Silly of me! I screwed up half the work I started. Ah success did kiss my forehead in the other half after kickin my butt. Now I'm sitting writing this post in totally jinxed state of mind. The timer is about to go off; it's time to inactivate ligation.
The work's unending. I'm glad I can take the bull by the horns now, even if I get gored once in a while :)

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Uncivil Servant

There are three things that lead to success in Civil Services: Hard work, hard work and more hard work. The competition is intense. You have to be very knowlegeable, resonably intelligent and totally prepared. If all works out for you, you finally face the interview and if you're selected for any one of the services (IAS, IPS and IFS), you are considered "creme" stuff :)
You work that hard to earn that title of a "civil servant". Of course these days you can't trust servants so much, they commit all kinds of wrong doings. Let's pick the case of one such civil servant. The ex-Haryana DGP, S.P.S Rathore.

Now let's check out what this civil-servant is guilty of?

Nineteen years ago in 1990, when he was serving, he molested Ruchika, a thirteen year old girl!
Wait there's more! he got her suspended from CLTA (Chandigarh Lawn Tennis Association), got her expelled from school, got eleven cases slapped against her brother, got her father to sell off his property in Panchkula and got five cases filed against the victim herself.
The girl committed suicide three years later.

With a "massive: fine one thousand rupees and a "rigorous imprisonment" of six months, the CBI thinks it has done justice.

Who was his his attorney? His own wife, Mrs. Rathore. A formidable team of a lawyer and an IPS officer against the (now older) friend of a dead 13 year old, the competition seems unevenly matched. The Smile on Mrs. Rathore's face (as seen in the local newspaper)proudly displayed the satisfaction she received after her victory over a few pounds of flesh that were burnt in 1993. The flesh, her client, life-partner and possibly father of her children touched everywhere, the hands that should've been locked for good in manacles. To think that there's any conscience residing in Mrs. Rathore would be definitely a wrong conception.
Six months and a thousand bucks (that's like USD 20) is a good enough punishment, so feels the CBI special magistrate, J. S. Sidhu.

CBI loses nothing but the common man's trust (huh! Yeah! like they're bothered)
Rathore's win.
Ruchika loses, but what more can you lose than life.
Another muddy shoe in our room that we'll toss aside.

Keep yourself in Ruchika's shoes for a while and think of all that happened, put yourself in her families shoes, put yourself in her friend's shoes. With people like John Fernandes and S.P.S. Rathore running the show, no one is safe.

Please follow the link
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20091222/main2.htm

Friday, December 18, 2009

Ody-Mel of a ar-schol

Don’t Rebel
Delay’s trivial
Idea Novel
Cast a Spell
This will sell
Patents Revel

Distant Travel
Green grass Dazzle
Destination Final?
Who can tell!

Author in a journal
Egos swell
dreams a Nobel
Life’s a Spiral
Locked in a cell

Look he’s again
stuck in a shell
Ring the bell
Myths Dispel
Do plan big,
execute it well

I look, I don’t see

12/12/09

I read somewhere that we look at various objects around us but many of them don’t necessarily register in our brains. A simple exercise to prove this was given: leave your room right now without looking around at anything and then start to describe your room in detail. Write about every wall and whatever hangs/leans on it, each and every table shelf and the stuff on it. Take your time and when you feel that you’ve done the job to the best of your abilities, return to your room and tally the list with the facts. It is said that most people will, more often than not, be quite surprised if not downright shocked at many things that are either wrong or missing from their list. So we look but don’t see, there might be clutter everywhere but after sometime, the brain stops to register it (ha! It needs to do other stuff not waste resources in what you choose to ignore time and again). So we live on in the clutter, things might get really grimy till we start to notice them. This generally happens when the dirt/clutter starts to create hindrance, say your shoes and slippers are lying scattered on the floor and you trip over them a few times and finally take notice and put them in order, or some may just chose to throw them in some corner. The table might be dirty but not till you sit down to work on it and feel that it’s difficult to do so because of the clutter, will you finally tidy it up. Your vehicle might be dirty but you wouldn’t take notice till one evening you come out of the house all dressed up to realize that you wouldn’t wanna be seen in that dirty cocoon on wheels. It’s either relative to something better (your dirty car at the parking next to a same clean and gleaming model next to it) or the hindrances in daily work (tripping over shoes) that make you see the disorder.
Disorder, anarchy, demagoguery, dirt, mockery of the parliament, filth, hatred, defalcations, bribery, sycophancy, injustice, murder, inequality, discrimination; when will the billion trip over these grimy sneakers in unison to see it all. I look at these everywhere, I chose not to see.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Follow up on Dawkin's Documentary

The audience was fired up after the show; religion, as shown in the documentary, is definitely a problem in the west. I really think such a documentary shouldn't be mass aired, and if it is, it should definitely have a followup in the form of an Indian context. It seemed the sudience found Dawkins to be too agreeable. What people forget is that if Richard Dawkins were to make such a documentary in the Indian Context, he'd probably die in the process, out of an outrage induced high blood pressure.

There were some things that you just couldn't deny in the documentary but it seemed extreme. I think Richard Dawkins should relax; I'm sure his parents did not indoctrinate him about Evolution, but he seems to one it's strongest proponents. Let people believe in what they want to, that's the benefit of living in a secular democracy. If evolution is not taught at school, it wouldn't debilitate people, it'll always be free for people to read and believe in. In fact G.J. Mendel, the father of genetics was actually a monk. That didn't stop him from laying the foundations of genetics in a scientific manner. Besides, it's not like all these schools, Hospitals and Shelters built by various religions around the world are harming people, in fact they're contributing in a positive way to mankind. So religion definitely cannot be the root of all evil. Having said that it cannot be denied either that all religions of the world seem to be getting more and more orthodox, rigid and offensive. Richard Dawkin's point was an extreme too.

When the collar is high and the neck stiff, it's difficult to peep inside.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Discombobulated

Today I watched a documentary titled “The root of all evil: The God delusion”, played at the movie club of our institute. Made by a American scientist, it hit out at the institution of religion, basically Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The man explained how the Theory of Evolution explains all the complexities of life present on the earth. He brought out the contrast of the explanation of genesis of life by religion and by science by pointing to a massive cliff. He said that religion says that the world, its life and man was created by God in six days, so it explains the point from ground (nothing) to another at the top of the cliff (everything) in one simple way: God created it. Then he walks to the backside of the cliff that has a gradual inclination leading to the top of the cliff and says this is the way that science explains it, by evolution, the gradual development of complexity of life on earth over billions of years. He said that the Christians in the US were becoming extremists, preventing evolution from being taught at schools. He drove past a street which had numerous churches and billboards saying Jesus this, Jesus that, and said that there were nothing but four walls meant to mislead the masses and make money. He even drove past and then into the campus of a humungous, billion dollar church being run by a very politically powerful evangelist. Inside of the building was dazzling with halls for music, prayer service etc (frankly I found it sickening too). When this fellow went to interview the evangelist, he was forthcoming at first but as the questions became sharp, so did the answers and tone of the priest. The priest then cross questioned, “I can’t believe that this (pointing to his eye) just happened by accident”, to which the director/interviewer snapped, “We never said that it’s an accident, it’s all been a gradual development. Evolution never says that such things happened by accident, in fact it’s explained in a much better way than the way religion does.” Soon the priest lost his temper and ordered them all to get lost. As they scampered away, he chased them shouting, “get off my property or I’ll have your tapes seized. You can’t tell my flock that they’re animals.” (This was repulsive too).
This scientist guy had some pretty sharp invectives hurled at religion. He then traveled to Jerusalem and found out that the holy city is but fraught hatred of the three religions towards each other. He even interviewed an Islam convert (from Judaism!! He was an American!!) to ask him why was there so much of hatred there. He said that I am an atheist and I don’t hate anybody to which the angry man spontaneously replied, “I hate atheist because they live by the law of man whereas we live by the law of Allah. Why are you doing so many injustices to the Arabs and Muslims? Why do you go around drinking while your women walk in the streets dressed like prostitutes?”
The man replied, “We don’t dress our women, they dress themselves, it’s their business”
The convert replied “Then you should take care of what they wear”
The man asked, “It seems like you want Islam to capture the whole world”
The convert replied “Yes I do and that will happen.”
Then he showed videos of some place in America where the “free minded” atheists lived, almost ostracized by the community. They were all planning to move to Canada.

I watched it all and sighed; I was born and raised in a Christian family. I might be influenced by it but I stay away from any form of “~ism”. I couldn’t help but notice the frequent sneering snuffs from the audience as they watched the documentary. We as Indians should be more reserved in such regards, this is a place where some people are burnt alive, raped, tortured and discriminated against not just on the basis of religion but also on the basis of colour, sex, caste etc. We live in a secular, democratic country and can act the way we want, sometimes without the slightest compunction. This was a documentary, like literature it reflected and was aimed at projecting one part of the story, the side of the evolutionists. Whether to take it as totally correct or totally baseless is at the discretion of the viewer. The debate will never end. Whether Allah will come, or Jesus will come or somebody from the realms of Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism or Jainism will come to save/destroy the world and I really do not see the point in cerebrating over it. I do not know if there’s a God or there’s been a dynamic biological evolution to have finally created me, all I know is that my tea is colder than it was when I started to write. Phuh!
I’ll end this with a brilliant quote by Ashleigh Brilliant “Hate me if you must but please don’t misunderstand me.”

Friday, December 11, 2009

The old box

If Mayuri's seven year old PC is shouting "retirement retirement", my ten year old PC is wheezing "respirator respirator". It cost Rs. 53000/- back then; I could buy a cool laptop with that kind of money now. It's cranium is an AT cabinet, the technology of which was in it's autumn even back then. It's cerebrum is a Pentium III 500MHz which was the state of the art intelligence in 1999. It's bus speed was 133MHz and when I told my friends about the 128Mb SDRAM (100MHz), they drooled (of course, back then). My 15" CRT monitor was bigger than most 14" owned by my peers. I'm talking about the time when the price of a SONY CD-writer drive was 21000/- (yes twenty one thousand rupees). Of course I didn't own one. The hard-disc was an 8GB monster and the cute little niche for the Floopy Drive added a to the beauty of the metal-plastic box. Windows98 was the talk of the time and was marked improvement over Windows95. I fiddled a lot with my comp; opened the box up every now and then to clean it and/or add remove components. I installed and removed various linuxs, Windows 2000, Millenium (the most shitty one) and finally XP (relief at last). The comp went with me to Patiala and stayed there for two years till I completed MSc in 2005. It came back with me and is still serving me well. The upgrades include a second hand 40GB HD that I bought from my friend (he wanted to get rid of it for he was upgrading to a 160GB), a CD writer and a LAN card. Of these 10 years, I've run it without a UPS for almost 5 years and during this period it has bypassed the proper shutdown system innumerable times, with the electricity department snuffing it's life out time and again. Since it refused to die, I rewarded it with a battery replacement of the UPS. Oh I just recalled, this torture did take its toll with the SMPS blowing out one day. The one for AT cabinet was not available so the engineer installed a second-hand repaired SMPS. It roars when started, I've been unable to find the reason so I've just learned to live with it...anyway it becomes silent after 3-4 minutes of running.
The only thing that hasn't gone totally obsolete in this system is the ARTIS 4.1 sound system which are still serving me boomingly well. Well actually nothing's wrong with the computer either. It runs perfectly well and resonable quick with Windows XP, maybe because the only programs I use are MS-WORD, MS-POWERPOINT and media player. So maybe it's not the computer that's wheezing...maybe it's I who's looking down upon it. The fact is that if any of the component malfunctions or is rendered irreparable, it would translate to an expensive or impossible repair (part unavailability).
Anyway it's a world where smaller is better, so a lappie would definitely make me happy. Daddy, it's my 30th B'day and err... Ahem!! I think I know what you're gonna gift me...and NO NO I do not want a bride!!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

A trip down the memory lane

while reading Ashish's post http://iamplural.blogspot.com/2009/11/house-i-left-behind.html I remembered something from last year.

Our last accomodation from where we moved out 19 years ago, was rented (not one provided by the govt.) and I felt algia of the nost (sorry hee hee) everytime I thought about it. The park where I moved out of the house for the first time to make friends, where I'd hide from my dad evertime ma cooked fish (dad'd force me to eat it), the streets where I first learned how to ride a bicycle and scooter, the place where I'd watch the other boys play cricket (I hated it) and then go play with the boys who played with the girls (Ughh!), where I made my first gang of bad boys when I grew bigger (n we all got beaten up by the big boys), where my sister and I spent the summer and winter vacations and she'd bring me loads of comics and storybooks when she came home from her boarding school...sigh! There were so many memories attached to the place. Despite having my own vehicle and being in the vicinity many a time, I never went to that square...till last year.

That night I rode towards the place with memories flashing faster with every meter I covered towards that area. To my dismay, the top floor didn't exist like i knew it, it was all redone in a grand way; beautiful dim lights beckoned through the huge windows covered by semi see-through net-curtains. My little house where I grew up, where I had some of the most memorable times of my life, was history...sob!!

19 years is a long time, the place had changed, and as I moved away, I realized, so had I.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Maddening ads

Lifebuoy soap claims to have the power to counter the swine flu pandemic. It doesn’t state that explicitly but leaves enough audio-visual cues to get most people to think so. I’m NOT trying to undermine the importance of washing hands with a disinfectant soap to prevent swine flu, but to loudly claim that it’ll give you 100% protection against the swine flu virus can be misinterpreted. I’m sure Lifebuoy has the capability to incapacitate or remove the H1N1 from its area of application in a certain way for a certain period of time, but this can lead people to wrongly think that swine flu can be stopped by using Lifebuoy alone. True, one should not forget that an infected person’s hands are likely contaminated by the virus and whatever this person touches becomes a source of infection for others. Therefore you should wash your hands and try not to frequently touch your face without thoroughly washing your hands first. But unless you read between the lines, statements like “SWINE FLU SE DARNE KA NAHIN, LADNE KA (you shouldn’t fear swine-flu, you should fight it)” can make common people rather careless to other ways of contracting the infection. Of course once the virus enters your body, you will have no option but to fight it, for it will fight back to turn your body into breeding grounds for its posterity. Swine flu, like any other flu is an airborne infection. If an infected person sneezes in your proximity, the virus directly enters your lungs via microscopic droplets in the air as you breathe, washing your hands with Lifebuoy isn’t gonna help. Once that happens, maybe washing your mouth, trachea, bronchus, bronchioles and alveoli thoroughly with lifebuoy might help but let me tell you that that would be impossible without killing you first…or in the process. I feel that the ad should be more vocal about this fact. It is the way these people highlight one fact and downplay other, equally important ones, from the whole story that gets me worried. Please inform yourself more about this disease.
Another ad I do not like: Idea cellular. 26/11/08 the day terror knocked straight at the Gateway of India and entered The Taj Hotel. We were all shocked and in disbelief as the events unfurled. We are all still emotional about it. One year hence, Abhishek Bacchan appears on the T.V. screen with a serious face and requests the viewers to pick up their idea cellular phones and go crazy making calls on 26/11 (today). He informs us that the money thus generated will be given away to the police (in lieu of the sacrifices they made on 26/11/09…I do not remember if it’s hinted at or explicitly stated in the advertisement). I wish this ad were a little more informative. The ad neither tells whether the money would go to the families of the policemen who died or were injured in the incidence or to Mumbai police or to some other police force. I’m especially restive because recently it was in the news that some of the police officers did not report to duty when called in the emergency situation of 26/11. Are these people gonna get a share of the collections as well? I request someone to tell Abhishek Bacchan (whoever can), that the next time he brings a somber face on the screen to conjure up our emotions in the name of national integration, generated out of a crisis situation, to please request the people, who pay him crores for an advertisement, to give us (the viewers) a lucid insight into what they’re requesting us to do and who does it help and in what way?
These ads either contain only hints to something that the common’s psyche automatically builds on in presumption (which might be incorrect) or hide important facts from the complete story; both are unfair practices. I think I’m gonna try and find out how to use the RTI, I’m sick of so many things happening around me. Call me cynical if you must.
Only last week I received a forwarded mail giving incomplete details of some woman claiming to be in a financial crisis after her husband suffered total paralyses. It gave no details of the city, no details of the place the husband worked. The mail said the woman had two kids whereas the picture showed three. I couldn’t help but raise my skeptical eyebrow at this. I mailed to all the people that were on this mail’s mailing list about this doubt of mine. As I was typing this email, I googled the name of this lady in another window…lo and behold…the name was found in the list of hoax mails. Every time the mail was forwarded, it added a few paise in the account of the conman, who devised this great plan. People just ignored it and said, “it doesn’t matter to me for it doesn’t cost me money and hardly takes time to forward it to a 100 people”. Why would you help a thug to even earn one paisa? Why would you even spend one second of your time to do that? How bloody careless and lost are you? It’s surely good to be kind and benevolent but is it not good to also be attentive and vigilant? How long are we gonna be a bunch of idiots, fooled by every Tom, Dick and Harry who plays on the strings of our emotions?
SORRY I DIGRESSED, I’ll get back to the mad world of ads. There’s one genre that conquers the rest (in my opinion i.e.); comedy. I love comedy, at times sarcastic (though I feel it is best avoided), goofy, slapstick, witty, any kind of comedy. When I hear the bingo mad angles song playing on TV, I stop all other activity and watch the ad. The pretty girl and the lovesick boy gesturing to each other from their balconies with the melodious song playing in the background, it all makes me happy. The mischievous flying kiss of the girl that is slyly and skillfully captured into the shirt pocket by the boy is a treat to watch. The expressions of the girl hence say something’s gone terribly wrong, and the first time I saw the ad, I was sure it would be another girl but wait, the next shot captures the boy’s shirt pocket on fire. He hastily slaps it out. Then the girl looks at the packet in her hand…and the music goes BOINGGG!!! The reason of the fire is ascribed to the fiery hot flavor of the mad angles that were transmitted to the boy’s shirt via the flying kiss. The next part, which is mostly omitted from the shorter version of the ad, shows that the two meeting with the hot mad-angles still in the girl’s hands. This rightfully (obviously) alarms the boy and he lowers his welder-helmet that he’s wearing, to cover his face and hence protect is from the fires in the girl’s mouth. WOW! I’d suggest that the boy eats the hot mad-angles too and they both can thus get cosy; fire beats fire.
We talked about two kinds of transmissions, swine-flu and fire. I’d go with the fire transmission. If I were you, I’d go to the CDC website and read more about swine flu to learn how to protect myself rather than trust a bunch of currency-note hungry businessmen, trying to mislead me in the smallest way in connivance with the ad-psychologist they call “dream merchants”. I’d call them nightmare salesmen. Call me cynical…ah! A cynic that loves comedy!

Boot camp Harley

I registered myself for Harley Davidson boot-camp on the internet yesterday. There was a button that said “win your place in the boot camp” so I opted for it because being a part of the Harley Davidson boot camp costs 3500 bucks! I just had to give my name, address, age and the bike I own and punch in 30 words saying why I deserve to be in the boot camp. I didn’t know what boot camp really meant in this context but I figured I’d get to ride a Harley (maybe for a couple of days) so I wrote something like this (I don’t remember the exact words) “I’ve done long roads, many a time, bad ones on my Bullet. I’d like to know what it feels like to do it with more power, control and technical finesse.” I remember that the one I actually wrote was also 29 or 30 words.
In all probability, these lines were unimpressive but what the heck, that’s all I could manage surfing Harley website for a few minutes, hiding from my boss. I really don’t know of any person who knows about motorcycles and doesn’t wish to ride (and of course own, if possible) a Harley Davidson. I especially like the SPORTSTER; it impresses me with its bobber looks and crouching posture. It seems like it’s ready to spring into action at the twist of that throttle.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Bondage

As far freedom of expression and liberty is concerned, living in this part of the world is difficult sometimes. No, I will not thank God that I’m not living in Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not do so because India has a system is place that gives me the freedom to exercise my will regarding what religion I follow, who I marry, who I vote for etc without being under any kind of pressure from any quarter. I know someone who resides in the US with her parents and was slapped viciously by her father when she expressed her desire to marry her boyfriend in India. The reason was that the boy wasn’t from the same caste as her. This is the ugly truth no matter wherever we go, we carry this attitude with us. I know someone who is facing difficulty picking his girlfriend up from near her place (they both work at the same place) because people the people who’re present there every morning stare and gossip about them, and not wanting to be left behind, the neighbours are out spying too. These middle and old aged culture vultures are out on the voyeuristic prowl, imagining things that they fantasize in their dark dreams. If you’re one of those vile hypocrites who’d point their fingers and say that the girls parents must not be aware that she goes with the guy, I’d say you’re true and it’s because of people like you that they don’t know. There are people busy hard-wiring their children to live a certain way and to think a certain way; it cripples the kids without them ever knowing about it. I’m not against teaching good habits to your children but that is an aspect barely touched upon as seen in the kind of creatures that have entered youth, roaming in the city streets. Only in the beginning of this week a brawl broke out at the local KFC in which a boy was stabbed. People like talking about high principles and morals but lack basic manners and courtesy. Today CNN IBNs office in Mumbai was attacked by the Shiv-Sena workers. The reason was that this news network criticized Bal Thackery for criticizing Sachin Tendulkar for saying that he was an Indian before he was a Marathi. That’s the deplorable status quo of the national pride as seen in the leaders of political parties.
What does liberty mean in this society? It seems to mean that so long as you have money and contacts, you have the freedom to do as you like and the liberty to pay your way out of your deeds. Who are the people enforcing the law here? Gluttonous, greedy perverts that take ages to reach crime scenes and when they do, they’re inept doing what they’re supposed to and adept at committing unscrupulous acts themselves. I’ve known girls who’ve called up the police station to report acts of eve-teasing only to be discouraged by the voice on the other end of the line advising them against lodging a formal complain stating that it would be a tedious and a messy process that they should avoid. When I lost my wallet a few months ago and went to report it to the police station, the policeman was rude to me and said that he had a whole lot of work and careless people like me were increasing his work load. He went on to show me his wallet saying “see this, I have it for the past 20 years, I’ve never lost it.” I politely replied, “Even I hadn’t lost mine for the past ten” at which he frustratingly told me to go back and come the next day. I was lucky, that night, a gentleman walked up to my place with my wallet that he’d found in the parking lot. Last year in July when a bus ran over my father’s toes (and ripped the whole sole off his foot) and he was lying on a bloody stretcher in the hospital waiting to be taken into surgery, the policemen arrived. My father wasn’t in a state to give any statements. These bastards were being rude to him and pressing him to sign a paper that said the accident was all his own fault…UNBELIEVABLE! This was happening in front of my eyes. I was too shocked to see my father in that condition to react. A friend advised my dad to do so and not get into the mess for now because there was another important thing we needed to concentrate on; keep him alive.
Its sin to have a girlfriend but it’s ok to go around eve-teasing because in the former case, you’ll face the wrath of the society and in the latter case…well no one will bother to catch you. This is the liberal democracy I live in. People take the law into their own hands to punish people for falling in love and marrying (“Haryana’s Khap Panchayats), where nuns are raped to punish a community (how do these bastards get aroused in front of a resisting, crying helpless woman?), where goons try to gag the press, where a surprise check would reveal a staggering number of inebriated on-duty cops, where the common man is busy hard-wiring his/HER kids to be like him or something he/SHE always wanted to be but never was. Where is the bloody freedom to speak or choose, where is the liberty to develop and follow my own thought? We’re all slaves. I want more bloody freedom; this is not enough for me.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

I just woke up to a song playing in my mind “Just Good Friends” by Michael Jackson. I used to love this song as a kid. Way back in the 80s my sister and I used to listen to a lot of music and MJ’s tapes were on our favorites list. I don’t remember the last time I heard this particular song, it was probably in the 80s only for when we shifted to our present home in 1991 February, we’d lost many of tapes including BAD. Besides I was getting into other kind of music by Guns n Roses, Eric Clapton, Color Me Badd and even rap but MJ was still one of my favs. It was time I was in school and never had money to buy original tapes so I’d spend the last rupee (of the very few I had) to get songs recorded on blank tapes; a true music pirate. MJ bombed the world in those days with his album Dangerous and the songs like Black or White, Jam, In the Closet, Remember the Time, Who is It dominated the charts.
Anyway I jumped out of bed and headed straight for MJs MP3 CD that I borrowed from my friend. It’s a pirated CD but I had no compunctions about enjoying it; Why? MJ’s dead, he doesn’t need money anymore to pay of the debts that he died under.

The first MJ song I heard was Dirty Diana in 1987…or so I thought. There was guy who had a locally-made stereo, and he kept two of the four big speakers inside two big earthen pots that raised the bass to a level that made you feel that the bass-guitar and drums were playing right inside your tummy and yes, they weren’t hard on the ears at all). I was sitting in his room and when he played Dirty Diana and the music raised the hair of my head (didn’t have any body hair, hey I was seven half years old then). I never liked the way the song ended but then again, this was Michael Jackson and the slightest twitch in any part of his body would lead to a couple of dozen people fainting in awe (at least back then), who was I to pass a judgment on him. Then I looked at the cover of the cassette and went WOW! There was Michael Jackson, light brown stretched skin, dressed in “are you for real” studded jacket embellished with chains and whatnots wearing his propriety glove in one hand. This picture’s not the same as the typical one you get to see on a BAD album in which MJ’s is looking like a white man (Woman?!?). The confusion was generated when after going back home I heard the familiar “Beat It” again and exclaimed HEY THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG HERE!!! This guy sounds the same as that guy but he is black while that one was…well…brown! Then the revelation, both cassettes had Michael Jackson written on them (yeah! I’d never paid so much attention before, hey!! I was a kid). So my sister told me that he’d had a cosmetic surgery done. I asked her why, she replied as a matter of factly “to look better”. Of course throughout my life I was made to realize why White is better than Black, at least in this part of the world. So I understand why Michael did it. Though he maintained that it was vitiligo…maybe it was…but I’ve never seen such an even progression of vitiligo, I thought it spreads in patches but since MJ says to it must be true. Later I learnt looks didn’t help sell his records better as his Album Thriller holds the Guinness Record for the largest selling singles album, the time when he was black.
Anyway he got message across in his songs and when I heard the lines “I’m not gonna spend my life being a color” in the song Black or White, I sighed and said “I understand MJ”. Living in the US (the land of liberty and freedom) and being popular ever since he was kid, if one wrote and songs “They don’t really care about us”, we here, can only wonder what was plaguing him.
Though there was a time when I was filled with scorn for MJ (late 90s through to the time he died), his creative genius seemed to be taking a nose dive, so did the way he look; ALIEN. But just like he did, I thought that he would never die. When he did I realized for myself that death is the ultimate truth. There were other people who lost their lives around me, but I really thought that MJ would never die. A lyricist, singer, dancer, a creative genius, there was but one Michael that was also a Jackson. What a sad end! I have no shame in shouting it out loud “I’M A MICHAEL JACKSON FAN”. Now as thoughts overwhelm me and my writing becomes more of a nonsensical and incoherent, I’ll close this post (I’m getting late for work) and continue listening to the MJ songs playing on my computer while I get ready (Ha! It’s so much easier to obtain music nowadays unlike back then).

Now's moving


My head’s dizzy, just enough,
to hallucinate that I’m in love
the one that was never mine
the one that happened
twenty times nine

My eyes see things unseen
It’s pitch dark but these trees
look so green
the lights flashing at the distance
tell me to go on, despite
my resistance

tell me my friend, do you want advice?
I’ll give it from the bottom of my heart
Though it might be filled with vice
Tell me too, what to do of all this despair
Tell me why life’s to me anything
but fair

The night is cold but I’m not
I’m on fire
right now I’m The Zealot
these visions make the real surreal
being alive right now is no big deal

Death wouldn’t end me now
I’ll leave this flesh,
and live on somehow
I’m intangible, I’m a soul
Right now, I’m with myself
I’m complete, I’m whole
Tomorrow I’ll be another book
eating dust on the shelf

A book with many chapters
One of which deals with rapture
a time when it’s just about me
beyond which nothing else I see

That’s the last one I’m sure
Dear friend I’ll have no more
Time to drink just got over
Must hurry back home,
though I would’ve like it slower

I’m just another beggar on the street
An invalid trying to find his feet
A voice from a throat parched and dry
Or maybe a mind that’s just gone awry

The surreal now looks more real
With regret for things I just said
I admit, I’m better off alive
than dead

I don’t care Heaven or Hell
This is my time I’ll spend it well
I see them both every now and then
I see them in the form of men

Tomorrow I’ll start another day
in the empire
and live with angels that switch
over to vampires
But who am I to point fingers when
my dear, I’m just one of them

Monday, November 16, 2009

Tables of the Universe

There they stood, beautiful statues of the deities, high up on the carpeted stage. The devout followers seated below on the ground were listening to the holy words of the preacher seated at a height between the people and the Gods. As I passed on and reached the rear side of the stage I was quite astonished at the sight. The stage was built of tables, piled one on top of the other. The kind of tables that are a familiar sight on this side of the planet (at least here in Chandigarh). These are ones that are most commonly used by tent-services. Each one has a heavy, crude cast iron frame and legs with wooden boards on top. Most of them were (probably) designed and manufactured 20-30 years ago. I’ve never seen a clean table (one of these) till date. The metals finish is rough and uneven and it has some cheap greenish paint brushed on it (most that I’ve seen have lost much of that too). The wood is…err…I don’t have a good word to describe it. It’s dirty, unfinished (I mean crude) with big nuts running through it on the vertices. It’s not a big single piece of wood either, there are two to three planks fitted to make one ugly table top. The ghastly cast iron legs are foldable and the sound that these tables make when being loaded or unloaded from a truck is something I can recognize instantly. I once attended an extravagant, outdoor wedding dinner. The set up was beautiful. I was happy to see no signs of the ugly tables anywhere. Then while taking the nth helping of the dessert, I  got curious and lifted the skirts of the table....and found the same sickening, semi-painted, rusty cast-iron legs. “YYeoww!!” I let go off the fabric immediately after my fear was confirmed.

Pathetic, these tables are just pathetic but I wonder who designed them. They’ve been so successful because of their strength, design (foldability…ha ha I just added a new word to your vocabulary), resilience to torture (oh I’ve seen them being treated like they were less than tables) and of course their ability to function in a beautiful way without actually showing up their ugliness. They’d hold your Gods, you food, your politicians……did I say politicians?

Yes that brought back something that was strolling in my mind. I think that’s the reason I started to write this article. Today’s breaking news “Laalu Prasad Yadav hurt while addressing the people as the staged caved in”

We like to place our politicians high up, alongside the gods. The problem of being so high is so aptly described in the old adage “the higher it goes, the harder it falls”; Laalu was hurt alright. They also showed some other political leaders that took the fall when the stage gave way. These were:
Uma Bharati
Amar Singh
Varun Gandhi

So while the Indian news channels were showing the memorable masala moments of all these people falling down as the stage crashed, the camera captured an interesting detail; guess what the stage was made of. That’s right, our very own Universal Table. Oh I’ve started to love these table now. They hold steady when they have to and cave in when they must. Muahh!! I love you tables.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Rain on

As they creep up and cover the sky
I watch the ominous sight and sigh
These ones are not that give just shade
these ones are here to show their rage

A blanket dark and dense
One that has no pretense
Down below the gale gesticulates
Nature's opening its floodgates

Thunder roars with a message clear
Lightening flashes the message of fear
"take cover" every life that moves
or be struck by the bolt's hooves

Then as they start to fall
They hit the big and the small
Sneering arrows of the Cloud
Relentless as it glides by, proud

And then it all mellows down
The green shimmers, now rid of brown
Its shower time for things immobile
I was foolish to think of it vile

There must be a farmer, happier now
The sweat washed off his wrinkled brow
There he dances in elation
As I worry about reaching my destination

I see that Love too celebrates in the rain
Gone is the hurt, and the pain
As they walk holding each other’s hands
Now resolute, they’ve taken a stand

As they fall the drops touch me too
And reveal two points of view
As one sits and accumulates rust,
Another washes off it’s dust

So is everything else we face
The same moment’s for one to rest
For another to race, as he
reaches out for the crest

But let me not get stuck in the
Human wisdom’s muck
Let me see, smell, feel, hear and taste
These were not given to me in vain
They were only gifted, for me to
Enjoy the rain

(Started 09/09/09, when it was raining heavily but left it midway. Completed on 12/11/09; I was hungry so I munched on this leftover food for thought)

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Your high(headed)ness

I just cannot see your point of view
Your words are like the grains of sand
Good points in them are but few

You talk of the time that you were young
You talk of the times when you went numb
You talk of the time your dog died
Still smell the aroma of the first fish you fried

You say you know that He is right
If I say no, you’re ready to fight
You claimed to have seen their miseries and plight
You wanted to help; they just wouldn’t follow the light

You claimed you know your inner self
You’ve traveled the road from heaven to hell
Enlightened; when you lost that friend
But still revel in the glitz of brands

I hate you not, I don’t like you either
In you I see my own reflection
Just like you, my words are heavy
My works, light as feather

Let us both stand in front of the mirror
Let us try to open our closed eyes
Who are we?
Can we ever see the truth
a bit more clearer?

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Anchor

Yesterday I shared the anchoring of the Freshers Formal Show with my batchmate Anmoldeep Randhawa. It was the first time I was hosting a show of any kind. Here's the sequence of events in a nutshell:

(2 days to freshers) At 12 noon I called up Anmol. She did not answer. I kept calling her till 6p.m. in vain. Then I lost my patience and fired at the other organizers (apparently she's their friend). She finally responded at 7p.m. and told me that she'd fallen sick. The med had made her drowsy and she'd slept off. We sat down till 10:00pm outlining the script.

(1 day to freshers) We sat for sometime and made some changes. Anmol's very creative and intelligent but unfortunately doesn't give a shit about other people's time (she's anything but punctual). She asked me to meet her at 6:30p.m. and disappered till 8:00p.m. She also took the script with her. My fuse blew out for the second time. Again I went to her friends and gave them a piece of my mind. They frantically searched for her and brought her back. I reckoned it would be no use getting angry at her for she'd probably make me suffer more later. We sat down and edited the script till 10:00p.m.

(D-day, freshers at 5:30p.m.) We hadn't finished editing or even completing the final part of the script. Anmol for busy with the presentation that was supposed to be played in the background. I gave her my deadline of 2:00p.m. She couldn't get back to the script till 4:00p.m. We worked on it till 4:30p.m. and by that time she was in tears, cursing me that I was taking her precious dressing-up time! We both rushed to the hostel to get ready.

According to me I took ages to get ready but it was a microsecond compared to what Anmol took. By 5:15pm I started to get calls saying that people had started gathering in the auditorium and that Anmol and I should rush ASAP. I reached the audi only to find Anmol missing. She didn't take my call again. When she finally did, she asked me come and pick her up on my bike. By now I was ready to kill. I rushed to the girl's hostel and called up her roomie. Anmol was getting ready.

Then I called out as loudly as I could "Anmol if the Director reaches there before us, we'll be history!"

She shouted back "It's all your fault. You didn't let me get ready on time"

I replied astonished "Are you bloody crazy. What would you do looking pretty on stage when you woudn't have anything to say out there?"

She shouted, "Shut up Jesse"

By now it was 5:40p.m. and I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. She finally came out and we rushed to the audi.

She said she needed more time as her saree wasn't tied properly!

The audi was full with our hyper-critical audience ready to hoot at the first chance. We pulled off the begining pretty ok. The director gave a rather candid speech about life of PhD student. Addressing the juniors he said that that they won't face ragging at the institute but the five or six or even seven years that they are in the institute will more than cover up for its absence. I am no stranger to that bitter reality as I've seen many students lingering on for more than five years to complete their PhDs here.

Anyway, after that started a series of non-cordinated moves with us announcing an item and the performers shouting from the backstage "We're not ready yet!!" and the crowd booing and hooting at us. I managed to paste a smile on my face and laughed it off but Anmol got really emabarrassed. She started cursing the other committe that were supposed to coordinate with us, not realizing the mic was right in front of her face, raising the hooting even more. I tried to pacify her but kept my distance from the mic. I wasn't so fazed and was surprised at that, for it was me (not Anmol) who'd been losing sleep over this debacle. Not that it was happening, I was standing there, totally calm. Then came another performance by the juniors that can be described in one word as "catastrophe". A group of 10 students standing on the stage holding candles (nearly setting each other's hair on fire) and only one of them singing "Heal the world". An inappropriate song for the ocassion. The crowd went wild with laughter and shouted funny comments. I was finding it exceedingly hard to control my laughter, and Anmol, her temper. Poor people, they walked off the stage holding their heads down in shame. The lead singer felt so humiliated that she didn't come up on stage to introduce herself later.

Then there was a solo song which too was booed off the stage. The two dances that followed settled the audience down a little.

Then two skits saved the day. They were hilarious and crazy and one of them can be aptly described as one of the best choreographed skits ever at IMTECH. This one had a guy playing an affable overconfident dwarf. The same guy also went on to win the Mr. Freshers title. He had his fair share of booing too when he introduced himself in his south-indian accent (he's from Andhra). Fortunately he didn't let all the stingy remarks get the better of him.

By the end of the ordeal of the show, I was pretty relaxed; thankful that we managed to pull it off without any untoward incident. Later I felt that Anmol wasn't so bad afterall (apart from the disappearing act that she's adept at). She had single handedly made the whole presentation that was played through the show. She had been running around to get her dress made on time and had a lot of trouble dealing with the tailor at the eleventh hour. She was unwell throughout the three days that we'd been preparing and executing the whole thing. Considering that we both are short tempered and we actually managed to finish the job without killing each other or even having a bad feeling it was a big success. Surely this event taught me a thing or two about working as a team.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Blogger's Park

Yesterday, five of us met. "We" are people who blog. The mundane day passed rather slowly and by the time we all met I still had some bit of energy left that I spent in cracking wise jokes. By the time people actually started to talk sense, I was a spent force. I went into a trance like state, oblivious to the conversation and started to observe the sights and odours around me.

From whatever little I heard, here are some of the topics that were dicussed (with my answers in brackets, wherever I could answer i.e.):

Veronika decides to die by PC!
How difficult it is to help the destitute! (Very, that's why not everyone can.)
Sigmund freud Vs Sigmund fraud! (I know just one thing about him; he's dead.)
Dalhousie is beautiful. Please comment! (Must be)
The electricity problem in Punjab! (Heck! it's ok... what about the overexcess of electricity inside a random punjabi...you gain some, you lose some)
Sizzlers cause air pollution. Can they also harm your body then? plz comment. (Doesn't matter as long as they taste good)
Why would an African tribal not want to climb Mt. Everest? (Err!! because he spends all his time to gather food and protect himself from lions using spears??)
Why would a New Zealander want to do so? (Errr!! Because he's probably rich and doesn't have to gather food/protect himself/ family from animals and has the time to think of doing so??)
What's the similarity between Whitney Houston and a canine? (Both can howl at high pitch)

Other topics I would've like to discuss were:

Why do dimly lit places make me sleepy? (Unless of course I'm on a date with my girl)
What is the need to have a huge mirror placed in front of a urinal? (Don't know, I kept standing there trying to figure out why...in vain.)
Why I do not understood psychology like psychology students do?

Why are some noodles flat? (I guess I have the answer to that...because they can be made like that...just like Mt. Everest can be climbed)
If neurotics start writing, do they turn into psychotics?

If psychotics start writing, would be treated as idiot-savants?
What kind of a conversation does a neurotic have with another neurotic?
What kind of a conversation does a psychotic have with another psychotic?
What kind of a conversation does a neurotic have with a psychotic?

Why do some people make use of so many hand gestures while conversing?

By the way I just received a mail while writing this blog and it shows The largest flower is of a plant named Amorphophallus titanum...if you see the flower, you'll immediately understand why the plant has that hilarious name.
Ok Ok so I'll end the joking session now. On a more serious note, it felt good to know that there are others like me for who writing is the road to their inner self. It is sporadic, intense and compulsive. The big question was "how can we possibly retain the 'intense' and 'compulsive' part and replace 'sporadic' with 'consistent', I think we all took it home as holiday homework for it was never discussed. My problem with doing that is that for me to write, I need to be alone for sometime. A quiet time when a chain of thoughts start to move, part reality, part fiction generated by my opnion on a particular subject. Strangely when I start to indulge socially, the 'need' to write vanishes. Probably because the thoughts generated over conversations are immediately put across as words in real time. Since I'm not a quick thinker, I find it difficult to strike good conversations. Writing however gives me time to ponder over my thoughts and analyze them for their logic. Anyway this post is exactly like a one sided verbal conversation. Besides, my guide has just left the lab and others in the lab are playing music at loud volume, the kind that can be aptly described as jarring cacophony, so I must end this post. GRRRRrrr!!

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Have a nice day

30th October 2009
I am really angry right now. I’ve been angry for a long time though I haven’t been able to figure out why. Its 2215hrs, my head is dizzy. I think I’ve been a little overexposed to radioactivity in the lab somehow. I think it was when I was using the vortex machine.

But the anger started to seed in the morning when the neighbour was being cocky.

Or was it when I realized that the motorcycle tyre was loosing air pressure despite my replacing its valve. Or was it when I read that blog-post “dirty education” (http://iamplural.blogspot.com/2009/10/dirty-education.html) and remembered the time I worked as a lecturer in a private college.

Or maybe it was when I had to get the puncture fixed and I was overcharged by the guy. Or was it?

I think it was when boss sarcastically suggested that we’d sit and discuss about what I’d been upto lately.

Or was it when the security guard asked me to park my bike in a certain way. That was totally dumb because he told me to park it 180 degrees to the way in which I was parking it, so it takes the same place…why the difference in orientation? Does the motorcycle God live in that direction and all bikes must be parked facing that direction?

But that’s not something that’d make me lose it the way I’m fuming now. Maybe it was in the evening when I nearly got run over by a bus, then by a car for no fault of my own. None of the aforementioned people gave any indication of turning but just did so at high speed. Thank God my bike has a disc brake or I would’ve been down with some broken discs. I wanted to pull these people out of their vehicles and wring their necks.

Or maybe it was that stinker friend of mine who made fun of me when I told her that my BP was surging, she said that it was perfectly normal to happen in old men; I stopped myself from wringing her neck.

Maybe it’s because that lazy-ass (my best friend) hasn’t still gotten the paper work done of the scooter he purchased from me one and a half years ago; I’ve been reminding him lately, in vain. Today, like everyday, the reminder popped and like everyday I sent him a message and like everyday, he was perfectly deaf to my reminders and blind to my growing restlessness.

Maybe it was mom, every night she brings me a big mug of milk that she’s clasping with both hands and doesn’t let me touch it saying “It is way too hot, you’ll burn your hands.” I snapped back at her today, “Your hands aren’t burning right? So just let go of the cup ok!”

No I think it was the radioactivity for this was just a day like any other.

There goes our hero

August 29 2009
After arguing with myself for over 30 minutes that it was/wasn't time to wake up and oscillating between the sight of my cupboard and the man eating lion, I tried to force myself back to reality of the cupboard by trying to move some part of my limp body. I slept on my tummy (like always) such that my head was facing one of the sides of my dorso-ventral plane (as always). My mouth was open, lips dry but the lower side of my mouth was dripping saliva that was making its way out onto the pillow. My arm weighed heavier than any weight I'd ever lifted, half numb due to lack of circulation. I tried to revive it in a slumbering, slow-motion panic attack. I sat dazed and relieved that I wouldn't have to fight the lion afterall. I waded through the morning air and located the newspaper in the haze of reality that looked more beautiful, pleasing and non-ominous than what I had been seeing a few minutes ago in fantasy world. I picked the paper and was shaken by the condition of my sight; I was seeing things in decaplets. Or was I? No, these were real estate ads, ten of them, by different dealers about the same apartment building and consequently (and strangely) they all carried exactly the same picture but with different dealer addresses. I flipped the pages hoping to see something other than political unrest, murders, rapes, defalcations, cricket etc etc...all in vain, even Michael Jackson managed a very small place despite it being his birthday today. Except that section on Dhyan Chand, the legendary hockey player from our country. I remember reading about him in high school. I reckon all (probably) language text books, at some level in high school, do have a chapter on Dhyan Chand. I guess that's the only way to keep the memory of a legend alive and not mentioning the cruel apathy he faced in his last days. Everyone knows what a wizard DC was at his game, if you don't then spare a minute to read about him but we were never ever taught in high school that he died of liver cancer lying neglected in a general ward!

face it

Yesterday night I was reading the Royal Enfield Manual by Pete Snidal and I quote:

"Let's face it- India is basically a third-world country, and their high-tech (If that it may be called) exports, such as the Enfield Bullet, are an entirely different kettle of fish than most other motorcycles."
It was embarrasing to read this line, it had nothing to do with the Royal Enfield: a British vintage, and everything to do with me being an Indian. It embarrassed me; it didn't enrage me, for the statement cannot be generally rubbished.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Recidivist

In my last post I'd said that I couldn't write anymore; I couldn't have been more wrong. Of course I had slumped enough that I needed an extraneous push and decent bit of guidance. What was generated in the end was an article for an online newspaper which was well received by readers and embellished with comments that made me "HAPPY".

Here's the link http://www.heraldofindia.com/article.php?month=10&year=2009 the article is titled "Nobel for Venky in layman's language"

A friend of mine told me write this article on 2009 Chemistry Nobel winner Venky Ramakrishnan. He emphasized "it need to be for a layman". I started with reading about Venky's post Nobel interviews but I soon realized that for someone who doesn't know the basics of cell biology and biochemistry it would be rather greek to say "Venky's group deciphered the structure of the small subunit of the ribosome and it's association with various antibiotics" Another question that would baffle the reader would be "why is a guy who worked in Biology all his research life, receive a Nobel in Chemistry"? So I wrote down as best as I could to put it all together as ABC for the layman. I also included an analogy of a tape-recorder (to protein biosynthesis) that I had once orally given to one of my friends who is from a non-scientific background. When I hurriedly prepared the first draft and mailed it to my friend suggested the relevant changes. Only then did my eyes open up as an "editor" of the text; much of it was jumbled, parts of it to an extent of being garbled. I saw the errors and heaved a sigh of relief; "thank God there's just another person apart from me that has seen this draft" I thought to myself. I was resonably excited when I submitted the article but it rose when I actually saw it published. It rose further with the first two comments. It shot out of this planet with the comments that followed. Here I am, planning ny next article. I was wrong...I can write...at least for now.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

so long solo

Can't write anymore, I've lost the knack (if I had any) and the pleasure I used to derive from it.
There were streams of thoughts that once flowed through my mind. I'd close my eye and watch the fleeting, flickering thoughts generated in the cranium. Sometimes I'd reminisce and go back in time and feel the joys and pain and write about them.

Now I'm consumed in the parochial anxieties of the day, everything's work and everything need to be done.

When I do have time for myself, I'm either listless or very sleepy. I've lost myself.... and I'm sleepy again. Sigh!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Haryana khap panchayat at it again

This is a "The Tribune" article

23-year-old youth lynched for marrying same-gotra girl in NarwanaChandigarh/Narwana, July 23

The khap (caste) panchayats of Haryana defied law yet again when a 23-year-old youth was thrashed to death by a mob in Singhwala village of Narwana last night at his in-laws house where he had gone to bring back his wife.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Nightmares amidst dreams

Srijana Mitra Das is with the Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, UK
This is a Hindustan Times article

Indian popular culture usually presents Punjab as the fount of eternal well-being. Bombay cinema in particular depicts Punjab as a rich homeland full of golden fields, sarson da saag and tractor-loads of farmers poised to bhangra at yet another bumper harvest.
Through the 1990s, Bombay films popularised this image of Punjab among Indian and diaspora audiences. The filmic ‘state of plenty’ boasted brave and handsome sons, fair and lovely daughters, industrious and prosperous people. The state seemed State-less, ruled only by ironies. Love flowed through its winds but required social approval, migration to foreign locales strengthened emigrants’ roots and a regional ethos of equality was riddled with hierarchies.
In its construction of a rustic idyll extending itself across the globe through diasporic movements, Bombay films ignored caste in Punjab. As the recent shoot-out in a Vienna gurudwara and its aftermath show, caste for Punjabis is real, violent and tense. It has a long history and a bitter present. It is a realm of oppression and struggle where every Singh is certainly not king. The drama of caste in Punjab makes its omission by Bombay cinema particularly remarkable.
I chanced upon caste in Punjab by accident. During my doctoral research, I lived in a Sikh village near Ludhiana, doing what anthropologists call ‘participant-observation’, immersion in the environs of people whom one is studying. I wanted to see how Sikhs negotiated ‘Punjabiyat’ in Bombay films. The filmic phenomenon was ubiquitous and dazzling, yet contradictory as the culture on-screen was presented as Hindu Punjabi and usually personified by Shahrukh Khan, a Peshawar-Delhi Muslim.
My fieldwork yielded knowledge about audience aspirations, politics and pleasure playing out through popular culture and commercial entertainment. I learned that screen silences were as important as speeches. I began sensing the ghosts of Partition, the Green Revolution and Khalistan hovering over filmic sequences. I learnt about a fabulous pre-colonial history and a troubled relationship with colonisation that blended into screen politics. I also learnt of the power of caste. The Punjab village where I lived was indeed idyllic, prosperous and attractive with old havelis and cobbled lanes on which the SUVs of rich Jats trundled, surrounded by green fields and a blue-gold sky. The sense of space was enormous, yet constricted. The first question one faced was, “What caste are you from?” which, in a Sikh village, took one rather by surprise.
The village was divided into two zones, Jat and Scheduled Caste. The first was rich, electrified, wireless. The second was poor, darker, smaller. Separate gurudwaras existed for each. There were restrictions on eating, touch and marriage between castes. The Jats regularly emphasised their ‘purity’ to the Scheduled Castes who sought dignity in sects and affirmative action by the State. Popular culture played a definite role in struggles over identity.
Jat Sikhnis of the village, ardent fans of Bombay cinema, began observing the marital Hindu fast of Karwa Chauth. While the Jat Sikhs muttered about ‘Hindu-fication’, one thing was certain: the Scheduled Caste Sikhs were not allowed to observe the same fast; their ‘pollution’ ruled that out. “Jats are the noblest Sikhs,” said an agricultural rentier. “Look at Hindi films. On the rare occasion they show a Sikh, he is a Jat.”
But how could you tell, I wondered, with a common surname and an identity based on ending distinctions by adopting the markers of Sikhism? “Of course you can tell,” a woman said. “Just look at the colour! Fairness and a good build mean Jat Sikh because they come from pure stock and haven’t mixed their marriages.” Interestingly, Akshay Kumar was the Jat zone’s favourite star, considered ‘handsome’ enough to portray a ‘proper’ Sikh on-screen, which is exactly what he did soon thereafter.
Contrary to its perception of being based entirely on fantasia, Bombay cinema actually acutely senses grassroot realities and ground-level politics. With a mix of prejudice and judiciousness, it chooses elements of maximum acceptability with the maximum number, depicting that on-screen as ‘reality’. Many aspire towards such reality, some challenge it fervently.
As I found, in its omission of caste from the Punjab landscape, Bombay cinema, in fact, touched upon the reality of nightmares jostling amid dreams, silences amidst celebrations, and aspiration and brutal denials co-existing in the ‘state of plenty’.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Peripheral knowledge

I was searching for some information on the protein that I’m working on: Epo, when a silly idea struck me.
“Why don’t I search the key words “Motorcycle” in Pubmed (the biological science citation database)?
To my (pleasant) surprise, the key word hit 1,995 results!
As I skimmed throught the articles, I saw that they indeed were related to medical science and statistical analysis to be more precise but the fact is that some of these articles can be an eye opener for a layman as well.
Here are the titles of some of the articles:
Motorcycles and goats.
Ueffing E.
Maxillofacial injuries in a group of Brazilian subjects under 18 years of age.
Road traffic injuries among middle school students in a rural area of China.
Accident-related risk behaviors associated with motivations for motorcycle use in Iran: a country with very high traffic deaths.
The prevalence of drugs and alcohol found in road traffic fatalities: a comparative study of victims.
A mixed logit analysis of motorists' right-of-way violation in motorcycle accidents at priority T-junctions.
An analysis of motorcycle helmet use in fatal crashes.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The burden of motorcycle-related neuro-trauma in Ireland and associated helmet usage.


The ENTREZ search engine also suggested the following key words to search:
Also try:
motorcycle accidents
motorcycle injury
helmet motorcycle
motorcycle trauma
motorcycle riders

As I altered the search words to “Motorcycle riding”, I hit 130 articles, some of which are:

Patterns of risky behaviors associated with methamphetamine use among young Thai adults: a latent class analysis.
A case of abdominal aortic injury caused by a traffic accident.
Characteristics of back pain among commercial drivers and motorcyclists in Lagos, Nigeria.
Barriers to, and factors associated, with observed motorcycle helmet use in Vietnam.
Paediatric motorbike injuries: do children riding motorbikes get the same injuries as those riding bicycles?
Heart rate and blood lactate concentration of male road-race motorcyclists.
Neurologic injuries in cycling and bike riding.
Kennedy J.
Dupatta (scarf): a unique cause of cervical spine injury in females.
Jain V, Agrawal M, Dabas V, Kashyap A, Sural S, Dhal A.

Exploring the economics of motorcycle helmet laws--implications for low and middle-income countries.

Helmets for preventing injury in motorcycle riders.
Hazards of bicycling: from handlebars to lightning.Hazards of bicycling: from handlebars to lightning.
Neurologic injuries in cycling and bike riding.Neurologic injuries in cycling and bike riding.

Related articles
ReviewHelmets for preventing injury in motorcycle riders.
ReviewHelmets for preventing head and facial injuries in bicyclists.
ReviewSpeed enforcement detection devices for preventing road traffic injuries.
The impact of two related prevention strategies on head injury reduction among nonfatally injured motorcycle riders, California, 1991-1993.
The prevalence of non-standard helmet use and head injuries among

Wish I had the time to read them all. I did go through 2 of them, they were quite interesting. I’ll selectively read a few more when I get time.