Certifiably alive

Of damaged angry men.

2012-01-03T11:01:00.002+05:30

5 Bollywood movies in 20 hours. I finally watched five movies I put off for several months. Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Manorama Six Feet Under, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Dev D.
Firstly they are all fantastic movies, LSD in my opinion was one of the most innovative movies I have seen. Not having read anything about it before watching it, I was the perfect passenger and Dibakar Bannerjee knows how to stitch a ride together for sure. I fell for the funny bits, only to find I had been baited into a very real, very visceral kick in the gut. And my kidneys loved it!
Khosla Ka Ghosla and that 'Lucky' movie were also directed by him and were very impressive also.

The Manorama movie, directed by Navdeep Singh was great as well; set in the small town of Lakhot Rajasthan, it is a re-hash of Roman Polanski's Chinatown. The movie oozes with the same lovable torpor that infects everyone in the movie. I was drunk on noir and the thickness of desert summer air by the end of the movie, needing a hot sticky nap and random jolly bystander to be snarky to.
But while each movie was different, one thing emerged as a common property: Modern Bollywood loves emotionally damaged angry men, emotionally damaged angry men with the stress tolerance of myotonic goats. Angry men themselves make great muses; they frequently have just been punched in the nuts, or have had a devious scheme ruined by some meddling kids. Such timeless edifices are angry men that they have been all-time favourite subjects for artists attempting to capture the human form, as elucidated by this archetypal example of upper-paleolithic rock-art from Kakadu, Australia. Followed by an in-praesenti example of ... (pop-art?).

The emotionally stunted angry man is a particular impotent variety of angry man. DevD, for example, is a story of guy who returns to his home town, courting a woman there called Paro. The movie is a document of the colourful and chaotic tapestry that emerges from shit hitting the fan as Dev expertly splits the seam connecting nuanced Indian ethos, sexual attraction and personal conflict - with a wildly swinging chain-saw. The result is a beautifully rendered haze of drug addled dementia, swearing, sickly moping and the self destructive urge to hurt the things he loves.

I find it interesting that this is a somewhat recurring theme with movies and that male characters with retarded emotional maturity are colored with a touch of romance. I am willing to buy a male character with an impulsive rage and temporary loss of judgement. I suspect that most men can empathize with acts of indiscretion triggered by a hormonal head rush. An uncontrolled impulse, after all, must be something of a vestigial fragment of a reflex existence, where stressful situations needed to be dealt with, in greater measure immediacy than tact. Think, saving your occipital bun from a rampaging woolly mammoth! I find it hard to believe, however, that there was ever anything but a severe anthropological disadvantage for men who attempted to reach lucidity through transcendental binge drinking. True, the D in Dev D probably stands for Degenerate but there is no doubting that men willing to freestyle dive into self-propitiating chaos are unfairly perceived as remissible juvenile delinquents.

More often than not the role of mending or at least valiantly trying to mend these men, at great personal cost and sacrifice, falls on the lead female character. And honestly, these female characters are quite awesome, balancing a figure relatable to viewers as a "real woman" while dealing with events of cartoon proportion. I hear from individuals broadly identified as female movie goers that there is a lovable aspect to damaged men, the myth that women love men who are projects. At the very least, the claim is that women find inarticulate men with troubled emotions more approachable and human.

In contrast, I believe there is nothing human about Dev, him and his cohorts in films alike are caricatures of disarray. An anthropomorphic representation not unlike Homer Simpson. They are the contrast you need to be able to see all the other humans in the movie; so dull in their similarity to you, me and the people we know that we wouldn't notice them unless you set them against the absurd. So then DevD is not a movie about the complexity of Dev's glaring dementia, but a movie about the intersection of a fantasy with regular lives. The regular lives of Paro, the guy who sells Dev drugs and the random stranger who jumps out of the way in time to not get stabbed by Dev in a murderous rage. A collection of characters that just as well could have been us.

Even the vamp character in the movie, Chandramukhi, is not illogically fucked up and without the ability see choices ahead of her. Her fuckeduppedness has back-story, purpose and beguiling charm. Vamps in general are far from the vapid seductresses they are advertised to be, being instead highly put together gold diggers with guile and wit.

Truth is, it is not our frailty, ineptitude and weakness that writes the human narrative. Wooly Mammoths had frailties, weakness and consequently are extinct. Devs from history have all shared the Wooly Mammoth's inadequacy at articulating a growing sense of incompatibility with their surroundings and have shared too their fate. The human story is that we survived, we survived past the ice age to talk about the the time we were in an abusive relationship with a drunken asshole or the day we almost got stabbed in the chest. It is our ability to make choices and plan for a future with less assholes and fewer opportunities to get stabbed. Oh by the way here is an approximate rendering of that lunatic who tried to stab me, his legs and arms were like that of a mantis, a snarling mouth as big as his head with hair flying in all directions, never have I seen a scarier sight in all of upper-paleolithic Australia. Now hand me that rock I am going to draw him for you,... and did I mention he was like 10 feet tall and was holding this gigantic bottle of Red Label!?

Rock faces stand everywhere, marked with the blood of human cruelty, headstones to inexplicable hatred. But gleams amongst them, the monolith of human existence, coloured with grit and volition, shaped by the men and women who survived, lived and contemplated.

Coffee at 3

2010-07-12T17:00:00.011+05:30

He and I go to the Cafe Coffee Day a lot. We sit and talk and look out the window, sometimes our conversations last several seconds and then there is silence but it is a silence I look forward to. I am not ashamed to say it is easily a daily highlight.

We are the young professional types often times seen in coffee shops like this one, well he is and I am along because with some imagination I can pretend to be one. He is true blue business sheek though, the real deal, he bustles when he moves and when he sits down he does so with a confident sigh, like he earned the well padded sofa-chair in the upper seating area by the TV. I, on the other hand, fidget a lot when I am at any table, it is too noisy if I don't. I am fidgeting today with the fork and the thing that holds packets of sugar, waiting for him to walk in from his office down the road.

I like the upper floor because it offers a good vantage on the busy Sadashivanagar 5th cross road, a multi-species ecosystem made up of organisms that would rather be anywhere but there . There are dogs on the pavement below, German Shepherd mongrels, Labrador Retriever mongrels and the common golden wheat Bangalore street dogs. Breeds diffused and mixed together by the freedom of social life. There are people too, escaping being run over, ponderously inspecting a ditch behind the bus stop before spitting into it. Hindi Bangloreans, Tamil Bangaloreans, Pissed off Bangaloreans, on my way home to Malleshwaram from a liquor shop in Yelahanka Bangaloreans, just scammed a dealer in Cottonpet to scam customers in Gandhi Bazaar Bangaloreans. Shirts tucked in, common Bangalore mongrels with wheatish complexion and no pedigree.

I stab a packet of sugar with my fork, the couple cuddling in the corner booth giggle about a sugary explosion of a different sort. I can see him now round the street corner behind a fog of engine smoke, sleeves folded summoning a scowl of arrogant invincibility to cross 5th cross. We are not so different him and I, brown, on the way to somewhere, positively discontent, never once imagining the very real possibility of being flattened under a BMTC bus. Similar beings but ensconced in very different people. I think I could be a Cappuccino drinking, shirt tucked in kind of guy if could stop fidgeting so damn much. I like the way the kind smell, aromatic finely brewed individuals with Income Tax returns to file. Fidgeters should NOT drink coffee though, not good for the fingers.
His fingers however are not fidgeters fingers, they are theatrical instruments, they reflect a collected meditative tension when he talks about the future, they snarl with evil wit when he cracks his knuckles. His fingers are like the rest of him, parts of a big anthropomorphic cast of characters. Acting out his ambition, his sureties and his indecision. He is arrogantly focused on success and he wears his arrogance proudly on his sleeve. It is great because there are so few like that, most only begrudgingly part with their master plan to rule the world, not him. Listening to him is like a romantic escape where it is almost quiet enough to buy into his philosophy.
Like how he always has a method to get ahead, it is always a hard method wrought with idiots, slackers and incompetent adversaries. Things that only become problems if you show weakness and indecision when you cross them. I want to call it naive but I love the idea too much.

He jogs across 5th cross while a motorcyclist loses a game of chicken and squirms out of his way. He pays his respects to the motorcyclist, another slacker dealt with.
I cross the street with a prayer, he does it with faith. My prayer is to the present, his faith ignores the present. In his head he is already in his sofa-chair drinking a Cappuccino, operating a sugar packet as per instructions.

He pushes the door open and nods at the waiter, he will have the usual, he has a usual. The coffee shop is briefly struck by the howling chaos from the outside. The doors close the noise stops, quiet- it is awesome. I put the fork down and sit up. He sits down, leans back and looks out the window, "Fuckers!" he exhales. "Yup", I agree.
Quiet continues.

Over the months I have been privy to several conversations at tables near me here on the upper floor by the TV and the window. The ones that I remember most are the ones between young Cafe Coffee Day couples. Sitting in the corner booth so intoxicated with each others' eyes they forget the brown untucked fidgeter within earshot.
I made this enumerated categorization of couple types on a napkin one day (9/24/06 - 8:34PM) and titled them with fine beverages available at Cafe Coffee Day that have all at some point competed to be my 'usual', I never settled on one.

1) The daily refresh - An uplifting creamy cold coffee with the crunchiness of cookies.
- Relationships sinfully blended to buttress an ego which is aware of its own mortality.
Commonly heard phrases:
-Come on you are much more pretty than her OK.
-You can also do wheely da, Hero Honda is very fast no.

2) Devil's own - Cafe frappe loaded with chocolate and whipped cream. - Relationships are only good if they are yours and people know it.
Commonly heard phrases:
-Vijay told Lokesh you sat on his bike! I slapped him bastard, is it true?
-When I take you to film do I say you can't wear jeans pant!?

3) Cool blue - Bright blue ice slush with a hint of coconut; an adventurous delight. - Experimenting with contact and general giggling
Commonly heard phrases:
-Ushoo! Someone will see!
-What ya! No one is there.

4) Kaapi Nirvana - A chilled-out espresso with subtle Caribbean flavours topped with whipped cream and chocolate vermicelli. A silver prize-winner at the WBC 2002 in Norway! - One day, some day, I too can dream.
Commonly heard phrases:
-You and all are so popular where you will have time for me.
-I know I am not fair but I just want to said you that I love you okay. Okay bye.

5) Assam tea with honey - A light flavourful classic. - At least we can be bored together.
Commonly heard phrases:
-I had idly.
-Nokia is better.

Buckethead vs. Death Cube K

2010-06-30T09:15:00.000+05:30

Buckethead is a guitarist and a self titled and cited avant-garde cultural icon. I had until recently only been sort of aware of this masked musician who played with GNR . Lets see, Tracii somebody, to Slash (whom we all know), to Robin Fink who gave up on one upping Slash's hairdo and now torments manicurists in their sleep as the guitar frontman for Nine inch nails, to this masked guy with a KFC bucket on his head, to some guy now that I have not heard of.
But, Buckethead is far from the run of the mill GNR graduate. He is incredibly talented and stark raving mad.
He keeps his fans close by tasking them with having to defend his progressively increasing bizarre behaviour. But, any thesis towards a method to his madness ultimately rests on the quality of his music. Soothsayer and Jordan are two his most popular songs (attached below) in the main riff for Jordan, for example, he uses the hammer-on and pull-off technique on the frets while rapidly operating the pick-up kill switch with his right hand.
In reading his biography, I was struck by his disjointed career. Several false starts with bands that all could have been successful. Failed invitations to work with Ozzy Osborne and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and then I read about his alter ego "Death Cube K" another masked musician created to circumvent contractual obligations with Sony Music and presented as a photographic negative to Buckethead (Death wears a shiny black mask). Mr K's music is more experimental, like the album monolith, which is a 5 disc set with one track per CD.
Infact, Death Cube K is almost a movie definition of disassociated behaviour. The Tyler Durden to the narrator. An internal duality, where one if not both corporeal forms are aware that they share a chassis, and it seems, equally interested in buckets and off-the-hook shredding.
So, this is not complete disassociation then, it isn't an alter-ego invented to vacation from oneself. It is different, a Side-B? A different arrangement of the same instruments, a vantage from where one can sit and fall in love or grow to hate the other person in the room. But, the music is a commonality, maybe it is the reason.

I remember this answer from a Zakir Hussain interview, and I felt it was something I wanted to hold-off and ask myself one day. His answer was," When I play music I feel like I am important to myself." I bet Buckethead nods his bucket in approval.
Sometimes, the internal conflict is not to hide and tuck away, but to celebrate.

"There has been much speculation as to the identity of Buckethead. We do know that he was raised in a chicken coop by chickens. And possibly due to the unusual circumstances surrounding his upbringing, he is a very private person. He doesn't grant many interviews, and shuns most conventional means of contact. The mask and bucket add an eerie air of mystery to his activities and serve as a harbinger for his otherworldly musical stylings and sensibilities. He would prefer that his fans accept his eccentricities, focus on his art and enjoy the wonderland of joy that is Bucketheadland."

Star crossed lovers

2010-02-25T04:15:00.001+05:30

She called him over for dinner to her house.
Told him her room mate was away.
He told her he sold his car so he had to take the bus.
She told him that is fine, "I will wait".
He told her bus #2 is running late but;
he will be there.

She opened the door and said she was glad he could come.
He said he bought her a volleyball because she likes volleyball.
But he left it on Bus #2. She said "sit down I made pasta".
He said fine but his room mate made chicken curry at home so he is not so hungry.

They ate and talked about movies. They leaned close and he said he had never kissed a girl and that girls never "like" like him. She said not to worry and that she would show him that she thinks she might "like" like him. He cried and said can't marry her because flight tickets are very expensive and her legal degree will not be recognized by the barristers association of India.

Ending.

2009-08-15T06:24:00.004+05:30

It has been years since I updated my blog. I walk around calling myself a blogger by heart though, I tell people I was only truly happy when I was writing. But, over the last two years a blank text box and a blinking cursor have lost their power over me, they remind me of the other, less comfortable, emotions that gain voice only in the quiet of writing. It is a discomfort that is easy to bury though, in the slurry of cheap social activity. Blogging is nerdy and anti-social, there are people to talk to and things to do. Get up and be out going, the confident people are. The last two years of my life have been pretty good from a confidence perspective, my career took a turn for the awesome, I figured out the conversational widgets that kids normally learn in high-school; to maintain social interactions without over-investing in them. I have friends that like me. Really, life is not all that bad at all. In many ways it is highly bloggable; I am traveling quite a bit, there are at least a couple dozen interesting anecdotes where funny things happened to friends and colleagues; some of them are even up on Youtube.
But still I rarely find the need to document a meal I just had, or a person I just met, or a place I just went too. "People, Things and Places" they say are the starting points for a popular blog. I have never written about any of them. I did ambitiously start blogs to document activities in my life but they either became excercises in English composition or a series of unfinished drafts themed around an interesting picture of birds I took on holiday. But I yearn, yearn so much to write! To feel the sentences form, to force them into well-fitting punctuation.

I am not a blogger of events then, I like to write but I like to write because it is the only way I can read what I am feeling. This craving is the consternation of emotions that are not cool enough to make a dinner table conversation. They are the voices inside that are wispy, fleeting, and bound in emulsion that need grammar and typesetting to precipitate. I remember spending hours to get the words just right, deleting and correcting. Forming my thoughts and then mulling over them before the words appeared on screen. Looking back on my previous posts, there is one thing that is consistent, every post is deeply personal. It is a conversation that was a long time coming with myself, writing is the only way I can get myself to listen.

The paradox however is that, while I wrote for myself, I met the most amazing people through the blog world. Surprisingly everyone I hit it off really well with, enjoyed time with, and let my guard down with are either bloggers or active readers of blogs. Maybe it was because all these people I met had the incite to recognize the same parts of me that my writing helped me discover. Nonetheless, with the people that read my writing and chose to be friends with me, I never felt the need to govern how they see me, it felt scary and exciting that they had read what I write.
But while I enjoyed the friendships spun from my writing, once I knew I was writing for people other than me, the need to write never reached the critical mass to actually make me do it. I have stopped and started many times, I started when my Grandfather died and I needed to feel what I felt and talking did not help. I wrote so many pages then. I wrote again when I graduated and felt like there was nothing in the future to look forward to, a scary black void that terrified me, while the people I could talk to were all quite content in letting their lives acquire trajectory by the providence of their current state. Many more occasions, and now, I write today after two odd years.

Being a young man, my tears need to make up excuses before I can let them come. They are justifying themselves to me and I understand. I am writing as I empathise with them. Something, ended today that they never expected to mourn. They believed I could articulate what I felt so they would not have to do it for me. But I cannot.
I need them to see how important this was, why it needs to be marked and how I can move on from here.

I miss you.

The taste of a new generation

2006-07-29T21:18:00.000+05:30

A recent conversation with someone that fits closest to a mentor, was about the dichotic differences in people employed in enterprise and government. Having been a government employee all his life he has the congenital fear of the private industry along with a distrust of modern day management practices. I guess what he finds most profane is the imperious job changing. Mobility is a good thing in the industry today and it is the “slow” that choose to remain stationary.

A rolling stone gathers no moss and the one with a 20 year Central Government contract. Slowly turns green as the other rocks go bounding up the hill.

This conversation was of course in the context of me. A quintessential rolling stone until two years ago when pretty much the same thing happened to me. While he was trying to induce in me the justification of "stability" and it's chawanprash like qualities.

His argument as passionate as it was for me was pretty much like the Chawanprash ad itself, with the sadhu atop a styrofoam himalaya grinding herbs. Sure it is endearing to think that the R&D department for Chawanprash is an emmaciated and suprisingly well insulated mystic, but the ad failed to really appeal to me at the discerning age of 16, atleast in comparison to the ad for another esoteric concoction of nutrients - PEPSI.

The chawanprash ad went off the air; Pepsi hired Britney Spears.
I think there is a point in everybody’s life where they suddenly are the “demographic.”
Every ad in print or on television seem targeted at you.
I am young, I may be swayed by an attractive woman who likes me because of the brand of gearbox oil I prefer, I on occasion have a craving to jump of a cliff pedaling my bicycle madly while synchronizing my consumption of aerated beverage to an acid rock, lead guitar riff.
The cool dude with glow in the dark hair and the guy with the breath so fresh and good smelling he could use it to fight evil are my contemporaries.

Hence, by induction I must buy myself jeans that expose that really attractive bit of skin at the anterior medial region of my knee.

Somehow the world thinks that it should be primarily made up of people like me. Or maybe just people who are easily swayed.

It is a luxury of our generation. A generation that in the words of Tyler Durden is working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.

My mentor on the other hand is from an age where you prayed on your good-fortune that you were not bombed by black and white B-52s and hoped on your ability that the world accommodated you in the electric arc lamp spotlight of the living. Each day lived a gift of freedom from despair and providence the celebration of that fact.

I recognize that his context is an anachronism of sorts or so positivity will have you believe. I find it fun that we want to rub in “new age” as often as we can, make sure he understands that nothing in this world is intended for him. As is evident from the Blood Sugar testing apparatus that he recently bought after much deliberation.
I am generally inducted into most purchases that contain more than 20000 transistors per square inch and went along with him to make the purchase. The device we picked is pretty damn fancy it uses the age old Glucose Oxidase reduction reaction but then coulometrically titrates the complex trapped in an enzyme electrode back to Oxidase and then tells you how sweet you are.

It is designed to be appealing to kinsmen of extreme snow-boarders, with cool curves and splashes of icy blue acrylic.
All while symbolizing success as a sheek and sexy fashion accessory when you are in the pub with the boys, complete with beeping noises and things that provocatively flash in neon imperiousness. A perfect complement to ones' glow in the dark hair.

So anyway, we opened the instruction booklet and politely skipped past the illustrated step by step operations in Swedish and the regular maintenance requirements in Portugese, flipped past the 50 page legal disclaimer that essentially implies that the number displayed on the screen could legally be - not your blood glucose concentration - but the present cricket score for New Zealand’s tour of South Africa and found the font size 4 instructions in English.

It’s operation is fairly simple, designed thoughtfully to be fully intuitive to regular users of variable energy cyclotrons and the X-box.
My mentor not unlike most snow boarding, X-box owning diabetics in the world, doesn’t operate high energy particle sources on a regular basis, which is why I get phone calls at godforsaken times of around 6 AM complaining that “this bloody thing doesn’t work!”
And he means that quite literally!

In all seriousness, this world and it’s overwhelming urge to fit a gaussian is the most poignant reminder of our mortality.

Love in Bangrass.

2006-05-19T13:04:00.000+05:30

As Arun and I came in to work this morning, we bore witness to what I believe is new Punjabi kuddi love taking flight on campus.

My theory seems to have some emprical backing. Now that I think about it, whenever I am just walking in the vicinity of the main building lawn, there is this lady who always stands out in the open under the blazing after noon sun and has hour long conversations in hushed whispers with plenty of giggling. I have been casually curious about this new love slowly taking bloom; enough atleast to confess that I wasn't really "just walking" but "just walking on a recon expedition"!

So, anyway, today as I was "just walking" in a half-hour holding pattern just within ear-shot, I am happy to report that the relationship seems to have leapt from the unstated to the explicit. So, apparently every time she talks to this particular person on the phone, her head, I shall paraphrase " feels woozy" I can see how this would be taken as a compliment by the caller. Then again anything would pass off as one if my estimation of most smitten young lads is accurate. She could just as well attribute to him a mild itchy feeling between her toes.

While I quietly congratulated the caller on the returns to his perseverence, it suddenly hit me that I was sort of feeling a little woozy also. As any guy would, I concluded that I had just fallen madly in love by induction with this mystery caller whom I have never met or heard. I immediately panicked. Inductive romantic shimmer is a well documented fact I just never thought it could happen to me. I clung as an appeal to reason to all the times I had glanced a second time at a rather attractive male passer-by. At the number of times I had noticed the cologne the guy on the third floor of new building wore. And a driving internal impetus to not be a homophobe and to accept humanity in all it's forms.

I was also a little thirsty. Sure, I could do what years of Love struck Indian cinema protagonists have been doing and lick my lips in a slow seductive manner. Sure I could wipe the sweat of my brow, in an exaggerated purposeful motion. And then plot my next move in the destruction of the lady on the lawn, my competition! But then it hit me! The woozy feeling, the panting, the distant apparition of an Oasis! I was having a heat stroke!

I retired to the air-conditioned railway compartment of a lab I call, my lab. Only to realise that my all-encompassing passion was waning about as quickly as my elevated blood pressure. My true love it seems was only a case of early onset heat exhaustion!

The symptoms of love can be plenty, but just in case, you may want to check if they include,

* dry mouth and tongue
* no tears when crying
* no wet diapers for more than 3 hours
* sunken abdomen, eyes or cheeks
* high fever
* listlessness
* irritability
* skin that does not flatten when pinched and released
* headache
* dizziness
* disorientation, agitation or confusion
* sluggishness or fatigue
* seizure
* hot, dry skin that is flushed but not sweaty
* a high body temperature
* loss of consciousness
* rapid heart beat
* hallucinations

I am now concerned for the sustainability of our new couple, sure the sparks will fly on the back seat of his motorcycle in an afternoon Hosur road traffic jam, sure their love will seem undying during their honeymoon on the beaches of Goa. But, what happens when many years from now on a cool dark night, with the invigorating chill of early spring in the air and only the silent whirr of a Kaithan ceiling fan to keep them company. When she thinks to herself, in quiet desperation and temperate comfort, “where has the magic gone! Will it ever return. Maybe before I decided to take the plunge and commit my life to what was essentially a woozy fling. I should have ensured I was drinking plenty of fluids, drinking appropriate sports drinks to maintain electrolyte balance, wearing lightweight, tightly woven, loose-fitting clothing in light colors, scheduling vigorous activity for cooler times of the day!” “If only I had known!”

Well anyway, since I am now convinced that their love, is doomed by destiny and annular thermal cycles. And that mine is only passing dementia. I am kind of curious about who she is, Arun says she works with Desh. I should see if it is possible to invite her over to the auditorium some day for a movie or something. Maybe leave the fans off :)

Chicken soup for the larger than before in-sole.

2006-01-04T09:52:00.000+05:30

I have always felt a little awkward with reunions myself, it may be the rampant almost obligatory judgment, “ Have you seen his hair-cut!!?? Do you think!?”, “Ofcourse !! Have you seen the colour of his socks!!”, “Aha! So now we know what happened at those after school play practice sessions! *wink*”.
But, mostly I am nervous, I will be reminded, how much I have changed since way back then.
I think I am more or less happy with where I am right now in my life, sure I have regrets and insecurities, but they don’t bother me enough to want to take refuge in the “good times”. Wouldn’t you say “Catching up on old times” is sort of a "mid-life crisis-esque" thing say.
Old lonely men losing a battle with their youth and all its associated charms, making desperate attempts to relive days where getting dressed didn't include "tucking in" attire to camouflage a healthy potbelly. Being hot didn't involve measures against rheumatoid arthritis and where ones personal philosophy on phlegm management was not available for public distribution.

But, nostalgia is the binding purpose.
I must admit most childhood memories are a lot of fun to regurgitate, especially when you have people that were there to share it with you.
And more so than not, childhood memories are always pure, and carry with them a charm and romance that makes them so attractive after all these many years.

I recently met an old friend of mine, we were best friends all through middle school, we hung out all the time in our early teens, we discussed matters of paramount importance to early teens… we conducted path finding research on small insects, leaf extracts, ourselves … we worked out the dynamics of stunt bi-cycle riding and consequentially the statics of multiple fractures. …
You know…. all the stuff that makes you ready to be 18.

I might have spoken to him a sum total of 4 times after that.

I agree that being perfectly happy with your current phase in life does not preclude the need to find comfort, solace and joy in times past.
And as you would expect, both of us immediately burst into discourse fuelled by memories that we share.
We discussed every one of them in great detail, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. But, I could not for the life of me find anything new that we could connect with. In all the fun we were having we had unwittingly reverted to a 14 year old version of our selves, and it is only this version that seemed to fit.
As adults we seem to have grown into rather disparate people. I kept wondering and am quite sure he did too, whether we would be friends if we met now for the first time.
It is a bit like old pants, for a while they felt like they were a part of you. You grew together, hosted microorganisms together, but then comes a day a couple of years in the bottom of the closet shelf later, when they aren’t quite "you" anymore. (Their waist dimension may be even less “you” but that is beside the point.)

People change, pantaloons don't.

People change, old friends do too, but old friendships don't, especially when shelved for a while.
They remain in a state of suspended animation for all that time, waiting to re-establish them selves from where they left off. They on occasion feel awkward, just like the inner thigh region of my two-year-old corduroy jeans.

I do admit some childhood friendships are ridiculously hard to live without. And become a physiological requirement almost, as one grows older.
Maybe I should narrow the field a little bit. Just to neuter the "we became best friends in 4th grade and have been inseparable ever since" police.
So, take a bunch of friends that you had lunch with, with moderate regularity all through school. And with whom you on the last day of school, walked to the sanctified "lunch spot" sat in a circle and pledged everlasting allegiance to, but then realised the next day, the logistical night mare in managing a bond for evermore with someone, when you didn’t know their address, home phone number or for that matter even if they had a home or a phone.
This may be a bit of an antediluvian dilemma for kids today.
But, you must remember when I was in school a CC: was still a waxy, blue facsimile of the original, that came with an acrid smell like someone toasted a badminton racquet on a paraffin candle. And depended on a stringy old peon handing out, "Kaourban seet" to us lazy oafs that didn’t have the assiduousness to pen all the halogen reactions to benzene in triplicate.

It sort of hits you when you are sitting down at your desk a week later, with a blank fool-scap sheet, torn in half, supposedly to write that letter. You feel the rapid cold of depleting permanence when you realise that about the only thing you remember of a permanent nature is maybe that his mom made super awesome, alloo gobi and that he owns a He-man action figure with battle-cat attachment.

But, isn't what makes childhood friendships so beautiful; it's all-too-epochal nature. When you are a kid, you could make a friend based resolutely on the fact that he has all the GI Joes you do not and once you realize that you both own white BSA champs, you know you are friends for life.

It is only when you are adults that, you factor in stuff in ridiculous detail, including possibly their take on Iraq and the colour Burgundy.

So whether friendships are as dynamic as the definition of oneself or are tenacious and immutable, or both.

I am glad I met Sundip after all these years. I am also glad that I made all the friends I did the last year. You guys mean the world to me. It feels good to have a closet full of really awesome pants! You guys really are……fly!

Peace and a happy new year!

Tour of duty.

2005-11-26T10:11:00.000+05:30

Having an office amble's distance from Murthy in accounts and payroll has it's advantages in the form of the optimized mean free path between the two of us on pay-day, though my office is a stop on his mid afternoon pre-coffeebreak exploratory waddle.
If you thought "pick-up" lines were corny. You should hear his, "drop-in" lines!!!

I think my recent favourite, was when he walked in, lazily looked about the ceiling and said. "Aaen appa, dhananjaya; full tube-lightaa." loosely translated to "What man Dhananjay, full tube light is it!"

He then ambled about the office, picking up and replacing objects that were pick-uppable and on occasion if something was exceptionally interesting in shape, size and mass; to complete his spontaneous field evaluation, decided to sniff aswell.
Once empirically satisfied with olfactory properties of an EM-filter on my desk. He pointed at it and said, "Aen, aappa boomb thara eidhae!" "What man, it is like a bomb!" followed by a very satisfied, guffaw! I replied that it was a inductive surge suppressor plus capacitive by-pass filter and explained that the "Boomb" like parts were mere terminals for Amphenol mil grade connectors, I added, that it probably wasn't really working, because it normally is really good at removing "annoying transients".
He looked at me with a mildly quizzical expression. "Parwagilla, sir" I said, "full tube-light"

By now bored by the utter lack of things to smell, he released a tonsil yo-yo-ing yawn and darted out of the office, calling after the floor secretary; "Mary, maedum; cauffee finishing, is it!"

I returned to my keyboard, chuckling to myself. Sarcasm falls deaf on knavish ears.

Completely quote me out of context, your honour!

2005-08-19T23:18:00.000+05:30

I began this blog more or less out of sheer boredom.
Boredom has a great ability for making you discover creative ways, to destroy it.

On one slow wednesday afternoon a conversation with a colleague about the supposed chaotic mess of Lalbagh, led me to a neat little boredom breaker. He had apparently visited the park that day and was exasperated at the disrespect shown to esthetic in its layout. I spent most of the time that afternoon nodding my acquiescence to several fundamental ideology claims towards the need for "botanical symmetry in recreational gardens".

Inspired by my ready acceptance, he had begun a very excited and animated extension of his theory on agronomics to "the general scheme of all things". He had by now worked himself into something of an Aristotelian fit. He had found the word "symmetry" to be a revelation and had decided to expand its purview for use in what had now become a philosophical discourse.

Soon enough, like most male conversations; the conversation turned to women and the dictum of "symmetry" was empirically tested on various aspects of the female form and had culminated with a very exuberant, "by that argument Aishwarya Rai is not beautiful, but highly symmetric!"

I had agreed with him completely and might even have called him a "genius man!"

I am blessed that the walk back to my office from literally anywhere on campus is punctuated with elements of real natural beauty. The outcrop of bottle brush adjacent to the lab. The gulmohar tree behind the liquid nitrogen plant. The maudlin jackfruit tree near the car park and the pepper vine; its devoted serpentine associate. All really beautiful. All totally unsymmetric. But really beautiful.

The patches of campus green here sometimes seem like the abstract expressionist art of a green thumb on dope. However, disorder in structure doesn't necessarily take away from their beauty.

There are way too many absolutely messy things that are breathtakingly attractive as well. Things like the rockbed of a stream or those pretty mazes of alluvium after a monsoon rain.
This ofcourse is obvious and really not all that much of a discovery.

Its only apparent worth was to use it as nucleation for more discussions on Aishwarya Rai's
more "symmetric" parts.

But, like sleeping on a bed before superficially smoothing out undulations on the bed sheet, the wrinkles that may be under you, become intolerable.
My problem was with the realisation that if indeed "esthetically pleasing" objects could have no order or symmetry, then there was no biologically hardwired system in place to appreciate beauty. If that were true then there was a fundamental flaw with "ugly." (Pun merely coincidental.) Yet, we see beauty. We can even be critical enough to rate it.

Before I abandoned further analysis citing inexperience in the Freudian aspects of the human mind. Hell! most of its aspects; are far beyond my understanding.
A chance conversation with an astronomer friend of mine, solved the entire quandary in one swift swoop. (It is worth mentioning, that this astronomer friend of mine can "swift swoop" any problem to resolution with the same egotistical grit that he uses to work 72 hours without rest.)
He often expounds on us the "magic" by which he pulls precise information out of absolute gobbledygook. The method (or atleast my understanding of it) is to take every point out of context and predict contextual anomalies that it will induce on the gobbledygook. If the gobbledygook seems to be a blood relation to the predicted gobbledygook, the gobbledygook fades away to a spectacular image of real merit.

The analogy is almost uncanny, being blinded by gobbledygook is probably the root of most problems. For some, seeing past the gobbledygook is probably harder than others.
The moment one recognises that gobbledygook de-convolution is at the mercy of personal trespasses. Voila! the pesky little problem of subjectivity has been quietly taken out back, shot, booted in concrete and now sleeps with the fishes!

Running high on the adrenalin rush of having made a "Godfather" allegorical reference and that my grandmother's frequent epigram of "What a bootiphull!" finally makes sense to me in it's complete semantic form. I ran to the venerable "adjudicator of all things King size" and ofcourse more recently the incumbent "progenitor of symmetry".
I knew I had found enough meat to offer him.

Oh! the afternoon was going to ripe with revelation! I could feel it!
"Symmetry!" I said. "What symmetry?" he said. "Symmetry! the begetter of all things holy and pure!" I said. "Shit, man my stomach has such a weirdly funny shape, check out my belly button," he said. The conversation failed to improve. I left.

A little unstatisfied both with the quality of philosophy that had just been discussed and the hilarity of the "weirdly funny" paraboloid; even as a "hole" . I decided as an exercise, I was going to try to appreciate what I had begun to consider mundane and perfunctory.
I wanted to look at random events and objects in my day and see if I could insulate them from context.

Copious quiet solitude offers some marked advantages; you get to watch. Watch while not participating. Just staring out the window or into space offers some great vantages into thinking, that may otherwise be buried under the noise of self-propulsion.

It actually worked in a while. I was able to see stuff that mattered in all most everything. I found myself thrilling myself about discarded coconuts on the side of the street, the fact that some traffic lights turn green before the counter hits zero, the way at certain speeds the dotted line in the middle of the road, executes a synchronized squiggle to the music you are listening to, as if you are living inside a Winamp visualization.

The point is; I felt obliged to do it, there is always something. Even something as unattractive as the dismembered peel of a banana drying on the pavement; gently curling up in the direction of the sun as if reverting to a foetal position in somber homage to it, is really cool as long as you don't think of the banana that once inhabited it and a hairy bulbous belly, weirdly funny or not, in which its current maserated form is probably put up.

It is very stimulating. Even if you can't find something that is semantically pleasing you, all you do is start dropping stuff around it and pretty soon in a weird way the very act of having done all that focusing somehow makes the remainder, unwittingly the coolest thing you have ever seen. It is context that throws things out of whack! (Irony noted, guffawed at and 'brow-furrowed' at .) It is what makes things ho-hum and passe! Grotesquely ugly and probably even depressing.

I am happy!

Horsing around

2005-07-14T18:00:00.000+05:30

I have nothing against Infosys and nothing against people who have made it their life's mission to be a part of the entire Infosys enigma.

For that it is! Infy now is an enigma, a shrine to all that as holy and curiously mysterious.
Like jumping off bamboo towers naked with vines tied to your ankles; it makes you an immediate somebody. Matrimonial companies love you, so do the cashiers at the local Café coffee day, assorted grand-aunties treat you with a reverence formerly reserved only for “Chetta’s in the gelf!” (I am of course assuming your grand-aunty is “mallu” )

I myself am at times a little bemused and dare I say impressed at allegory related to me by a protagonist in the “Infy” saga. I even saw the imposing black pyramid shaped glass abomination and faked awe.

I mean, it is a bit like having a 2.7 metric tonne floating pink pony in your backyard. Hell, if anybody knows what it is and what it is doing there, but they sure as hell all want a ride.
Plus you get all those people with regular backyards, who get all frustrated and as a result cynical, with the very mention of this new novelty. Though, the presence or absence of an airborne beast of burden is; in no way taking away from the merit of their own rather pleasant backyards.
It is a lovely social experiment though, it will be fun I am sure to be up on that pony and watch riders of all natures and dispositions bestride the beast filled with pride, indignation or deerskin breeches.
I personally don’t see myself fighting off competition to clamber up its monolithic buttocks, I guess I just dont like horsing around (sorry about the bad pun, kindly refrain from beating the dead horse) But thats just me.

Peace, love and Giddy-up!

In the matter of one Mr. Thomas Cruise versus big scary alien

2005-07-11T16:37:00.000+05:30

I watched the "WAR OF THE WORLDS" yesterday. I will try not to make movie reviews a part of my blogging ritual, this isn't one either.
I have over the years watched every moderately successful "aliens --> subjugate human race" movie. And have always wondered why it is that the aliens seem to look exactly like their interplanetary attack vehicles. I mean, you have the disc headed attack craft in "Independence day" with "disc headed" aliens inside them. You have "lumpy headed" UFOs with "lumpy headed" dudes inside. I would hate to think that I.... look like a...... Hindustan motors Ambassador!

The movie actually was fun, primarily because of the impending possibility that little Miss. Dakota Fanning might get "death ray'ed" plus the fact that the aliens seem to have, during the construction of their gargantuan tripod machines of death borrowed the Adam family's doorbell for the horn.
One also, wonders about the supposed intellectual superiority of these “disc heads” I mean if I was a super intelligent alien dude about to invade an alien planet, I would atleast put some pants on first. I mean come on, we humans with our puny minds have figured out that you need a little more than undies even to do some thing as benign as play golf on the moon.

Anyway, several hours of frolicking about in dark, dank basements in little more than their “chaddis” finally does them in...... Not a “banyan” clad Will Smith or even a smooth talking Schwarzenegger.
They all die eventually in a flurry of mucus secretion, of what could only be inferred as ......."the sniffles”.
That actually fills me with warm reassurance. If ever discheaded aliens in jockeys were to pop out of the ground in shivajinagar, I can say with some degree of certainty, they will be about as dangerous as a three legged can of vegetable soup in a less time than it takes to say, “Achoo!"

Growing market

2005-06-28T20:03:00.000+05:30

I dont think I am specifically annoyed by spam these days, I think it is unfying force that binds us all. If anything it feels good to know several million people spread across the far reaches of the internet were offered fast action 24 hour Viagra this morning.
Spam and a bilateral hate for it can, become quite the usefull coffee break conversation with somebody with whom untill now you could only disscuss the weather and in monosyllables.
Also, what really thrills me is that spam though targeted at a market that exceeds one offered by a Indo-pak onedayer and "friends" simulcast remains relevant and dynamic.

Take for example a piece of spam that many months ago offered me a 8" penis with an increased diameter. It sounded remarkable at the time and inspired some scientific enquiry into the actual process. (Enquiry not experimentation!)

Of late however I discard them with little regard. Untill a couple days ago when I was offered a mind-boggling 12'' or (304.8mm) penis with an ancient amazon herbal concoction. I may be wrong but if indeed the ancient amazons's were able to manufacture foot long penises, I think they probably would have evolved out of wearing grass thongs a long time ago.

All that aside, what I find interesting is that some research somewhere probably showed that having a 8" schlong was no longer worth a "click"....... that or everybody else on the planet bought the 8" pump and now are looking for another upgrade.
That would sort of make me...... well....... obsolete!!! I mean, there are people out there who just used pneumatc pressure to develope their device into an 8" monstrosity, still unsatisfied because they just cant reach the TV from the couch with their penis.

(I presume that's about all a 12 incher would be good for.......plus maybe finding landmines)

800 K's to graceland

2005-06-25T15:21:00.000+05:30

What does it take to survive a 800 km road trip, well from personal experience, a spinal cord reinforced with carbon fiber, an ego that wont let you admit you would rather be in bed watching Gilligan's island recaps, a semi-crappy semi-awesome MP3 CD and of course great company to sing along with it non-stop, not pausing for lyrics we havent the faintest about or for that matter the fact that the song ended half a kilometer ago.

Of course the occasional cow that thinks it is a BMW X5 and and a BMW X5 that thinks it is the batmobile, does help too.

All in all a trip wildly successful, in a strange subdued way. I guess the only analogy I can draw is, it is sort of like eating really good "Chilli bajji" in the rain, you never realize how hot it was until many hours later within the private environs of your loo. Though this is rather more pleasant.
Especially the "only in India" bits. Like a hot masala chai, on a tree stump, overlooking the view in the photograph (minus the chappy in the I'm too cool for a tee-shirt getup) on a cold invigorating afternoon 2240 metres up in the Nilgiris. Next to a tiny bon-fire whose warmth is mostly psychological, but infectious. Its presence becoming a fulcrum to the formation of a fraternity of several warm blooded mammals, whose allegiance irrespective of genus, runs only as deep as the fire burns warm.

A trip that also was a religious experience to the extent that I now can confirm that if there is a god I believe in, he will bring world peace, goodwill to all mankind, and as a display of his holy magnificence strike down with one swift bolt of lightning one Mr. Enrique Iglesias and all his minions. "You can run, you can hide, but you can't escape my spark!" MUHUHA! HA! HA!

..........I feel like I have to be exorcised to drive that excruciatingly incessant tune of that particular one of his limericks out of my head.

Damn! kerala mosquitoes

2004-06-14T15:59:00.000+05:30

Krill is a beautiful land. Land of peaceful serenity and bloody genius mosquitoes. Have been suffering from bites for the past week, after a kerala trip. They seem to love the bug spray. Like professional atheletes, and "performance enhancers" they dont seem to realize that its killing them.