A-argh.

Bangalore is Silicon Valley, eh?

As well as being the Capital of Karnataka?

If that is the case, why the hell isn’t there an IMDB entry for Upendra? Bloody hell, even some Miscellaneous Crew Member from Dilwale of the same name gets a mention. Why not our Uppi?

It gets worse.

There is no Wiki entry for our Pathbreaking movie A. What’s worse, no IMDB Entry either. Well, there is an entry for A, but it’s some sad Japanese flick.

All that Ka.Ra.Ve does is write ‘Kannada is in our blood’ etc all over Gandhinagar. Why can’t they do the basic needful for Kannada on the Net? Is there no Uppi fan who knows Wiki and IMDB can be edited?

What a sadness.

[I'm no fan of Upendra, not watched more than a couple of his movies, and I found A too... weird. But hell, IMDB entry atleast!]

Update: Here it is, the Wiki page for A. Add content, do.

In Which Wanderlust Tries Giving It Those Ones

I promise I won’t end this by joining evening Law classes just so that I can sue people.

I wish I could begin this with a swashbuckling “THE END “, but that will have to wait a bit.

I see one recurring pattern in the story that is my life. Each time a phase seems to be reaching closure, I do a fixed set of things, which all have the same outcome. As to what set of things, I’ll probably blog about it twenty-five years hence. If the concept of blogging still exists, that is.

An overwhelmingly scary amount of people I know are exchanging/have exchanged vows. Maybe I know people all in the same age group or something, but it’s still a bit disconcerting to start off with a bunch of friends and colleagues for whom a wedding is something that happens to someone else, and end up with a circle full of married people, all in the span of a few months.

I amaze myself quite a bit these days. I keep my head in really edgy, nail-biting, emotion-sucking incidents, and lose it without fail over the little stuff. Makes people wonder what I’m smoking. And some of them say ‘Aha! Caught You!’ when they see me inhaling something deeply…. and promptly go down on their knees once I manage to convince them it’s just my inhaler.

When you go through life, it happens that you meet people who are Dementors in letter and spirit. JKR couldn’t have created more lifelike characters. It takes quite some time to realize what a Dementor’s Kiss really is, and even after you’re through, the memories -to use another Potteresque line- dog your steps.

It also happens that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. I’ve somehow never been able to do that. Atleast not very well… there was this one incident when this kid was bawling his lungs out when the doctor was attempting to bandage a pretty bad scrape, and I had to get out of the scene just because I couldn’t both hear the kid bawl and not scream “Please don’t hurt the little git!”.

And I’ve never been able to stand megalomaniacs. I know I’ve fallen into that category on more than one occasion, but it turns out that the people who are more in-tune with reality are the ones that are most successful. After suffering a big loss, you do tend to numb your pain by becoming mildly delusional…. but you need to take a lot of care to avoid the delusion becoming your perceived reality.

I’ve also been quite, quite pissed with adults who think they know all about ‘teenage’ and the pains it brings along with it. I’ve lived through the whole ‘You’re a teenager, where’s your acne?’, ‘You’re a teenager, list out your crushes’, ‘Oh, you’re a teenager, you’ll rebel like this only… it just has to do with age’ nonsense, and to see my teenaged sisters and brothers go through all this makes me want to fall on the floor laughing.

I’ve never understood the preoccupation with ‘teenage’ and ‘changes’… cmon, a period of seven-eight years is so long that changes are bound to happen. Don’t people change in the period from when they are twenty to when they are thirty? I’ve found people more inclined to experiment when they are between nineteen and twenty-five than when they are between thirteen and nineteen. I think it’s just a crutch used by people to explain away the fact that they’ve lost touch with their children. And I won’t even mention the word Hormones here because my sister is so tired of that word being used in context of her age group… whoops, sis, I just did! *evil grin*

I don’t know why, middle-aged people think all you need to do in order to ‘understand’ the ‘youth of today’ is to talk about romance and relationships. More than one teacher has begun a class with ‘And I also have something interesting for you guys today ‘ and proceeded to tell a borderline perv joke, or mention something about a love marriage… *sigh*, I certainly hope I don’t grow up to be like that.

Because it turns out that I’ve respected not the ‘cool’ people who ‘understood’ when I was apparently ‘checking out’ a nicelooking guy and who tried finding out if I have a little pink book where I write batshit insane Lord Byron-esque pieces, or those who thought nothing of swearing in front of fifteen-year-olds just to be ‘with it’, but those who’ve acted their age. Those who were dignified about everything they said or did. None of that cheap loose talk about relationships being absolutely necessary to prove you’re a teenager. Just the right doses of reality and advice. From adults who behave like adults and not people who are in their second teenage at age thirty-five. Nagesh Kukunoor seemed cool in Rockford being the chilledout gym teacher, but in real life, I’d find it really hard to respect someone who fibbed to my principal just to let me meet my romantic interest.

Hell, I don’t think it’s even worth it… school is not someplace for something serious to begin… from what I’ve seen, the cool people at school don’t turn out to be the cool people later on in life. All the folks I considered rockstars when I was fourteen aren’t my rockstars now. People take on such different paths in life from what they seem to be headed for in school. Or rather, what others make them out to be in school. Case in question: my mother was told by my class X teacher that I shouldn’t try for something ’serious’ like engineering or medicine, but something more like a BSc after which I should probably be a housewife. Fate willed otherwise – with grades like mine, any degree college would have thrown my application out in a trice , thank god for the AIEEE which just ensures you’ve got enough in your XII. And housewife… just suggest that to the mother of any eligible bachelor and she’ll laugh.

Movies like Rock On!!! never fail to piss me off. Apart from the feel-good factor, they strike me as utter nonsense. Most people shy away from quitting their day job and trying to be a rockstar not because of any uncoolness within, but because… well, it’s risky, unstable, and you can be living off the streets… and how do you even know you’ve got what it takes to make it big? You might just end up wasting the best years of your life. Which sensible father will agree to spend his hard-earned money on something like that… and why should he? We only hear about the outliers, and not about the million others who died trying. Now I’m not saying we can all not aspire to be that one outlier, but you shouldn’t base your decision on misinformation.

And yeah, all of us have delusions about how we are all outliers, something special, someone inscrutable, someone very different from 99% of the population. Inclusive of me. There’s nothing anyone can do about it, because it would just break down all our self-confidence and urge to excel in this ratrace… so, oh, whatever, never mind.

And just as I write this, news reaches me of Michael Jackson’s death. I wasn’t so gaga about his dance moves, I was never very much in that line. But for people like me for whom DD was synonymous with television for a large portion of childhood, MJ was synonymous with western music for a very long time. Heal The World and We Are The World used to be staple diet at the innumerable socialCause events where someone would have to sing. I also vividly remember the time many years ago when he came to India (Mumbai, I think) when girls were simply flinging themselves at him (On TV), and people generally indulged in the ga-ga-ness hitherto unchronicled in India. But it was only at NITK that I actually (re)discovered Mr. Jackson. The voice…. the range… I was seriously amazed. Vocabulary fails me. Of course, I assumed he was forever and his discography could be covered in time while I went more slowly on The Beatles, Queen and The Bee Gees… but I guess death waits for none.

I meant that last line there in a very matter-of-fact way, not in a deep sort of way. Which brings me to… people always seem nicer in death than in life. But one incident wants me to put a caveat there. I don’t want to go into the incident, but I’ll say this – parents don’t think your death or maiming is too high a price for the humiliation and suffering you cause their kids.

And all that apart, there’s a lot to be said about doing away with state education boards and making Class X Board Exams optional, apart from Mr. Nilekani being made a cabinet minister…. but I’ll reserve those for another post.

On Rationalizing and aberrations.

So you have a system. All you want to do is judge how the individuality of the components compares to certain norms. You determine what contributes to achieving the particular goal that the system needs to. And then judge how well each individual rates with the particular yard stick.

Lets complicate this a bit more. You have a bunch of these which do similar things. Each has its own yard stick. Each does its own matriculation. But they are all similar. The average judgment is what you would say, okay.

Suppose you introduce a freak in one of the system. This freak fails, all the tests that the yard stick is for. But ultimately can reach the goal in a more effective, albeit different way.

Now you should know. These systems are not all that simple. Each have a bunch of tasks to do and all of them are similar. For each task, there is a freak, but maybe is not very standoutish.

This yardstick, seems to rationalize all the tasks together.

Now, should the system be more robust to account for the freakishness of the freak? If you do rationalize, dont you think you are killing the individuality? But if you dont, the freak remains a freak. And the effective and better way of reaching the goal is lost.

In the middle of all this what is the freak to do? Apart from dealing with the nametag?

When life hands you a lemon….

“Hey, don’t pick NesTea in peach flavor… lemon is so much better”.

“Ma, the upma will be so much better with a twist of lemon”.

“This recipe says ‘dash of lemon juice’… why didn’t you add it? Just because it’s optional doesn’t mean it should be ignored”.

***********************

“Priya, you didn’t tell me you were making lemon rasam today”. “But it’s not lemon rasam!”.

“Why is this pongal tasting a bit funny?”.

“Why’d you get this facewash?”. (Because it contains lemon as an ingredient).

“God, I thought we’d sworn not to buy this brand of deo anymore”.

“Maami, what to do for travel sickness?… and no, YOU are not giving me suggestions here”. (Go have your Avil and throw up all you like… sucking a lemon half works best, didn’t you know?).

***********************

I seem to be in a phase when everything tastes and smells so much better in lemon flavor. And when lemon cures everything from common cold to Stockholm Syndrome.

Minestrone soup from a bewitched, bothered and bewildered soul from Ipanema

I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for quite some time… a lot’s going on with me that can’t be put into a post that’s short and to the point. But something or the other always comes up. Some intermittent writer’s block that is worse than a normal one… you begin something and are continually pissed that you aren’t able to complete it.

I watched The Great Dictator yesterday and man, I must say it’s a mindblowing movie. I rather liked Charlie Chaplin’s speech at the end. And all the slapstick’s really godawesome. I’m rather surprised I hadn’t watched it before last night.

Talking of which… I find I watch more movies on TV than I would normally watch on the LAN at NITK. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to put in effort to choose movies. I just watch what’s coming.. no expectations, I pay attention because I want to, not because I have this movie in front of me and I’ve decided to watch it.

I thought search was a better paradigm than browse… but this previous experience has changed that. It’s easier to ask the chef to surprise you than to painstakingly ponder about your order. And they actually show good movies on television, I find.

So exploratory search is hot right now. Google Squared is rather a great first step.

And the Google Wave video has me (and a gazillion others) waiting in expectation.

I’m quite surprised not too many people associate ‘Bing’ with F.R.I.E.N.D.S… like I said “Can Bing GET any worse?” and hardly anyone got the joke. If the name is onomatopoeic as is rumoured, I’d love it if there was an Indian search engine called ‘Dhichkao’ or ‘Dishum’.

Getting backs to movies and LAN, I find I used to read a lot at college. None of that remains now. It’s been months together since I read anything I found captivating, gripping and unputdownable. It’s actually been pretty long since I read anything substantial at all. It’s really shocking as far as I’m concerned.

At the same time, the number of blogs I’m subscribed to on Google Reader has reached scary levels. If I leave my feeds unread for a day or two, the backlog reaches seemingly apocalyptic limits. And what’s scarier is, I actually manage to bring the unread count to zero. And not by clicking “Mark as read”.

Perhaps it has to do with the attention span. Or maybe my interleaving reading with other activities due to which I can’t afford to devote a continuous block of time and concentration to a single piece I’m reading.

Oh, and I’ve been told for the trillionth time since I was born that I waste far more time than I should. Only now it’s official. I’m rather tired of hearing this… it seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve never been able to dig hyperactive people who are control freaks and can’t live without micromanagement and raise their systolic pressure by twenty points each time they are 0.1 second late in completing something.

I’ve never been an overachiever like quite a good number of my friends. Somehow I’ve never even wanted to overachieve. My goals, if any exist, are modest. I don’t much care about lines like “The only thing worse than aiming high and not getting it is aiming low and getting it”. I despise lines like “Winning is not everything.. it’s the only thing”. I continue to be shocked by people who get frustrated just because someone stole a march on them in things as inconsequential as a Hindu Crossword or a little extra attention. Oh well, maybe I’m just sleepwalking through life.

I also find I’ve been liking a lot of things less and less. People not in the least. I totally detest the mainstream media. It’s due to the Internet, yes. Right from when I was a kid, I was a newspaperoholic and deified anyone who had anything to do with that industry. But it turned out that there are people who don’t do this for a living and do it much better… blogging helped me find a LOT of such people. They are more incisive than Allen Mendonca, funnier than Jug Suraiya, and write better than Bachi Karkaria… So, well, fall from grace for newspaperwallahs in my eyes… it’s going to take me a while to get back to perspective.

I’m also rather sick of the whole post-poll analysis of where the BJP went wrong and whether ‘Hindutva’ is relevant. It’s going too over-the-top for my taste these days.

Getting back to reading, I read Kon-Tiki a really long while back, and I’ve to say Thor Heyerdahl is one of the best writers I’ve ever come across. The whole tale of how he got the idea of sailing from Peru to the South Sea islands, how he assembled a team together, how they got balsa logs, how they built a raft, how they finally sailed using only the most rudimentary sailing equipment, and how they finally reach land… and the most touching bit about how the locals on the islands say they are very touched and feel vindicated that their stories about their ancestors being white bearded Gods are more than just myth…It’s brilliantly written, captivating, gripping. Heyerdahl’s words flow so easily, so simply that he so seemingly effortlessly gets the message across. It’s not fiction, not a thriller, no nailbiting scenes… but so endearing, so edge-of-the-seat that it’s unputdownable.

The adrift-on-a-lifeboat part in Life of Pi borrows heavily from this book – the description of the ocean currents and weather conditions, the description of the seaweed and sea life – birds, fish, sharks, whales, dolphins are all taken from Kon Tiki. And when you’ve read both, you understand the importance of context. In Kon-Tiki, the ocean is a treacherous yet fun place, and the animal life a merry company. But in Life of Pi, the ocean is a dank lonely place and the sea life just food waiting to be gobbled up by Pi Patel and Richard Parker.

I notice that I haven’t heard any substantial bit of music in the past one year that I haven’t heard before. And I’m more addicted to Ella Fitzgerald than ever before, as the title shows. I like the honesty in her music and lyrics. It somehow feels like any emotion I feel has already been felt by Ella and been penned into a song.

Of late, I’ve been hearing quite a few things that are making me rethink ideas I consider the very basics of my thinking. Oh, maybe that’s just a nice way to say “I’m being brainwashed”. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve turned twenty-two and the teacher appears when the student is ready. Or some such thing.

And hopefully I’m coming close to the end of my “This is all a temporary situation” phase that has been on for the past seven years. It got sickening, the feeling that this isn’t where I’m supposed to be, and I’ll be where I’m supposed to be in the coming few weeks/months/years. The moment seems to have finally arrived. But I’ll know for sure only in the next four-five months.

And maybe I’ll finally make one decision and maybe it’ll turn out to be life-changing… but that’s speculation, and I’m not the most decisive of people, as I find out.

I’m also viewing my NITK life in a whole new more detached perspective now… and more than anything else, I’m appalled at the pathetic conditions we all lived in… Mum, Dad, how did you let me live there, and not cringe and gave me moral support every time I called up whining about the pathetic living conditions?!

And… I’ve all moved on from the undergrad mood or so it seems to me.. and when I get nostalgic now, it’s for the times that have passed me by, and I don’t want to relive those times all over again or anything now… I’m glad it happened, not sad it’s over. But it tickles me that there exist people who still haven’t gotten over their undergrad experience and hold on to it to such a large extent, they even nurse the same grudges they held in college, like as if it’s still Incineer or something.

All that apart, after a very very long time, my mind seems to be totally blank. I’ll wind this post up right here…. I don’t seem to have anything more to add… I can’t seem to remember all of what I wanted to put in when I began writing this… so goodbye there.

And the comments section here seems awfully dead of late. Do take a minute to drop a comment. Just anything will do…. it’ll be nice of you to help bring something back from the dead.

Otiose

Yesterday, I was trying to toss these thermocol balls into a bottle of Nail-Polish Remover.

Some of them stuck to my fingers, unwilling to let go. Some others neatly fell around the bottle. Quite a few neatly bounced off the mouth and fell on the sides. A lot of them stubbornly held on to my finger tips. Very few managed to get past the mouth but adhered to the inside.

Just one or two. They fell directly fell into the pit. They met their maker.

Games for parent-child bonding.

In the vacations after my Class XII, I developed a fondness for the Deccan Herald Quick Crossword. So did my mum. We’d crack it together every morning after breakfast. Soon I moved to Surathkal, but we didn’t stop solving the crossword together… those were the hallowed days of free Reliance-to-Reliance calls.

But for the past year, this hobby has suffered a blow. I leave early, and my mum can’t wait to be done with the crossword in the morning… and she can’t call me while doing it, as I’m busy. When I get back home, I see a half-solved crossword with so many scratches and pencil and pen marks I don’t feel like solving it anymore… and when I come home, my mum is out and only comes back a bit later…. so, well… we don’t anymore solve the crossword together.

But of late, we’ve discovered another pastime which doesn’t require a pen and paper, or even as much time as a crossword. All it seems to require is my mum.

Now, mum has this uncanny ability to remember and match faces. So today if she gets a glance at you, and sees your sibling/parent/offspring a year later, she’d say, “Hey, isn’t this the sibling/parent/offspring of the person we saw last year?”. She can match cousins within one level of removedness…. that’s my mum.

So now what I do is I show her images of the Youth Brigade of the UPA government. She tells me who the parent of this young politician is. Like I show her a picture of a Northeast girl, who can pass off as my batchmate… she correctly identifies her as PA Sangma’s daughter. She looks at the huge images of the new Speaker of the Parliament and says “Jagjivan Ram’s daughter”. Same for Jyotiraditya and Sachin. She didn’t have any problem identifying HD Revanna as he was in the same college as her once upon a time.

Of course, she slipped up on Krishna Byre Gowda and Dr. Rajeev Gowda…. YES, they are dynasty dudes too. See this and this.

But that outlier apart, this game is a good bit of fun. I suggest you try it with your parents or grandparents.

100ft NH-17

Little sleep. Tiring day. Hour-long ride home.

So the moment I got into the volvo that’d take me home, I went to the first available seat and proceeded to grab some shut-eye. I pride myself on sharing one trait with Masai warriors. Sadly, it’s not their height. It’s their ability to sleep and wake at will. Okay, make that half a trait… I can go to sleep at will.

Soon, two girls sat opposite me, and a man in the seat next to mine. I barely registered their presence as they kept talking. The conductor came around after quite a while, when I was just about awake thanks to the incessant conversation that I think was about their siblings’ weddings or something.

“Where to?”, the conductor asked. “Udupi Garden”*, said the two girls. “Udupi”, said the man.

“And you?”, he asked me, while one girl made an effort to nudge me awake.

With great effort, I turned around and said “KREC Guest House”**.

*Name of stop in BTM Layout, Bangalore, on the ring road.
**Name of stop closest to Girls Block at NITK

Mark of a T-School.

(When there can be B-Schools, why not T-Schools? There’s more of a demand for them in India anyway. And it sounds way cooler than ‘Engineering College’. My lame attempt at introducing a new word into everyone’s vocabulary. Like bitchcakes.)

There’s this urban legend about Lewis Carroll. Apparently once the Queen liked Alice in Wonderland so much that she asked for a copy of his next book. Carroll duly obliged, sending her a copy of his loyally inscribed An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.

But then that’s urban legend.

Now for some cold, hard fact.

First floor of NITK Library. Most books in order, a few thrown about here and there and stuffed into the wrong locations. A man hard at work putting books back in their correct place.

Category 500 in the Dewey Decimal System. Books on Mathematics. A bunch on Number Theory. Then some on Linear Algebra. Quite a lot, actually, on Linear Algebra. You sift through the books looking for one particular author.

Then a volume slimmer than those around it catches your eye. It looks very unlike the others. You look at the author’s name and wonder what that book is doing in Category 500. Then you look at the title and understand.

Author: Arundhati Roy. The book: The Algebra of Infinite Justice.

Just for Laughs

(Now, If you are religious or are a great fan of Bombay’s famed Mahalakshmi temple, I dont mean to offend you… Just laugh. If you don’t find it too cliched already for your taste, that is. )

Friend: Kya yaar, I wanted to go to the wall at the back. You know, if you wish for something and press a coin against it and it sticks, the wish will come true. Sadly, that area is closed.

Me: May be God shrugged and said, ” Recession. Too many asking for favours. Its affected me too, you know?”

Blush II

This is not an isolated incident I’m blogging about, but a whole series of them.

Has it ever happened to you that you are talking about someone, and that very same someone happens to be eavesdropping on your conversation? Embarrassing for all concerned Even if all you’re doing is paying a compliment.

Two particular incidents come to mind. One happened  a few hours back, and I shall not go into details.

But the other….. wellllll… I’m just hoping people have all forgotten I exist. It happened a long time ago, anyway.

So there was this piece of gossip floating around the hostel about a certain inmate, let’s call her X. The gossip was regarding a certain saree pin of hers, let’s call it Y.

We were in the room of a certain batchmate, let’s call her Z. There was me, let’s call me I, then J, K, and L.And M too, who roomed in the same room.

Now K, L and M had some fancy-schmancy Engineering Drawing to do. They had the top view, front view and side view of a certain image, and couldn’t agree on its isometric projection (or whatever the right term is…. remember this was AGES ago).

And then I walks in, along with J, and I and J began to bore Z, and disturb K, L and M. I, J and Z began to try helping K, L and M with their homework and as most joint-study sessions are wont to do, it morphed into a chitchat session.

One of the group made a passing reference to X and Y. Another member was hearing this news for the first time, and wanted to know more about the Y in question. Words weren’t sufficing to explain this rather elaborate bit of news, so K hit upon a brilliant idea.

She drew top view, front view and side view of Y. On the homework paper. And for once, all six of us agreed about the isometric projection.

As we were just expressing our feelings about the Y in question, in giggly, loud voices, through the unlatched door comes who else but X!

Now Dr. Devi Shetty would have been a very welcome person there, considering the trauma our poor coronary arteries were undergoing at this shock. But, nope, it was X, and X alone. K left the topview-frontview-sideview paper in I’s hand and ran for her life citing she needed a drink of water from the cooler, though she had been clutching a bottle full of cold water till then The rest of us had X to face.

“What are you folks upto?”, X asked. “Nothing, it’s mega-boring… nothing to do, we were just wasting time… you on the other hand have been slogging your head off, haven’t you?”, one of us said, in a desperate stab at normal conversation.

“You slogger, what’s that in your hand?”, X reached for the sheet in I’s hand, left by the quick K. “I… I… ” was all that I could muster. And then brainwave. “It’s not mine, it’s Ls and M’s homework. See? Topviewfrontviewsideview”. And as if on cue, L mercifully retrieved the sheet from I’s hand, before X could mentally form the isometric view.

After a few more Gestapo-like enquiries about our previous topics of conversation and the subject of our giggles a few minutes back, the four of us (L and M having gone deep into their homework) got back to discussing how awesome that new movie’s songs were, and that George Clooney looked really amazing for his age, and we listened in rapt silence to X talking about unsavoury elements spreading stories about Y, while L and M pretended to not hear and concentrated on their homework.

Punning

Whats your pun style?

Do you pun for the heck of it? Or are you a situational punner?

Do you pun just to introduce some humor in a conversation? Or do you pun unknowingly during conversations?

When you pun, how do you deliver your line? Does it rest heavily on the the meaning relevant to the conversation? Or does it tip it merciless on to the other meaning?

Does delivery at all matter or affect the pun, its comic effect, or acerbic sarcasm or whatever reason you punned?

Can you at all take a pun out of the situational relevance? How effective are stand-alone puns?

I’d like to know.

Gawd! this sounds terribly like a facebook quiz!

Guess, I need to introduce a ‘none of these’ option!

Saddest Day Of My Life

My political leanings are well known; I’ve all but yelled it from the rooftops.

And for those of you who were concerned about my state after this…er… shock, I’m fine even expected such an outcome, though not like this.

So, anyway, the following bits are to justify the title. I wanted to actually make it ‘Say it’s not true’, after the Queen+Paul Rodgers song for World AIDS Day, but then this Advani phrase suits it better.

My first concern has been about this evil of reservations. And that there is an order of priority according to religion, to claim the country’s resources. If all goes well in the next three months, and for six-seven years following that, I’ll be free of all this nonsense. But what about the rest of the country? The heart bleeds.

The next thing has been about the blatant selling of our national interest. The N-Deal for one. It should have been renegotiated.

The most important thing however is the security issue. I’ve come close to getting blown to bits, but thankfully escaped.. once was at Forum Mall, another was at Army School. Both places they detonated bombs. And then there was the frenzied set of phonecalls to relatives in Mumbai and those in Delhi. I can (thankfully) only imagine the levels of anguish folks who’ve lost loved ones in terror attacks go through. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. I can’t bear to watch millions of innocent lives being compromised for cheap motives like staying in power.

And then there’s the issue of Assam and the North-East. The place is overrun by illegal immigrants, a potential security threat. And everyone concerned as of now, apart from the BJP and maybe the AGP chooses to look the other way, or even encourage it for electoral gains. Separatist movements are on full swing, violence is a daily occurrence. No one else seems to have reached out to these separatist groups, tried to begin a peace process. And integrate the North-East with the rest of the country. That is one region which shares more border with other countries than with our own. And China is encroaching on the borders, and Manmohan doesn’t seem to be having sleepless nights about that.

Freedom of worship is yet another thing. Proselytization has reached new heights, and is slated to continue. A minister of state calls our gods names and no one says a thing? And he doesn’t bother to apologize?Symbols of our faith are encroached upon, and no one seems to turn a hair. The levels of polarization society is seeing now has had no precedent.

I don’t care if the people in power are young or old. I don’t give a damn if they are rich or poor either. They can be illiterate for all I care. All I ask for is some amount of patriotism. Of what use is competence when you don’t look at the country and your countrymen with love and a feeling of belonging? I find that sorely lacking in the UPA and the Left, who put party and self interests above national interest. And who don’t seem to take pride in being Indian. They have the ‘We are a third-world country’ mentality instead of a ‘We can/need to be a first-world country’.

So for five years, I’ve been hoping for a change in governments, cringed at all the injustice meted out by the establishment,  and have seen an increasing number of people turn anti-UPA. But, well, I guess my sample space was localized… as is seen in the near-sweep of BJP in Karnataka, and the whole of Bangalore Urban. I was surprised Sangliana and Jaffer Sharif got beaten. And that Ananth Kumar was trailing for quite a while.

They say it’s good the Left is out… but now there’s nothing to stop Manmohan bending backwards to US demands, and considering it’s Obama, he’s surely going to demand his protectionist pound of flesh. And have his own solutions for the Kashmir problem.

On a more positive note, now the Congress can’t hide behind the excuse of the Left preventing development from taking place. It’s also good to see a non-fractured mandate, though one hopes it isn’t Amar Singh the Congress allies with. And now that their position is secure, hope they concentrate more on development than on nurturing votebanks.

On a lighter note, searches for ra_hul_ga_n_dh_i_s_girl_fr_iend are up again. Not scheduled to go down anytime soon, I guess. Folks say they are looking for the image of the future bahu of the nation, and by extension, the future kingmaker of the nation.

The folks at mind dry dot in have the best accuracy/resourcesUsed ratio w.r.t exit polls . Maybe Mr. Yogendra Yadav (not the one featured in this video) needs to take a leaf out of their book.

And for so long, the BJP’s slogan has been “Advani For PM”. Now that they have to sit in the opposition, it’s going to be “Advani Against PM”.

PS: On a personal note, I didn’t stick around watching the counting unfold (I can’t watch India lose a cricket match, d’you think I can bear to watch it lose its pride, wealth, and everything else?) and so I actually managed to get stuff done. Not everything went my way, but my laptop mysteriously came back to life this afternoon… (it had died a week or so back) hurray!

Meta-joke/Tribute to Monty Python

A: Monty Python’s Argument Clinic Sketch isn’t really that funny.

B: ‘Course it is!

A: No, it isn’t.

B: Sure it is!

….
….

Has this been done before? I know Not The Nine O’Clock News has done as a tribute to this.  It’s called Not The Parrot Sketch, and I can’t seem to find the YouTube video now. Will link it up once I do.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Google.com. Wikipedia. MentalFloss.com.

LinkedIn. Orkut. Facebook. Twitter. Blogger. WordPress.

Sometimes I know too much for my own good.

Curiosity kills the cat. A little learning is a dangerous thing.

I never learn.

Never mind.

Fabtastic Four

So this blog officially turns four today, the 10th of May. This post is written to commemorate that. And reflect.

At this particular moment, my mind is a mire of chaotic thoughts all of which are competing to be penned first… I’ll start at the beginning.

Firstly, I’m rather surprised I’ve managed to sustain this blog this long. I don’t have a track record for sticking to what I start. But thinking again, probably it’s not all that surprising.

For starters, to stick to something, you need to be able to see rewards or potential rewards from the activity. And you also need continuous feedback on your performance. Blogging here is plentiful in both.

Feedback… we got a great amount of that in our first year of blogging. Not all of it was favorable, but it was fun. Atleast someone was reading us. The momentum sustained through the following year, and a sort of community of regulars began to build here. Over the course of time, some quit blogging, some quit reading us, some quit knowing us, new folks came in, we made new friends, old friends discovered this place… somehow, continuous feedback keeps coming in. The knowledge that someone is out there reading, that someone subscribes to us keeps us coming back and posting here. It doesn’t feel like a holler into the darkness.

And there’s other sorts of feedback too… blog stats. We notice uptick of hits for certain search terms and are amazed people google for images of cats scratching or coucals and end up here to look at my sad bits of photography, or folks wondering if India is a sec_u_lar coun_try and ending up on my description of an incident that took place in school almost seven years ago. And a good amount of folks end up here googling for our Alma Mater! That along with Search Engine Optimization drives us to tag our posts appropriately, to attract the sort of audience we want… I don’t know how successful we are there.

Looking at the post about Ra_hul_ga_n_d_hi’s g_irl_fi_end, I don’ t think we are very successful on that front. We get atleast 20 hits for that post from search engines alone everyday. Those stats overshadow my other posts… I’m wondering in what way this is going to affect things.

Occasionally, I curse the fact that family members, friends and whoever else who knows me personally knows of this space and checks it… due to which I can’t write bright bitchy posts on how irritating a particular person was or why I’m feeling down at a point in time… and thus I write rather obscure posts just to vent my frustrations… after a couple of months, even I can’t make out what such a post was all about!

No, I don’t mean I’m irritated with the whole deal… not when I bask in the adulation of a ‘nice post!’ or ‘hilarious!’ comment. The medium is such and I’m aware of it. But the fact that I choose to vent the frusts here too along with a dozen other more personal spaces, says how much this place means to me. It’s somewhere where I’m a slightly exaggerated me, where I play to (some of) my strengths and pretend the rest don’t matter. It’s one of those incredibly few places where I call the shots and can say ‘Respect Mah Authoritah’. It’s somewhere where I can write long drawn out descriptions of a rather boring day and in the same breath nonchalantly put in what I think is a major achievement. And on an especially bad day, I can even say “Screw you all, I don’t need you. I have my blog”.

Bleg: Some people tell me I’m a rather different person online than offline… is this true?

The rewards have been many. They might not be as attractive as a job at Live Labs, but do manage to keep me in the zone… the same sort of zone that keeps gamers addicted to gaming.

I write better now. I subconsciously maintain correct punctuation and spelling to some extent. My grammar is a lot better. My choice of words has improved.

And I’m a lot more logical. My arguments are better structured… atleast better than when I started off. I react less negatively to negative feedback. I don’t anymore give a WTH reaction when I’m corrected with condescension. I’ve learned to separate the style from the substance… to some extent atleast. Atleast to the extent I can say Shashi Tharoor and Arundathi Roy talk crap.

I also review movies and music better now. I know now what people like to read, what’ll provoke a flamewar, what’ll go unnoticed.

I react better in writing, I find. I sure hope I’m someday able to optimize that good enough for realtime reactions.

I’ve also read a lot of blogs, some good, most bad. I thank god I don’t get mindless adulation like folks like Silverine and Sidin on every post I write… And for that I have you to thank, dear readers and commenters, for setting the tone of the discussion here.

And… this blog is a sort of an online personality for me, better than Facebook or Orkut. I’m glad this is not an anonymous sort of an effort despite my paranoia about this. It conveys better information about what my interests are than any other slice of me. It’s also a good conversation starter.

This year is not without its highlights… First, we got DesiPunditted. Then Bejoy Nambiar, the winner of Gateway on Sony Pix, which I’d mentioned, mailed me saying “Glad you wrote about me” or equivalent… for a while after that, I toyed with the idea of getting a speaking part in a Hollywood movie. A while later, Ann Anra, the child star of Avvai Shanmughi who went on to become Miss Chennai, left a comment. A month or so back, I discovered on this blog that one of the folks who comment on this space was someone I’d been acquainted with seven years back.

Apart from all that, it’s the people I’ve come across through my blog which I’m most glad for. Friends I got to know better and who got to know me better, folks who know me but who I don’t know and who inform me of their existence one fine day to my face, folks I’d've never met otherwise… friends of friends, folks who live ten minutes from where I live, folks who frequent the temple I frequent, folks I don’t know about but who tell my friends they know me through my blog, folks from a past life I regained touch with, folks I hold in awe of some sort or the other, folks who validate my beliefs, folks who expose me to a totally different train of thought…

It’s the readers who decide the tone of the discussion that goes on here, and I’ve rather enjoyed the discussions that crop up, be it about books or movies or something I thought was funny… I’m glad to come in contact with a dozen different sorts of views, a good many links relevant in some way or the other to something I wrote, and bouquets and brickbats and ayes and nays.

And every year I write the HappyBirthdayBlog post, I customarily go into a link frenzy, mentioning all those folks here who had added their two paise on this page in the past year, with links to their blogs, so here goes:

• Logik who shares my Internet addiction-of-sorts and whose set of interests has a considerable overlap with mine, and who’s a goldmine of links to webapps and quirky news, and who gives good movie, music and other recos.
• SG aka Bond… ex-neighbor to me and ex-classmate to Tuna, and says things with that characteristic nonchalance of hers, like only a wingmate can.
• Ego, fellow Rightwinger, with more clarity and passion than I can aspire for.
• TheG who’s all but quit blogging and commenting here, but who gives me rather honest feedback when he does, off this page.
• Swati, who I wish would blog
• Harish, BJPFan like me and Advani impersonator, unlike me.
• Arjun, fellow AamirHater and fakeNewsWriter.
• Shreevatsa, who has a relevant link, apart from something to say, for everything I write.
• Karthik, who leaves a lot of slice-of-life comments.
• KarthikRam from Down Under who begins quite a few debates here.
• TheMonk with the very interesting contrarian tone.
• Nitin who LetsUsKnow. Used to.
• Vishwas, who occasionally takes time off from his rather long list of activities to drop an insightful comment here.
• Vada, who Penns and hence hasn’t penned (or punned) anything in ages.
• Dushy who seems to have been rather busy over the past year.

It’s been a great four years, but what’s next?

For one thing, we aren’t NITKians anymore. But we’ll still continue to care about NITK and all that that happens there. Sure, we won’t be bothered too much about who is doing what or who else, but we’ll check every college ranking that ever gets published and proudly circle NITK’s name in it. We’ll publicize NITKSIP, sing paeans about the IT department attracting employees of Adobe and suchlike yada, we’ll attend alumni meets. We’ll dash into the campus every single time we’re in the area and take photographs just like it was just one of the days between August 2004 and April 2008. We’ll follow Inci and Engi like we have a personal stake in it, and I’ll fervently pray that the folks who set Virtual Bounty know search engine usage better than I did. I’ll continue to end any “My college is bestest” argument with “Par hamaare paas private beach hai”. I’ll always have higher expectations than usual in the fields of humour, ability to survive in harsh conditions, and cool geekiness from anyone who claims to be from NITK… Nowhere else are students so resilient to bad food and bad living conditions, that they top it all off with a good dose of bad jokes and show you a few jingchak tricks with a computer while at it.

NITK Numbskulls isn’t named so because we were a part of NITK, it is because NITK was and is and will continue to be a part of us.

And I don’t think I’m stopping updating this page anytime soon. That’s not because of an altruistic need to inform and entertain others… if you gained anything from this page, it’s merely incidental. This blog has a more selfish motive for its existence. It’s been an integral part of this journey of self-discovery which is still underway. It preserves an image of who I was at different points in my life, it helps me collect my thoughts, analyze them… and keep me sane and knowing who I am despite the chaos in my mind.

Here’s a prayer to Goddess Saraswati who has graced me enough that I could see this day, and quite a few other important days in the past year for which I will be eternally grateful. May we see more such days in the coming years.

What happened to Woody’s?

This is more of a bleg post than a rant post.

Okay, just WHAT has happened to Woody’s?

My delight knew no bounds many years ago when Woody’s opened a new branch in Jayanagar 9th Block. A rather closeby alternative for good food, at non-astronomical prices.

It was where we’d go for breakfast when we had guests over, and where we’d go for dinner after a late-night movie. It was THE place for birthdays, and treating friends.

It was also the place for bumping into old friends.

It was most importantly the place where I went right after losing my mobile while coming back from CAT ‘07 (No, I didn’t write it, a friend of mine was and she was staying over at my place), and was clueless about what to do next, and was thankful as hell I bumped into my uncle who, like most adults, knew what exactly to do next.

Few visits home that stretched longer than a couple of days were complete without dinner at Woody’s.

Their large expansive structure, with emphasis on cleanliness, and giving you a feeling of being looked after, was a delight after spending weeks at a cramped hostel where you had to queue up for everything from a bath to a meal to getting a form to paying your fees.

Their Chinese wasn’t great, but their SouthIndian, and even their naans and rotis were brilliant.Oh, and what divine starters there were!

And ah, their basundi brooked no comparison to anything except maybe the nectar of the Gods.

Surprisingly, I didn’t give this place much of a thought over the past year, though I’ve been living at home. Maybe because I’ve been living at home and don’t care about eating out.

Changes happened. The place got/is getting renovated. Due to which the structure has been reduced to a mere shadow of its former self.

No issues, we thought and went there one evening. And as is usual, asked for the basundi. Nope, we don’t have any sweets this evening, the waiter said. Shock and disbelief. Then we were told it was due to staff shorage.The waiter even agreed with us that the standard has come down, and we all shook our heads together.

Go to the Woody’s on Commercial Street, he suggested. It’s awesome there.

I forgot about that bit of advice. Random shopping spree at Comm Street this evening, which was supposed to end, like other shopping sprees, with pizza. But then, coming across Woody’s brought back that waiter’s advice, and in we went.

I won’t go into details, but I think it’ll suffice to say the food seemed to have been prepared by a new bride. And while I tried to confirm this point with the waiter there, he only grinned and with an apologetic smile said “If the cook is paid, excellent meals are made”, or something to that effect. The headwaiter got an earful too, and he suggested I complain to the manager. Almost like he wanted me to. I did, and it felt like I was talking to a sphinx.

So what the hell IS going on in this place? Recession? Someone do let me know… I really want to know how quality could do such a backflip in such a short time.

Blush.

There are times when I splurge, and there are times when I’m rather…. economical. I’m not ashamed of exhibiting the latter behaviour, and successfully ignore stares from rude waiters when I do not tip, or bookstore owners when they say “Thisees naat ye library”.

But occasionally, I do end up blushing. Like today.

Usual bookstore whose owner doesn’t quite mind me finishing the pulp-fic pop-lit in the store. Not when I actually do buy more durable tomes from him with amazing regularity.

I came across one of those tiny books which give you daily predictions for a whole year, based on your Sun sign. Found the right one. Found it was cellotaped shut.

Now I had no intention of buying that book, given one-third of the year is done. But I wanted to test the accuracy of the damn thing. Just like I read the day’s forecast after I am done for the day.

So since the cellotape was only around the middle of the book, I tried peering through the ends of the book, for one specific date to check if the book was on track there. Feb 10, Feb 14, Feb 15…. and I see the proprietor giving me a look.

I tried giving my best ‘Well, you caught me with my hand in the cookie jar for the gazillionth time since I was four years old, now what?’ look, but he just smiled and said

That’s not for Taurus, that’s for Aries

Whoops.

This is what happens when you’ve been going to the same bookstore since before you learned to read.

PS: I find in most stores that such books are present for all the sun signs with the exeption of Taurus… why? Is there more demand for these books among Taureans?

Thinking Retro

Yeah, so, I have this fascination/ addiction/ devotion nearing madness for anything Retro.

Music, The Beatles, The Eagles, Boney M, Bob Marley, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Stevie Wonder etc etc etc.

Movies, My Fair Lady, Star Wars, Grease, Rain Man, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Psycho, any Woody Allen(you get the drift)

Books, Id pick anything retro or even Victorian or even before that.  Given the choice between say, Anna Karenina and Dan Brown, I’d  go definitely for Anna Karenina.

I absolutely detest boy bands and chick lit/flicks.

The reason as my friend soaringheights, puts, is because of the experimental nature of the bygone era. I also say, “Hey! thats class, not crass!”.

But I wonder, when I hear my Dad humming Brown girl in the Ring or Id love you to want me, (yeah! he likes pop and I tend to exaggerate that ) that all these might have been pop in that age and indeed survived because it was popular.

May be a few decades hence, we might actually find people thinking Bryan Adams is absolutely hip, or accidentally discovering Himmesh Reshamiya and going gaga over it. Five  Point Someone might become a raging icon for anyone who wants to know what goes in an average IITian’ s life.

Who knows?

Exactly 365 days ago…

Tuna, Bond and the rest of the Chem bunch left for a trip.

Mal, Pub, me, Bond and Tuna simultaneously got teary-eyed.Saranya was stoic as usual.

And after the ‘byes to this bunch, Logik and I had a cuppa at F&H.

Then I got senti with Pragu.We went and had a final mess dinner.

Began burning movies. And Mahi and Devika were leaving then, began lapsing into flashback and all that.

Then Tata-’Byes to Maloo and Bigshow. And found Vada had disappeared.

I’m not sure if it was this night or what, but I remember spending  a drizzly night on the pavement expounding to Poonam the theory of the Life, Universe and everything else.

I distinctly remember the sentiness with Shruthi… speaking in half-sentences and choking on emotion.

Bugged Pubali for a while. And then went to extreme nostalgia with my roommate of four years. And some more teary-eyed-ness with Pubali. Some more last-minute movie-burning.

Then had last few chats on the NITK LAN. Played the last strains of Ella Fitzgerald my room would hear.Shut down my laptop one last time at hostel.

Found it was 4 am. Took a bath in the Old Block…. man, last day at NITK and it had to go without water in the blocks.

Came back and got supremely senti with Shruthi. Eyes full of tears, both of us.

Just as I was moving my stuff out, I exchanged the last few words of gossip I would exchange at NITK. And looked back at the room, the cupboard, under the bed, on the table, on the shelf one last time.

And then the farewell hugs. Each one made me more emotional than the others.

My mother had never seen me tearier. And that is saying something.

My last night-out at NITK. Feels like yesterday.