What The Hack!

Momma

2011-05-10T22:10:00.000+05:30

At a church gathering, after the session on celebrating mothers day, I was asked to pray.

Me, being me, cant not speak in public without saying something totally unexpected and irreverent. So, this was my prayer. Iv added to it now, personalized it quite a lot, and put in a few ‘notes’. But still, here goes…

Lord, Thank you for moms.

Thank you for someone who teached me to pray, then insisted I do that every day of my life, and kept on checking if I did still did - even now, when Im 26.

Thank you for someone who insisted that I go to church every Sunday, and that I sit silently and reverently throughout the two hours there, right from when I was not even one (If ever I felt tempted to imitate the other kids in bawling, there were her nails to pinch, till I couldn’t take it no more and I stopped)

Thank you for someone who made sure I wash my hands before every meal, and trim my nails every day – even though I do neither anymore

Thank you for someone who spent hours after dinner talking about the world around to the teen I was then. About the constellations in the sky, detailed plots of Arthur Hailey’s novels, Sanjay Gandhi’s atrocities and the Roman papacy. I probably could now give her a thousand times more information about all of that and much more, but that’s pretty much only because of those snippets I was exposed to when I was ten.

Thank you for a mom who insisted that I learn to cook and wash my clothes right after I was done with my tenth. Being a guy just wasn’t an excuse with her

Thank you for a mom who introduced me to Enid Blyton, William Shakespeare & ABBA much before any kid my age was. They’re still favourites.

Thank you for a mom who took pride in my participation in debates, and quiz competitions. Who edged me through, without pushing me too hard either. (On a side note, she could have let me play that football match for Red House when I was in the 8th, inspite of my really low marks, or sing in the Culturals when I was in the 10th – But yeah, let’s not bring it up on Mother’s day)

Thank you for a mom who insisted that cheating in exams was a sin, that lying was wrong and that using foul language in whatever form was totally no-no. Those rules had no sub-clauses or exemptions.

Thank you for a mom who burnt the midnight oil with me before my exams during my 6th and 7th, pinching and spanking, just because I wouldn’t get it (Neither did she know how to get me to get it - But she atleast cared)

Thank you again, mom, for insisting that I complete my CA before I pursued a career in journalism. Even though I rebelled hard against that, and much of that rebellion was directed at you.

Thank you Lord for a mom who broke from normal mallu tradition and allowed me to not study science in 11th. It changed my life.

Thank you for a mom who, again in a departure from tradition, is not insisting I get married at 26. I probably won’t even when Im 35 (Please be cool about that too, if we reach there)

Thank you for a mom who taught us kids to manage the pennies. Who taught us how to stitch together a living even with the littlest of money to spend. We probably wouldn’t have to again, but if we did, we know how to do it.

Thank you for a mom who taught us that its not important to know all the answers in life, but that what’s important is persevering with what you believe is right.

Thank you above all, for a mom who did everything to ensure we grew up to beconme real Men!

Breaking Down News

2011-05-04T21:33:00.000+05:30

Eleven past eight in the morning was when I woke up. That’s early by my owlish standards. The first chore is checking Facebook on my phone, drowsily. One of my old school chums, now settled in the States has just walled saying something to the effect that if it REALLY was Laden’s body they found and not a body-double, then its sweet revenge for America. That’s enough to get anyone wide awake, forget a news-hack.

Iv already typed in nyt.com on my browser. That’s logical, considering it is an American story. If it was anywhere else, the logical choice would have been one of the wires, like Reuters, Associated Press or Bloomberg. The Times has a very short story quoting an AP report that Laden has been killed in Pakistan, and that President Obama will make a statement shortly. The three biggest pointers, Laden, Pakistan & Obama, which went on to be blown up manifold over the next day was very much there in the first twenty minutes of news gathering.

I decide to double check on Reuters. Reuters also has essentially that much information, again quoting AP. Bloomberg has still not updated its website. I have a wisecrack and text my boss, and his boss. Four words. ‘Laden dead, says nyt’. That’s important, because the name of the source carries a lot of credibility. If it was Fox News saying it, the news would have been trashed.

Ten seconds later I get a reply saying ‘we have it, we’re already running it’. I feel foolish and out of touch. By now its twenty minutes since the first report on the New York Times website. But by now all four business news channels (not to mention the dozens of non-business news channels in India) were all broadcasting the story in their own version of the flashy red Breaking News tickers.

In fact, by then NDTV profit had even made the first blooper, pronouncing Obama dead, instead of Osama. Iv worked the ticker. I know the pressure a ticker person goes through. The bigger the story, the higher the decibel levels around you urging you to finish writing that line and click on the Publish button, higher the force of the blood pumping through the veins of your hands, and in spite of that, higher the need to actually publish that line before your counterpart in the competition.

The entire competition probably would have laughed at that blooper. We allow ourselves that luxury. It’s too high-strung a world to not indulge yourself with a moment of relaxation. Very soon, we also make that same mistake. The girl who was responsible got it personally from the Chief Editor for about twenty minutes, not to mention the mails that went to the entire office calling attention to the error. She was in tears.

Within an hour, the Times had a proper 500 word article, accompanying an image of people in front of the giant screen on Times Square proclaiming Osama’s death, written, Im assuming, with inputs from their White House correspondent, and their reporter covering the CIA. This they do by getting the reporters who are regularly in touch with high placed figures in the White House and the CIA or the FBI to verify what happened. With the news already out, and America already taken to the streets in celebration, this verification should have been relatively easy. But then again, for a journalist, news is important only till it becomes news.

In the meanwhile, I continue to text a few friends about the news break. The fellow journalist has also seen the piece of news, and replies saying they’re carrying it on her channel too. The non-news friend hasn’t. And that is the essential difference between a news person and a non-newsperson. For a hack, news just has a way of finding you. That happens on different levels. For a reporter, like the AP correspondent who first broke the story, the people who make the news tell them. In this case, probably one very-high placed CIA operative, who was in the loop. For someone who’s job is to sit in the office, it comes through the reporters or the many wire services around, or if not, one of the rival television channels. But news is never hidden or obscure for a long period, and by that I mean around a quarter of an hour.

Another aspect of being in the news business is how news keeps changing like its nobody’s business. Every week, the world had brushed aside a happening event and moved on to the next.

Lets take this year for instance. In the last week of January, it was the Egyptian uprising, and the toppling of President Mubarak. In ther beginning of February, it was the arrest of A Raja and his aides. The last two weeks of Feb were about the budget. March brought the Tsunami in Japan. A week later, it was the crisis in Libya. Early April was the world cup victory. Later on the Royal Wedding, and now this. Each of these stories can vie for the biggest annual news event any other year, and we’re through with just four months in the year.

(Will probably be completed... Whenever that is)

Owning up to your spine

2009-04-21T23:40:00.004+05:30

Every once in a while, a young man or woman shoots out of obscurity with an act or a statement that, while it shocks the guts out of the conformists for its sheer veracity, helps reaffirm the faith of us puritans in the existence of the demarcation between right and wrong.

Miss California Carrie Prejean was the frontrunner for the Miss America title last weekend, till she was asked what definitely was a loaded question by Gay celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. “Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”

Now, gay-rights is an issue which even the presidential candidate is expected to have an opinion on in the US. Why, even Carrie later confessed that “of all the topics I had studied on, I dreaded this one. Any other question and….” But neither the fears, which eventually proved founded, nor the inclination to doctor her prepared answer to sound politically correct like even Barack Obama did, stopped her from giving an answer that politely but clearly stated her convictions.

“Well I think its great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offence to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much”

Ms Prejean predictably (though it is fair to suspect that she could have lost for other reasons too) lost the winners sash. But clearly she was the winner that night. Touted as a potential winner, and having anticipated this very topic, she probably knew how badly such an answer could affect her chances at the pageant. Even when she foresaw the depth of the trap that she was being lured into, even when she could have escaped with a politically agreeable answer that wouldn’t commit her opinion anywhere, even when she could have found a thousand excuses to even betray her convictions for the larger picture, like all of us are so prone to do, the 21 year old girl chose to be candidly forthright.

We live in a society that, we’d better admit, is abounding in covert morality, covert ethics, and covert spirituality - ‘Keep your inclinations to yourself, please. It isn’t socially acceptable’ So, that a celebrity, from that very class of society that we hold responsible for the downward plunge of our moral values, can stand up and say “it's not about being politically correct, for me it was being biblically correct”, is not just refreshing for its frankness, but also a slap in the face of a generation that shies away from owning up to anything that isn’t the in-thing, a generation that is terrified at the thought of not conforming.

But the furore that resulted points out something else too. The question technically asked for the contestants views on the subject. There was no way she should have been booed for stating what she thought was right. If anything she should have been lauded for the gumption. Instead, Perez Hilton derides her, calling her a bitch Have we become so obsessed with socially accepted stance’s, or the need for self justification in Hiltons case, that we cant even accept a differing view without snickering.

Something in the bottom of my heart applauds the way Miss California could be so vocal about her religion even in front of a partisan crowd, something we rarely have the guts to do. She later described the encounter as “by having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself”. She might have lost the pageant, and maybe a potential international title, but she was clearly the winner of the night!

PS: All this said, something still bothers me. Same sex marriages might not be Christian, but is sashaying in a bikini, a costume that classifies as semi-pornography in half the world, Christian? But yeah, for now, lets give it to the girl!

The Happy Post

2009-04-19T21:31:00.003+05:30

Its election time again, and predictably, everyone’s talking elections. So could I refrain? Atleast that’s my lame excuse for loading a whole post with boring political talk and analysis last time. But then again, I really wanted to say that, and anyway, you rely on my commentaries on the stock market. Then why not some politics? So hears the deal – You read politics, but I promise to keep it interesting as I can, not to mention insightful! Okay?

Politicians are known to talk big. Or rather, have a loose tongue. Someone once characterized all politicians as liars. Others just settle for calling them opportunists. Nevertheless, they speak of seemingly implausible things with so much of conviction that you begin to suspect that they actually believe whatever it is they say to be true.

Take for instance the number of leaders claiming that they will win the elections convincingly. Now, these leaders who are known as the best political strategists would surely have us believing that they knew the electorate as nobody else can. Only thing, even their opponents make the same wild claim of victory that leaves you quizzed.

Mayawati (oh btw, does she have a first name or something?) thinks that this is her year of reckoning. LK Advani thinks she doesn’t even stand a chance and is only dreaming. Both of them are Z category names that have had their share of wins so far. Could they be bad at feeling the pulse? One would think not. So why would they engage in such ramble? You would guess, so as to disillusion the voter into believing that the victory is already sealed and all he needed to do was be a part of it by voting for them.

Hmmm, that’s a point, but take this. Pinarayi Vijayan the secretary of the CPM in Kerala thinks his party will do one better than last time and win all 20 seats from the state. He claims a ‘Leftern wind is sweeping across the state’. And you read my last post.

So that leads me to conclude that maybe the leaders are not always telling you what they want you to hear. Rather, at the heights of desperation, they tell you what they would have someone telling them. Heights of disillusionment, wouldn’t you say? And they expect us to vote for them!

***

Talking of political rhetoric, it is sad, no pathetic, to hear the Congress keep on accusing the NDA of laying out a banquet for 3 terrorists some ten years ago, and then accompanying them all the way to Kandahar (Just to tickle your memory, that was when DD transformed itself into a 24 hour news channel – with hourly bulletins. Those were still the days when Prannoy Roy was only the Chairman of a news agency known as New Delhi Television). Now, that was a long way ago, but I remember clearly what happened then. No politician had come up with a solution then. So why make a deal of it now, when the intricacies have conveniently faded from public memory. That is where Indian politics needs to mature. We need to grow above the culture of saying anything and everything that suits our disposition at any given time. Home Minister Chidambaram’s statement early this year that the govt. of that day could not have done much better with the lives of so many hostages at stake was a solitary example of political honesty that transcends rhetoric. That’s why I respect that man. He has the guts to call a spade a spade.

But that said, even Advani’s allegation that 26/11 would not have happened under his rule is again crap. The thing is, no Indian government could have stopped it. The attacks were not a , but even in its simplicity, the only way those attacks could have gone wrong was if the terrorists themselves messed up. I think as a country we have to own up to that. That it is the system that failed us. And while the system ought to be improved, it isn’t something that features high on the agenda of any political party. And moreover, both Kandahar and Mumbai were one of a kind attacks. There was no way really that we could have seen it coming. Or atleast there was no way any govt. could have prevented it, given that we are talking about India.

L K Advani says the laws (POTA) during the previous govt. were much stronger and could have helped counter terrorism. But tell me, which terrorist has he stopped with that law? Ultimately, the law was only used by some regional satraps, trying to settle old scores with political rivals. And in any case, you have to give it to the Manmohan Singh govt. that terrorists started unleashing their venom only during his tenure.

***

Talking of POTA enforcement, one of the most significant instances of its misuse was Jayalalitha’s arrest of Vaiko. Today, Vaiko and Jayalalitha share a platform asking for a joint mandate. If there is an insult to a poor voter wielding his solitary vote that is to keep his mouth shut for five years or so, it is the presumption that he doesn’t even remember!

***

But this is nothing. Today, Advani stands up to the election commission for his partyman, Varun Gandhi. Now lets put that in perspective. Advani standing up for the son of Sanjay Gandhi, the very man who he ought to be accusing for the atrocities commited during the emergency, especially his own jailing which he still keeps crying hoarse about. Of course, he was just being fair and putting justice above his personal anguish. But tell me, by what stretch of logic can he still taunt the sister in law and the niece of the perpetrator, while he enlists the support of the son?

***

Congress without the dynasty, BJP without the RSS backing, or a progressive left. That’s what Ram Guha recently claimed would see the revival of mature politics in India. Ram Guha is a discerning man for sure. But has he forgotten the mess that the Congress party became during the only time that the dynasty wasn’t around to dictate things? 1996 was when the Congress actually threatened to become a political non entity till the videshi-bahu (thankfully the BJP has realized that that argument doesn’t really sell with us folks) rescued it, I must say, with her hard work.

Now the Gandhi family is not without its flaws. But these flaws are not the fallout of being the first family of India. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that works just as much for Ms G. Im not justifying her. But whatever she did was in a way a reflection of what the BJP did for the previous six years, and in some cases, a taste of what they are going to do should they be bestowed power yet again.

But on the dynasty, the Congress is better of with it. Otherwise, it is just a party of unruly power hungry men who don’t realize their pettiness. Sonia Gandhi helped put them all in place.

The BJP without RSS support? Now before you say why not, let me ask you where would BJP get its cadres from if not from the RSS? The ideology is far imbibed into the party that it is but a hope that the two can be divorced. But of course, if that happens, it will be the best thing that happened to the country.

And a progressive left, you gotta be kidding me! No no, I was just joking. Like Buddhadev has shown in Bengal, the left can be progressive. What they cannot be is accommodating. The communist parties might have a really democratic party structure, and they might not be communal, but their apathy towards a new idea is disheartening. For some reason, they still cant accept anything unless it was clearly permitted in the communist manifesto, and still look up to China and Russia (two non communist countries) for ideological support.

***

“Lalu, who had hit out at L K Advani as well for his role in the mosque's demolition has been slammed by an upset BJP as well. The BJP in turn attacked the Prime Minister and said it will complain to the Election Commission”. Of course, it should have been an oversight by the editors at IBNpolitics, but that sentence made me laugh out loud.

Indeed that’s what it has come to. For just about anything this summer, the BJP has taken to blaming the PM, calling him weak. Im not sure anyone is impressed. Im not in any case.

There’s more, but this is enough food for thought for the moment, methinks. Ill be back with more shortly. And Monika, you think this wasn’t a happy me writing?

Another Tag, Another Trail

2009-04-04T20:08:00.004+05:30

So they think they can take our idea, use it, pass it of as creatively innovative, and claim to enjoy it?

And they think they can pretend to be baring their minds or souls or whatever else, even while looking down with disdain at bloggers?

And they think they can sell us the idea of facebook blogging!

Hmm… but then, sometimes when im like this starved for ideas, I couldnt help taking a facebook idea, twist it to suit myself, and then employ it like we would have anyways…

So this one is 15 things (er, well, actually 25, but Im not sure Ill last that long – so we’ll take it as it comes) I would tell the myself who was around a year ago by way of advice, based on a years experience. Or atleast something like that! So, here goes…. And trust me, if I had heard even one of these last March, I would have ROFL’d for want of more absurd things to laugh at!

Hmmm well, for starts, maybe you can think of splurging a little on yourself while you have the cash. You’ll be hopelessly broke by this time next year!
Don’t make plans too elaborate, even for the immediate future. Not one single one of them is going to
Actually work out remotely like you planned!
Stop advising all and sundry. Over the next year, the biggest revelation will be that even you are incapable of living your own advice. And that’ll be a humiliation by itself.
You will know what it means to flunk exams. That too, multiple times! And how it feels each time!
You will, okay, now hold your breath… you will be called a ‘ladies man’ by the majority in a group of 20-something’s. And that too, not without more than a hint of jealousy.
You will start getting bizarre ideas like ‘write a book’, or even ‘start writing your memoirs’. But be warned, don’t attempt it. It’s just another attempt by Life to humiliate you. By proving you aren’t capable of even that!
Why, you will actually go out and make attempts to pursue all your dreams. Not that any one of them will actually materialize. You’ll just have your options curtailed.
You will lose pretty much all your friends. But surprise surprise… you wont actually miss them like you feared you would!
You will swear that Indian authors are the best in the world. Right From Vikram Seth down to Shobhaa De. Jhumpa Lahiri will attain a status in your book collection that was reserved for Paulo Coehlo this far.
You will actually see every movie you’ve wanted to in your life (thanks to file sharing, free internet time, and irrepressible joblessness. You, of all people!
You will discover that your soul-mate does exist. Or atleast someone who satisfies your idea of a soul-mate. You’ll miss her!
Hmmm well, you’ll happen to sleep with a female stranger on a train! Oh yeah, I know that’s corny, and so just in case you start getting Emraan Hashmi- flavoured reveries, Ill break the news that she’ll be around 7 years old!
You will discover that you can survive without knowing sensex levels, without blogging (or wanting to), without wanting to win arguments, or even without singing! For months, not days…..
You will be jobless for months on end. You’ll reeeeealllly realize the implications of cribbing about work!
Oh no, I forgot… You will be damn right about the recession/Bear Market! Not that the fact will save you from becoming its casualty.

So guys, that’s it. I guess you’ve got a fair idea of my current state of affairs, and perhaps an explanation of why you haven’t even heard from me in months! Its new, and I must say, I didn’t see it coming!

And yeah, for tags, feel free to take up the trail in case you are inclined to. And anyway, I dont think Im in the mood to do some PR for my new post! :P

The cornering of the Dot con

2009-01-10T06:46:00.002+05:30

Maybe from now on, we can look at company names for clues. Satyam, named after truth, it turns out was just conjuring for us some fanciful numbers every quarter for years now, trying to pass it off for the truth. In a recent, though relatively tame, ponzi scam in Kerala, the perpetrator, a 21 year old lad called Sabari Nath, called his company ‘Total4you’. It was obviously intended to be ‘Total4me’ and ended up being ‘Total4noone’ when he ended up behind bars. You will remember that the big bull of the last decade, Harshad Mehta, called his company GrowMore Research and Asset Management Company Ltd. It grew in infamy.

Not that it is going to help us in reality. Not that we have much of a choice either. If Satyam can happen to us, then God bless us poor investors. Mind you, we are not talking about a fly-by-night company floated by a cunning entrepreneur looking to make a fast buck. No, B.Ramalinga Raju was one of the celebrated faces of the Indian IT industry. Why, a few years ago, the Financial Post, a Canadian publication, suggested that he might be feared in America even more than Osama Bin Laden for the potential threat his business was to the jobs of American citizens.

And why did he do it? Raju was not a Bernard Madoff whose very intention was to defraud the hand that fed him. Atleast, I believe he wasn’t. His undoing was in his willingness to resort to exaggeration in his company’s financials in his eagerness to assure the financial world that all was well with his company. The mild exaggeration, which everyone suspects happens anyway in corporate window-dressing, became acute when just to keep up the façade he had to consistently overstate his profits, ending up with a little less than Rs.7000 crores of fictitious assets. Of course, that gap was intended to be rectified soon. Only thing his business never improved sufficiently to allow him the leeway to do so. In the end his predicament could not be summed up better than he himself did in his confessional letter. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten”. He continued to ride, till he was thrown off by the tiger itself. The clout which helped him call the shots so far finally deserted him. You can say he was cornered by his misdeeds. So let us examine them.

The first straw was the aborted move in December to acquire two other family owned companies, Maytas Constructions and Maytas Properties, a deal that was at that time unanimously approved by Satyam’s ‘independent’ directors. An uprising of shareholder activism on an unprecedented scale, coupled with the media frenzy put paid to that idea and the deal was called off within the day. Realty companies have been under the scanner for some time now. With liquidity drying up, property prices plummeting and just about everybody predicting doom for the sector, it was but natural that its promoter come up with ideas to bail out the twosome. No one, not even one soul, guessed that it was the parent company that needed bailing out. After all, wasn’t it supposed to be sitting on upwards of 5000 crore’s of rupees in cash? It was unimaginable that the whole exercise was designed so as to give some amount of credence to its Balance Sheet that was attaining humungous proportions in pretension.

When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions. Or so Shakespeare mused centuries ago. The next straw was the World Bank ban on outsourcing to the company in a totally unrelated matter, pertaining to briberies made to bank employee’s years ago. While it might not have actually contributed to the revelations of this week, it sure did contribute to the notoriety of the management in the eyes of the public.

And then came the takeover rumours. Having all but forfeited investor trust, it was but inevitable that they be seen as exploring strategic options to enhance value. Merrill Lynch, the firm appointed to advise the company in this regard, would have refused to fall in line with the management’s intention of covering up its own tracks, and when they served their notice of termination of engagement citing irregularities, Ramalinga Raju and his partner in crime, his brother Rama Raju, was left to face the music.

The frightening part is that had one of these elements actually blinked, either the company’s investors or the media that whipped up a fuss, or Merrill Lynch at the time of Due Diligence, (Remember, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, the biggest of the big 4 of accounting firms was hoodwinked into not verifying some 5000 crores worth of bank balance for God knows how long) we might never have even known. But the tiger would not be tamed this time.

Mr Raju is probably consoling his family that he finally did come clean about the whole episode. That he tried his best to steer the ship like a man and only gave up when it became totally out of hand. Maybe he’s patting himself in the back for not defecting or killing himself, a route many other failed entrepreneurs have taken. He seemed to have been doing us all a favour with his generous gesture of submitting to ‘the law of the land’. But wait, who is he kidding?

Two years ago, in February 2007, his company unceremoniously sacked about 1000 employees overnight. The charge – Fake CVs and documents used to gain entry. While that indeed was a crime, doesn’t that pale in comparison with appearing on national television every three months to announce and answer questions relating to another quarter of sterling results that were simply fabricated? If faking was a crime what is his defence for waxing eloquent about corporate governance history and Golden peacocks to assure his own employees knowing full well that his covert actions were anything but straightforward? Or is ‘ethics’ and ‘honesty’ no more than rhetoric to keep cynics at bay?

Maybe some of you would hail him as a warrior who fought till the end. But to me, Ramalinga Raju is just a fraudster!

By the time you would read this, you would have heard various hypotheses in the news about the extent and methods of this scam. So, first of all, I must say that this was written when the scam originally broke out, using the first facts available and my primary reading of the episode. Regarding the stories that I’v been reading in the papers, some are valid. But most of the theories are plain absurd. But let me explain why I think so.

Take for example the accusation that a whole lot of people in the management would surely have known about it. But take my word, if even a few more actually did, we wouldn’t have had this scam. There are two reasons I bring in support of my point.

One, even though the nature of fraud was serious, the items are covered are not. All it takes to repress cash balance would be a banker’s tacit misrepresentation and the bribery/bullying of the auditor in charge. Its easier because cash being the easiest item to verify, the junior most staff are assigned by the auditor to verify the same. And 22 year old kids can be easily hoodwinked. Secondly, the involvement of directors needs to be analysed. Typically the accounts are finalised by the audit committee, (consisting of financially literate members of the board and the different auditors, and the committee would really not take it upon them to verify the veracity of cash balance. I mean, it’s the easiest thing to accept, an audited bank balance number) The audit committee the forwards the recommendations to the Board of Directors who usually pass it without much ado, considering that it has already been analysed.

Even more ridiculous is the suggestion that the company could not have been working on a margin of 3% (thereby implying that the management siphoned out money). While it is a possibility, it is still not prima facie evidence. The reason is simple. All through the year, export based companies have been losing revenue to exchange rate fluctuations. Implying that a company could have done pretty well, but due to an adverse currency bet, they could have a major chunk of that shaved away. During March to September, the movement was so unexpected that a company with the wrong hedging strategy could have got knifed. In fact, just last September the very same journalists were speculating that a few mid sized IT companies might go out of business if the wild fluctuations persist. Of course, blame it on the pressures of sleaze reporting, but does it cost much to think before you put ink to paper?

About Raju’s claims that he never took a penny of the company’s money, here’s how you should read it. Let’s say you were a guest at someone’s home and used there telephone lavishly. While you say goodbye, would you just leave a message saying that ‘hey, I haven’t stolen any of your money, but Iv raked up quite a huge bill on your telephone, please pay it”. And while I don’t have the figures, My memory tells me that Ramalinga Raju and his brother were among the highest paid Indian managers. So basically he was paying himself all that when he didn’t have profits to show?

Finally, Udayan Mukherjee on CNBC TV18 was wondering aloud about the actually existence of Satyam’s 53000 employees. Well, no one has paraded them so as to be sure, but I would rather believe that they exist. The catch is in the fact that them employees themselves must have been a part of a window dressing exercise to tell the world that all was rosy. Like, I know a few fresher’s at Satyam. And virtually all of them have spent their first year surfing the net for lack of projects. Now Iv been crying hoarse about it for the last one year at my old office. Why all your new hirees spend their first year on the bench if your business was improving as per your claims? Either they changed the laws of probability, or something was fishy. Now we know why! And this is precisely why I believe that in spite of al the rhetoric, Satyam will have to retrench a good part of their employees. They don’t enough business to justify its workforce.

Blogging

2008-12-28T23:10:00.000+05:30

Im not very much of a blogger. Or so I guess its time I admitted. So much for the regularity of my posts. Till about a month ago, I had my excuse of too much else to do. Iv spent the last month doing nothing except fretting that I don’t have anything productive to occupy myself with.

I did try my hand at writing. And found out that maybe I don’t want to actually. Oh, in fact, Iv been having doubts whether I really wanted to write in the future. But that dissection can wait. Right now we’ll talk about blogging. Or my blogging, to be precise.

I don’t consider myself to be a very interesting blogger either (And no, Im not fishing for compliments). Mainly because of the absolute lack of original stuff I come up with on a regular basis. Of course there’s the rare, maybe semi-annual, post which is indeed interesting. Uh well, now that I’ve berated myself a little, I guess I can get back to attempting to write something post-worthy.

Sometime ago, I had answered a tag on ‘Reasons why I blog’. Going through that now, I really don’t think they were honest answers. The only reason I blog ought to be because nobody else would want to publish the stuff I come up with. Or for that matter, pay to read. So, that begs the question, why do I write. I think that puts the whole thing in perspective. I need to write. Not because writing is the essential me, like I claimed in that post. Not because I need to voice my opinion about the happenings around me (I do, but a vocal argument will satiate that need). Not even because I believe I could influence public debate (Anyway Im seen as no more than an immature male-chauvinist who voices everything his mother makes him believe – yeah D, that was aimed straight at you and a few others who don’t read this blog anymore).

I write because I enjoy reading what I write. Uhh no, I enjoy reading the outcome of the creativity in me. Every time I feel like writing, I intend to churn out something that satisfies that yearning in me. Often for prolonged stretches of time, my mind refuses to cooperate. And so I give up writing temporarily. I would rather live in oblivion than subject myself to reading routine boring inconsequential stuff (This of course, is about my writing, you are entitled to write what you please, and I as a dutiful blog buddy, will read)

I write because I love compliments. Not compliments like how smart I am or intelligent (They’re quite off-the-mark anyway), but compliments on my creativity. Yeah, Ill admit it, I get a kick to hear that. I don’t mind the light-headedness that comes from feeling a little superior.

I write because somewhere in the bottom of my heart, I am vain. I want to be a famous writer. Not necessarily an author, but atleast a revered columnist (yeah, I meant ‘revered’). Well, I hope I do!

****

Back to blogging. There was a time when for a few months I thought I was actually a good blogger. Good blogger as in, regular blogger plus popular blogger. And as I am wont to do, I began giving out advice on how to make your blog popular. And sometimes I get a kick out of seeing the popularity of some blogs.

It’s simple actually. And it’s high time you accepted it. You visit someone else’s blog and leave a comment, they visit yours and comment. You blogroll someone, they return the ‘favour’. Isn’t that what is known as a quid pro quo? But somewhere down the line that irked me. I didn’t add up. I know it was asking too much of a busy world that people should acknowledge me without prompting. I mean, don’t we all want to be loved without us having to demand it? That was when I started putting anonymous comments. So, I could continue ‘sampling life’ without leaving an obligation.

Well of course, I didn’t tell you. That was the period in which I was a little insane. Or rather what I would call my withdrawal phase. I got through that (Surprisingly, on my own). And then came the privacy phase. Now I suddenly didn’t want any new blog readers. But by then the blog had become quite public among my extra-net friends, even the very persons about whom I had to vent. That put writing about the questions that were bothering me out of the question. .

***

But blogging is where I discovered myself. Blogging wasn’t all just about quid pro quo. Blogging was also where I realised that I am not alone. That so many people, in fact most of the people, have gone through experiences that I did, in some form or the other. That helped put problems into perspective. That people have gone through it before, and so I will also survive.

Blogging is how I learnt some of the most important lessons in life. In spite of my dislike for quid pro quo, it taught me that the value of appreciation, both given and received, as long as it isn’t fake. It teaches you that to receive you must first be willing to give. I think I can boast of atleast a few real friends over and above blog-buddies. It teaches you that you need to spend time and effort on people, that you need to empathise with them, and. It taught me to be a good friend!

Blog-world was where I made a lot of good friends. In fact, I know a lot of the people on my blogroll by their real names - from all around the world. People with whom I identified with in spite of all the differences. And for a brief period, my blog buddies were my best friends.

So you see, I didn’t have reason enough to quit blogging altogether either.

***

Okay, now I told you that I wasn’t fishing for sympathy in this post. So then, what was the purpose? Simple.

Last week, I tried writing an article about finance, and I noticed I was so rusty that I had to struggle to write even the simplest of ideas without feeling lost for words. So I decided its time I shrug off my laziness to write something everyday. Especially since I really meant it about becoming a famous writer! And this is something I will surely enjoy reading!

Holiday Blues

2008-12-01T21:07:00.004+05:30

Iv never been in love. Atleast, not officially! But that doesnt mean that I havent felt a lot of the things that distressed lovers claim to feel. Well, so I was watching this movie 'The Holiday', starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. My first movie in a long long time, but just a few minutes into it, and I was hooked. Pathetic as I think I would be with a movie review, (and anyway, I feel almost impotent creativity-wise) Ill settle with sharing a few of the dialogues that made me go "oh wow, there's someone else too"!

*****

".... because you're hoping you're wrong. And every time she does something that tells you she's no good, you ignore it. And every time she comes through and suprises you, she wins you over, and you lose that argument with yourself, that she's not for you" - on why you stick with someone who's obviously not meant for you!

"I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said 'Journeys end in lovers meeting'. What an extraordinary thought. Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that, but I am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had. I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said 'love is blind'. Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost. But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night.
"And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. Its called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space! Yes, you are looking at one such individual ......
"These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life. All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back. Oh god, just the sight of him! Heart pounding! Throat thickening! Absolutely can't swallow! All the usual symptoms."

"... in the movies we have leading ladies and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend.You're supposed to be the leading lady of your own life, for god's sake!"

"Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in and both go to the same men's pajama department. The man says to the salesman, 'I just need bottoms', and the woman says, 'I just need a top'. They look at each other and that's the 'meet cute'." - Well, this one doesnt really apply to me. But I thought it cute, so there it stays!

"I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy.
"And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. And you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade."

"I need some peace and quiet... or whatever it is people go away for." - I DO! really do!!!!!

Rat race

2008-11-22T20:24:00.004+05:30

Jobless, but still starved for ideas, I decide to post some of my personal writing. Something I had written a few months ago:-

Today morning on the bus, I was thinking about this conversation I had a few days ago with a friend and was mentally telling her that after all, we're all in a rat- race, and whatever the outcome, we're still rats! And I look out of the window of my bus and what do I see but a dead rat, squashed under the wheels of an indifferent vehicle right in the middle of the road.

But then thinking on, i guess thats all a part of the deal. We'll all meet our end. And then we wont be any better than that rat, dead, with with its insides out. Or even if we're better off, it wouldnt really matter.

So the thing is not to take yourself too seriously. Enjoy life while you have it. Live by Aamir Khan's advice in his new samsung ad! Find the joy in existing. Be willing to take the risks you want to, like the rodent. Take a plunge. Experience LIFE. And dont worry about what people will think about you.

Like I said, I wrote this a few months ago, while I was still in Chennnai. Im not sure I still subscribe to it! Nevertheless....

I choose!

2008-10-19T00:20:00.001+05:30

Isn’t it much easier to just call it quits?

Does it really matter that you might get branded a loser?
How long do you battle against Fate?
How many times do you keep getting up after being knocked down?
Isn’t there a limit to self-motivation?
When does one draw the line?

Is it really worth the agony to beat an untrodden path for yourself?
Do you really need to be different?
How long do you justify you lack of exceptional talent to yourself?
How long must you keep convincing your loved ones that you’re old enough to take a decision after realizing its consequences?

How many times must you start building your life all over again?
How many times must you endure the hardships of getting off the block?
How many times do you put your Luck for enterprise to test?

Isn’t it much easier to just say ‘I quit’?

And to get on with life the way everybody else seems to be doing?
To bury your dreams and gradually forget that they existed?

Or is it worth, after all?

***

“Despite my lack of ability or interest, being on the team kept me away from the knuckle dragging bullies” - Kareem Abdul – Jabber, legend among basketball legends, on what had him started off as a basketball player, at the age of nine! (from his book ‘On the Shoulder of Giants’)

Its mad hearing of people who succeed like this. It shows that you could also be as successful, provided you make the effort. But how much of an effort?

***

Iv almost convinced my parents that I need to do something better (or rather, lesser) than being a blue collared executive-in-the-making if I were to find peace of mind. And though they’ve come to accept it, they, like most parents, would prefer I did something that would keep at least myself financially secure from day one.

Now starts the dilemma. Convincing your parents (of all people) that you are talented or that you can ultimately make it big isn’t really difficult. Convincing (or even, finding someone who wants to be convinced) a prospective employer is! So, thus another job search trudges on. And even before its really started, you have to contend with the rebuffs as well as the constant discouragements from people who think they know all that can happen! At least, I was saved the misery of having to bear the agony of being ignored by people you considered as friends and who were in a position to help. In fact, Iv got a lot to be thankful in that regard. All my through my travails, Iv found a lot of people willing to help, help more than was necessary, and to help like as if I had given them a life or something.

But still, you need to explain the lack of progress to yourself, and that makes you feel like quitting. And so often, I feel like I could actually quit.

In fact, I could just decide that my dreams were just idealistic cravings, and set about building a career in finance. Im sure with the attractions, I could get settled quite fast in life (in all respects) and who knows maybe Ill even be happy!

And if Im not, Iv got a wonderful excuse. That my parents wanted me to do something safer. And safety comes with its cost. A lack of excitement!

But I couldn’t get away with that. Because today the choice is open. Today when Im choosing, I need to consider that ultimately my parents did give me a free hand, that I have to own up to my decisions rather than leaving room for scapegoats!

Today I need to tell myself that I can choose an adventurous life. One that will at the very least deliver in terms of excitement, if not achievements. But more importantly, I need to tell myself that I must choose to follow my dream or not to. I really cant put the blame on somebody else for the way my life turns out when it really is in my hands.

Iv chosen adventure. Trying to beat a path for myself. Im sure Ill succeed. But even if I don’t, Ill have made my own choices, like a Man

Tagged to the Rescue

2008-09-20T23:47:00.008+05:30

UPDATE : Im still starved for time. and out of my mind anyways. But I managed to update some of the questions in this tag. And then, there's Jimmy's question to answer. Lets see, Ill answer it when I have the time!

Starved for ideas, who wouldnt take up the offer of a tag? Well, for the few of you who still dont know, Im under net-arrest, meaning, Im not allowed to use the net because Im supposed to be studying for a great big exam, and I cant afford to be distracted. Atleast mom thinks so, and while Im at home, rules go! So that leaves me with the precious few hours I get on saturday. So there goes the answers to a few tags. One by D and another from VJ

Of course, that leaves me with no time to read all your posts and all. But then, you'll understand, havent I been the best of blog buddies while I could? anyways... read on.

If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
HURT. I really don’t know if Ill be angry.

(I do sometimes wonder whether Ill be the one who cheats. I hope I don’t. Im not sure if adultery’s not ok. But Im sure that its NOT FAIR!)

If you can have a dream come true, what would it be?
Be known as India’s most trusted man. I mean, seriously :D

Whose butt would you like to kick?
On second thoughts, I would kick the chairman of the CA institute, as a representation of what I think of the whole lot of them.

What would do with a billion dollars?
Gosh. Maybe Ill write to Forbes. Just in case they didn’t hear of it. But seriously I don’t want a billion dollars. I need to build a house because mom insists it is necessary. I need to have enough to raise a pair of children if ever I have them without making them feel depraved. And I need a little to travel the world for the rest of my life. Does that call for a billion dollars?

But yeah, a worthwhile idea would be to buy off a good newspaper or a TV channel. Apart from the fact that it would solve my employment woes (:-D) it would also give some competition for Rupert Murdoch before he finally k icks the bucket! (Y ou know, I still harbour dreams of some media baron taking a liking to me and offering me 25% of his company, only to die without a heir, and Ill buy off the other 75% too – Like in ‘Kane and Abel’)

Will you fall in love with your best friend?
I would fall in love only with my best friend. I don’t know, I cant think of any relationship that isn’t intimate to the absolute.

Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
I guess its being loved. It gives you a reason to be around.

How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?
To quote Mark Twain, Id wait for her for half my life, if I can meet her before the other half. But of course, do tell me if you know any shortcuts.

If the person you secretly like is attached, what will you do?
Oh well, a few weeks ago, I did something, and suffice it to say that I characteristically messed it up. So, Im back to ‘The hardest thing Iv ever done, is keep believing, there’s someone in this crazy world for me’ and ‘I know I need to be in love’. God bless the Carpenters!

If you could root for one social cause, what would it be?
Domestic Violence. Ill treatment of women. But I wouldn’t call it women’s rights!

What takes you down the fastest?
Insensitivity to others. And people who'r so full of themselves already.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
A successful journalist, career wise. And happy, life-wise.

What’s your fear?
Living long – that is, long enough without being able to eat the things that I can today. Everything sweet, spicy and oily!

What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

Well, Ill say this. She’s in the best love story Iv actually come across in real life. And thats saying something, methinks!

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
You got me there! But no, I wouldn wanna be poor, whatever be the sacrifice.

15. If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?
The person with whom I can be myself, and the person who wouldn’t have to

change for me. The person who I enjoy spending time with!

16. Would you give all in a relationship?
Yes. Period. And I wouldn’t get into any relationship where all isn’t required.

17. Would you forgive and forget someone no matter how horrible a thing he has

done?
Well, actually yes. maybe Im not being manly. But actually, I find it quite easy to get over an incident, if I

see the remorse and the sorry’s. I mean, I melt quite easily.

18. Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
After hearing that D prefers being single, Im having second thoughts, but yeah, as

of now, relationship!

And then this. I wrote this a week ago, but couldn’t get around to posting!

My oldest memory :

Well, its funny, but my earliest memories wouldn’t really be about me. It would be something like watching Anil Kumble screw the famed West Indian opposition with 6 wickets at the Eden Gardens (which, I was watching while everyone else was celebrating a friends birthday in the next room). Or reading in the papers that Kapil Dev was the highest wicket–taker in the world. I remember that the previous day I had argued with a friend that he wasn’t – Because I hadn’t read that in the papers. (I think that hasn’t changed over 14 years. Ignorance combined with too much of arrogance to match intelligence!)

Another memory catches me. This same friend and I had once hatched a plan to write a song. My dad had assured me that it was pretty easy. And we reasoned why not! So, at the appointed time we both sat down with our tools – pen, paper and, of all things, a dictionary. Well, suffice it to say that that was my earliest memory of a writers block. We gave it up as a bad job some 15 minutes into trying. That might have been the first among many incidents that took away from my admiration for my dad (which is at its nadir right now)

Thinking it over, I remember squinting at bus #123 in Bangalore (that’s when my parents noticed maybe I had a problem with my sight – I was eight then)

I remember envying my school chums who could buy ice creams from the roadside vendors, something that my parents insisted were too unhygienic)

I remembe r being at a friends birthday party in which I could choose from the wrapped gifts. I so wanted a miniature bow and arrow that a lot of other guys wanted, but all that turned up was a Cadbury bar.

I remember watching a football match at this friends place. Lazio Vs Ajax. I now remember that it was he who was so gag a about AC Milan, but since then, there’s a bond between me and the club!

Gosh, I remember Yoko Zuna lock up the Undertaker in his own coffin.

Need I go on?

10 years ago:

Feeling too important for my shoes! Sulking after yet another fight with mom. Sulking after being told by my uncles that boys would many more things than curl up in bed with a Hardy boys on a holiday. Sulking over the fact that not one girl really would talk to me for more than a couple of sentences and that the guys only made fun of me. Sulking after being told by mom that I wasn’t allowed to play, because my marks weren’t good enough (less than 60% in 8^th standard, fyi. We still joke about those days) and aaah, feeling relieved after using yet another lecture to do something useful – like, read that novel or take a nap!

My first thought today morning :

Yippee, finally todays internet day again! Oh by the way I should have slept a little more. To see what happened after I ended up at the dentist clinic to undergo some tests to my brain! Gosh… btw, any of you guys can read dreams, by any chance? In case you could, I can clarify that the concerned doctor is actually a urologist, and that for some crazy reason I was chewing strips of cinnamon in his room, and he made me spit it out, which was when mom decided I had overslept enough!

My time capsule would contain :

Haha. I guess the answer will have to be some motivational speeches I seem to be fond of making to myself when noone’s around. And some really really interesting though twisted, philosophies on life! Its bound to come out sometime.

This year :

Has been wonderful. Even its nastiness. Finally, Iv come of age in the School of Life. Learned to decide what’s best for me!

(Update: ah well, you know those games of ‘snake and ladder’ in which you crawl all the way up, only to be bitten by the longest snake to end up in square two? That’s where I am today. Hmmmph… come of age! Fat chance)

I think this would sum it up – The year the 23 year old boy turned into a 24 year old man! (of course, still untested by the fires that await men, but nevertheless!)

14 years from now :

Be happily married, or happily unmarried – Happy anyway! And well on my way to becoming India’s most trusted journalist, if not the best!!!!!

The Circle of Life

2008-09-11T16:43:00.002+05:30

They used to play a game during break time. Table Tennis on the thin classroom desks with two pencil boxes arranged midway to serve as the net. Well, He was a master on that surface. As much as it kept him from scoring even a point on the regular TT court, he could beat the very best in this format. And he had a wonderful bat that everyone would borrow. Not the TT racquets with glazed surfaces that you see these days, but one with groves on the face that aided his high-speed top spins, back spins and whateverelse spins! But that isn’t the crux of the story. One day a fight broke out and one guy, lets call him Keji, was banished from this small playing community. The bully of the class, decided that he wasn’t fit to play with them. But Keji happened to be the friend of our protagonist.

Well, he got all worked up and started with a carrot and stick negotiation. Over the next two periods, he had very clearly spelt out that if Keji wasn’t reinstated, he was also pulling out, and naturally his racquet would also go with him.

Now, as the story turned out, at lunch break, they were all still playing. Keji has been reinstated. But our friend is out. And what’s worst, they shamelessly ask him for his racquet as, in any case, he had said he wasn’t interested in playing.

This story has kept on repeating ever since. The characters change. The settings change. But unfairness doesn’t. And he makes it his business to fight. Holding on to pride and honour. The pride of standing up for a friend. The honour of doing what he felt was right. Not realising that the world really didn’t need his huge efforts. That it has always been on the go. And that it would move on in spite of whatever happened within. Not realising that the ones he sought to help themselves had moved on.

Holding a fort that was no longer there! Duelling a shadow! Helping friends who were in need of help. Not realising that they didn’t need it any more.

Like Forrst Gump. They asked him only to run. They didn’t bother stopping him after their purpose was served. They had better things to do in life!
---------

We are all optimists. And we believe in the Circle of Life. But does the so called circle necessarily have to come a full circle. I was reading Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ yesterday. This story talks about two women in war-torn Afghanistan, almost fifteen years apart in age, and pretty much as separated in terms of cultural background, who end up fated to marry a man about 30 and 45 years older to them respectively. A man who, at the very least would give them a home.

Their life with him is miserable. But again to put it in perspective you could see that it could have been much worse. But the fates of the two women are different. The older woman, Mariam, a harami – fatherless-, kills the man to save the other woman Laila from getting killed by him, and gets exected by the Taliban for the crime. Laila escapes and in the end, to prove that love triumphs, gets reunited with her childhood sweetheart, and the father of her daughter, and has a happy life in Hamid Karzai’s Afganistan.

But the contrast is stark. Mariam. Brought up in a kolba, a mud hut which was all her single mother had, she is made to believe that what she was granted was indeed happiness. As if it was her fault that she was born a harami. She loses her mother because of an adventurous mistake she makes, and gets married off to a life of complete misery.

On the other hand, Laila grew up in native Kabul, the daughter of loving parents, in the company of her best friend Tariq. She loses them all, and she also ends up in Mariam’s house.

But life doesn’t come a full circle for them. Laila, brought up in happiness, has a happy ending to her woes. Mariam, born a loser, dies, though valiantly, a loser. Her only claim having helped the younger Laila to live through the debacle.

And it gives me the jolts. All the optimism is centred around the idea that life will come a full circle, and my time will indeed come. But what if it doesnt?

Phelps would know!

2008-08-25T19:28:00.005+05:30

Okay, first the caveat. I admit its blasphemous for someone who's never inspired for his own good to write an inspiratory article. But this came out! It started with this article by Rohit Brijnath that I happened to read, and I wanted to tell you why I would never ever achieve anything great. But this happened, and I was quite impressed. Read on!

Michael Phelps, the papers say these days, has the perfect physique for a champion swimmer. As if to explain the impossible. But let’s put that in perspective. Surely so do a dozen other professional swimmers. Then we say it’s the system, the well oiled machinery that is American Sport. But again, is it really a secret that for the handful of real champions produced by that system, countless others fall short, achieving but a fraction of their potential?

Roger Federer, till the myth was shattered over the last few months, could make the tennis ball obey his racquet like no other in history had. He was way too talented for his peers, we said, drawing comparisons to extra-terrestrial invaders and supernatural beings. Or, we speculated, a divine power stood beside him courtside, to do his beckoning!

Yelena Isinbayeva makes us sit up in surprise only if she fails to break her own world record at an event. Ussain Bolt seems to be on a pursuit to prove that ‘You aint seen nothing yet’ to mankind. The Chinese have won more gold medals than any other country in a single Olympics with a few days remaining.

These are tales that could easily be mistaken for one of those greek legends. But very true in substance. We salute these champions. We take them to our video recorders, our dining table conversations, and the posters on our bedroom walls. We write brilliant articles, and follow it up with commemoratives for each anniversary of the feat. Articles that hail the champions, even deifying them.

That is appreciable. Deifying the champions that elevated our collective imaginations. But that is a ghastly injustice too. For deifying a champion is to imply that he achieved what he did because his maker was partial. As much as it is glorifying a feat, it is also claiming that if we were just as gifted, we would also have achieved that. Who knows, maybe even more!

****

Champions are not just people with extraordinary talent who worked hard. They are talented people who worked harder than any of us imagined was necessary. Worked harder while the rest of us just found excuses not to, blaming our circumstances, our fate, our limited abilities, or simply ate, slept or hung around.

Ana Ivanovic should know. She wanted to be a champion tennis player. So she practiced in the best facility available - a drained swimming pool, of all places. At an unearthly hour, which happened to be the only hour that was guaranteed to be free from NATO bombing. Of course, praying that when the bombing resumed she, or her loved ones wouldn’t become just another casuality. No wonder she’s the first Serbian world number one, and the first Serbian gran slam winner

Andre Agassi should know. He had a father who’s only aim on earth seemed to be making his son a world beater. So he hurled tennis balls from across the court for the reluctant kid (not even a teenager, he was just eight) to return, so that he would learn to face every kind of shot. It didn’t matter that Andre hated every bit of it, but he had to do it even on Christmas. No wonder he could match Federer point for point for most of the US Open final of 2005, at the age of 35 (something his young peers on the circuit rarely managed), coming after 3 excruciating 5 setters in 5 days.

Micheal Phelps should know. His coach Bob Bowman seemed to know just one thing. “you trust me, it'll pay off down the road” and he didn’t have an option. It did. No wonder at 23, he is hailed as the greatest Olympian ever.

****

When Roger Federer hits another of those impossible winners at the end of an excruciating rally, we ought to pay homage not to a genius, but to a mortal who spent hour after hour, day after day, perfecting his shot-making, never content with what he had achieved, as though taking a cue from one of the watch companies his country is proud to boast off.

When Micheal Phelps hit the buzzer a hundredth of a second before Serbian Milorad Cavic to win his seventh gold at Beijing, we ought not to pay homage to a super human aided by fate to achieve the impossible, but to a young innocent boy who believed that if he, anybody, wanted to achieve something, he could!

“You can't doubt. If you doubt, then that's it. The biggest thing is staying positive and imagining anything is possible. Because it really is.”

That is what causes the Australian tail-enders to come in at number eight and go on to score the century partnership required to win the game. They know that no amount of blaming can give the satisfaction that victory brings. They know that not being a specialist batsman is only an excuse. They know that ultimately only one thing matters. Winning, and that was what they had set out for!

That is what causes Tiger Woods, stricken with a maze of bad luck running into the last few puts in the tie-breaker final of the US Open, to direct his every bit of energy to getting his shot right, not fretting over the fact that he couldnt win unless his opponent, Rocco mediate bungled his shot, but also knowing that he would ultimately win. He was after all, the best!

That is what causes Roger Federer, down a set in a Gran slam final, to hypothetically pat himself in the back saying, ‘dude, wake up. After all, its just a matter of doing what you’ve been practicing all your life for’ and go on to clean sweep the rest of the sets.

*****

“There were days in the where I was so tired, exhausted, I just wanted to go back to bed…” Phelps recalls. But his response was always mighty, for he told himself: 'This is the Olympic Games, I can't be tired, I've got to get up. If I didn't get up, then why am I here. This is the biggest of the big.'

It pays, I guess. But we can only say that. Only Phelps would really know

Getting in control

2008-08-17T08:22:00.004+05:30

I recently read Paulo Coelho saying in an interview that at 34, he finally decided to become focussed in life.

Way to go Ab. You’re just 23!

But well, yeah, I think the time has come for me also to settle down. Even without doing any of the crazy things that most kids moms are afraid their kids would get trapped in, I still managed to attract the angst of mom and virtually all my relatives and the few friends who cared, with the lack of direction in my life.

The problem is, there aint much to settle. Like Iv told you, Iv been pretty good by most of your standards. But I sure need a steady job. For the record, in less than three years since I started working, Iv already quit three jobs. And that’s gotta change. Atleast I should be doing something that makes me feel happy for more than 8 months on average. Iv finally decided I am indeed going to become a journalist. Of course, that’s not to say that I wont get tired of news, but I feel Ill do well, and how better to test it than to actually see for myself.

And I need to settle down in my relationships. Well, all my friendships this far have gone the same way – out of my life. And all I have to show for the efforts is, I guess, what Karen Carpenters meant when she sang 'all Iv learnt from love is how to live without it'. But it looks like I have come a long way, though. Today I don’t worry a whole two days at my insolence when a friend explains the lack of communication with ‘I thought it was your turn to mail’. I mean, how could someone have the nerve to tell me that. Or maybe it is indeed my fault all through. So its quits. Lets see if there are other pleasures in life!

Let It Be

2008-08-09T07:04:00.003+05:30

Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be great!

Allow for a few Misunderstandings - They’re inevitable, and not worth losing sleep over. And anyway, the only relationships in life worth having are the ones that endure such trivialities

Allow for a few Humiliations - It’s a world with a fair share of sadists, who need to prove their superiority over another mortal to be accepted by themselves. You can get even only by stooping lower!

Allow for a few Failures - It doesn’t mean the end of the world. As long as you never lose your hunger for victory!

Allow for a few Disappointments - They’re the spice of life. You would never realise what you’re worth without them!

Allow for a few Mistakes. – The fundamental right to be wrong, and not feel ashamed about it.

Allow for a few Heartaches – It means you’re alive. And that there’s a heart yearning for something that transcends human limitations!

Flash-back

2008-07-23T14:02:00.004+05:30

Sometimes tags help in more ways than one. One is the obvious solution to a writers block. Then, it gives you a chance to boast or vent, either of which you would feel ashamed to do if you werent provoked by someone else into doing it. And finally, like Im just going to do, you get to parade the past of your blog, the past that has faded to memory, and in some cases, the past no one ever thought existed.

What you have to do is simple: Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like. Tag 5 other friends to do this. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better. (gosh, Im getting so lazy i actually copy-pasted this too. or maybe im just too used to ctrl-c, ctrl-v for my own good)

Anyways, here's the answer to the tag (btw people, its the posts that i want you to read, not the names, so make sure you click on each of them, and actually read!)

Family - Mom. Actually i should put this too.

Friends - well, i havent written about friends. I once called someone my best friend on my blog, and since then we've been anything but that. But maybe you could take this peak into my distant past. A friend's testimony

Myself - This was my first post. So I preffered it over the more recent 'me' tag.

Love - hmmm, again im not sure i have an answer. But if you'll accept blabbering as my first love, here's a sample

Finally, Anything i like! thank you btw, because iv been wanting to showcase this article I wrote about Roger Federer two years ago. I cant say how much I liked the product.

Now to give away tags.

Ab (the female Ab, hmmph), Jimmy and Vishnnupriya

and the new vagrants, my new pakistani buddy, Tazeen, and an old horse who used to be the most frequent visitor here, Rama (ok say Rama, what else must I do to make you come back?)

Aby's day out

2008-07-07T16:20:00.003+05:30

Anyone at the finals of the Chennai Open squash tournament at the ICL Squash Academy yesterday would’ve naturally assumed I was passionate squash enthusiast, an admirer of Dipika Pallickal, the local girl, playing in the womens final or a journalist! For that should broadly cover the profile of the sparse crowd that assembled to watch

Of course, you wouldn’t make that mistake if you were already there when I arrived. For no journalist would bank on borrowing his prime weaponry - a pen and some paper- from the tournament organisers. And surely no squash enthusiast would actually wind up asking the Indian national coach, and arguably, the most recognizable figure in Indian Squash, Cyrus Poncha “and you are….?”, that too on his home turf!

Well, I must pause here a moment to talk about Cyrus. There was the Head coach of the Indian National Squash team, right at the door of the sporting complex, to welcome me in with the warmest “hi, you’re the first person in today” that you can imagine from a person who’s name is pronounced everytime any person talks about the game in India, a Dronacharya awardee even at his young age. Only too glad to oblige me with the back side of the score sheet of the previous days match, and his pen. And only too humble to reply to the inadvertent “and you are….?”, with a wonderful smile and “uhh… My name is Cyrus Poncha. I happen to be the coach of the Indian team”. I knew that!

Getting back, after an obnoxiously long hour waiting - an hour in which I chatted up with the Chennai sports reporter from Times, the Express reporter who did not want to be interrupted, a mallu fan of Dipika Pallickal, and a wannabe motivational speaker and author Ashok, who attends sports competitions to get ideas for his speeches, and watched the players doing exercise routines to warm up while listening to whatever was playing on their ipods – began a match of what is known to be the fastest sport in the world. Very soon it would strike me that it was not only the fastest, but maybe one of the most energy sapping too! The only game with caged players – not counting certain exhibitions of a make-believe sport christened as World wrestling entertainment - a game in which camera’s peep out of glass panes designed into the wall so that they can capture the faces of the players – a previlege spectators miss – and a game with the least aesthetics when it comes to hitting, which more looks like plain lunging at a ball that apparently can never be punctured.

And did not Ritwik Battacharya, the reigning champion, get off to a rocker. With a blatant display of pure strength and raw aggression, he looked as if he would run away with the match against a relatively smaller and tame-looking Sourav Goshal before I could even get familliar with the rules of the game. But that was only in the first game. In the second, Saurav looked like he was just wearing Ritwik in the first as he out–ran, out-shot, out –placed and out-rallied his veteran opponent out of the rest of the game to win 7-11, 11-7, 11-7, 11-6 in under 50 minutes. He was greeted by, among few others, the contender for the womens title and his good friend, Dipika Pallickal.

Now this is the first tournament I have witnessed with the tenacity to hold the womens finals after the men’s, and on a bigger and newer court! And maybe for good reason. For the bigger hall soon had a good enough crowd to make some kind of noise in the pretext of cheering. And there suddenly was a host of voices – presumably friends of the local girl – shouting ‘come on Dipika’ to a point where one would sympathise with her opponent from Hong Kong, who eventually won but had just one Indian, a four–foot tall boy walking up to shake her hand after the match. A boy who was startled to realize she didn’t understand his language, English, too young to know that sport has a language of its own, a language that transcends cultures, a language where emotions like applause, congratulation, booing, or swearing needs no classroom experience.

****

Well that was an attempt at covering a live event, an attempt to hone my journalistic skills, or test them, depending on your point of view. Only that it turned out to be more of a frolic writing, But the crown of the evening was this conversation I had after the event, with a friend I sing with at the Madras Musical Association choir.

Me : heyyy (in my new endearing style that at best, sounds sexily smooth)

She : heyyyy (ya, my way of saying heyyy calls for a similar response)

“So wassup.. how come you’re here?”

“uhh well, Im the wife of Cyrus Poncha”

“OH MY GOD”

‘why, you know him?

“uh… well, I was the first person in today….”

By now she was looking out for her husband, and suddenly doubts creeps in my mind on the lines of, am I talking to who I think I am. I quickly take leave and message a friend “hey, keep this between us, ok? That parsi girl who sings with us, is she uh... well, married?”

Putting it in perspective

2008-07-04T15:36:00.008+05:30

She: "Dunno...wht do u think o a marriage alliance between our families?"

He: "Ahhh well..., for a alliance between our families, you would have to have descended from one of the most prestigious Syrian Christian (also known as su-kri) families in Central Travancore, with roots that can be traced atleast back to the time St. Thomas landed in the country, have a blue-blooded parentage, and for good measure, have a few priests or bishops in the lineage.

"But of course, if you were all those, I wouldnt marry you!"

Naah, I didnt say this. One of those intelligent wisecracks that strike your brain approximately 24 hours after its due!

Mysterious God

2008-07-01T17:42:00.006+05:30

Our God works in mysterious ways. The problem is, you got to be God to actually fathom what the ways actually look like!

Like I was thinking, wouldnt it have been so much more easier if God just sent us an email or rang us up saying 'this is My will. Do this!"

But now, we've got to find out what actually might be Gods will, try your best to keep on convincing ourselves that we're still on the right track even when things look like the world might crash down on you any minute, and of course, accepting in your mind that after all this, there's a good chance that this wasnt Gods will all along!

I just told mom this and she says its because 'God is God and you are Man'. Wonder what she meant!

Faith, like we can understand!

2008-06-30T16:43:00.007+05:30

Faith, is knowing that Danny Cartwright will eventually have his innocence proved and that the true murderers will get more than their deserved punishment at the end of the story, no matter how unabashedly they lie in court, how dangerous their plots to keep him at bay are, or how heavily the odds are stacked against Danny's freedom!

Faith, is believing that Jeffrey Archer knows what he's doing, and its our business to just read on, enjoying the twists, because when the climax comes, itll be worth sitting back and enjoying!
After all, Jeffrey Archer knows best, and if you cant trust him with his story, what can you?

Everybody's Free (to feel good)

2008-06-21T12:03:00.017+05:30

Blog-surfing, which is currently my unconfessed hobby, led me yesterday to Ranjana's Blog, and from there to "The Sunscreen Song". It is what sounds like a commencement speech, set to music. In fact it is not a real commencement speech (though it should be!), but rather a column that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997 entitled "Advice, Like Youth, probably wasted on the youth" by staff writer Mary Schmich.

Sometime around Thursday, July 31, 1997, Mary's article found it's way onto the internet in the form of an email hoax, claiming to be the 1997 commencement address of Kurt Vonnegut to MIT grads. The real address that year was actually delivered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on June 5. A year later, the email re-circulated claiming to be Kurt's commencement address to the Class of 1998!

The email caught the attention of Australian film director Baz Luhrmann, who eventually tracked the source of the speech to Schmich, and bought the rights to the words to turn it into a song. He took Quindon Tarver's "Everybody's Free (to Feel Good)" song, remixed it, and hired Sydney actor Lee Perry to read Schmich's "speech". The end result became the seven-minute long "Sunscreen Song".

The song received heavy airplay from American radio stations nationwide after KNRK in Portland aired an edited (about 4 1/2 minute) version in the spring of 1999 -- about the time of graduation that year. According to Luhrmann's label, Capitol Records, it became the most requested song on radio morning shows in Atlanta and Philadelphia

So, here's the song, Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, by Mary Schmich:

Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Tagged! again...

2008-06-05T18:39:00.000+05:30

Okay Iv changed the Tag quite a lot. Just to suit myself... but then, So what? In case you want the tag as its supposed to be, Check out Rama

Ten random things about myself

I want to talk as if there wont be any tomorrow, but at the same time I often wish people would just leave me alone. I can talk about anything in the world. Like the solution for rising fuel costs to marriage and love advice. I might soon start giving sex advice . Who said you need experience to tell others what to do.

I know Im not ‘normal’, but I don’t think I really mind, and anyway, Iv learnt to live with it!

I seem to like the things noone else does, have a general distaste for the ‘in-things’ and a complete lack of understanding of fashion.

Im very much what you’d call a poseur. A wannabe. But of course, I manage to make sure noone else notices.

I don’t take myself seriously anymore. I used to, but realised it wasn’t worth much. So today I really don’t give a damn if someone spreads stories behind my back, ‘thinks’ I am a fool, or doesn’t want to talk to me. I call it bliss not to be bothered.

I ‘believe’ in God. No actually, I ‘know’ God. And I think that makes a helluva lot of difference!

Talking of God, I feel Iv been abundantly blessed in life. Everything that happened now looks like a really wise Man way ahead of time carefully planned it! Than ya, buddy up there!

I really don’t believe in sorry’s. I don’t say sorry to friends. If you make me say sorry, you’re not a friend anymore. But I don’t insist people say sorry to me. All of us make mistakes, don’t we?

I have this amazing knack of catching the wrong friends. For some reason, the friends Iv been most obsessed with are the ones who’v never really respected the person I am.

I too am a hopeless romantic. Staunchly refusing to believe that love can happen only in movies and that love can be just a feeling. I will fall in love. One day. I surely will (Oh God, this already sounds like a closing statement)

Nine things I wish I wasn’t/didn’t

Have to attend concerts (which is what I love the most) alone!

Keep losing all the friends Iv really cared for. Be forever on this pursuit of eternal friendship!

Believe (and keep on believing) that I could do things noone else could. Believe that I was created to do something only I could. (well, it started long before I read Harry Potter, so you cant attribute it to that) ….(Oh freak I cant believe I just saw a Nike ad saying ‘Take it to the next level – Just do it! lol….LOL)

Have to motivate myself so much. I must be the most inspirational person. Almost every night, for the last two years, Iv resolved to be more disciplined and hard working. I try in the morning also. It just doesn’t happen.

Surrounded by so many people who can ‘work’ for 8 hours everyday, who are so disciplined, and who seem to want to excel at work.

Be so ambitious. No, I wish I was more ambitious the way everyone else is. All I seem to have are a lot of crazy ambitions with just one common denominator – ‘Its something noone else will/can do’.

So emotional. So tender hearted. So selfless when it comes to keeping a relationship alive. That I wouldn’t feel so bad about having to hurt others, howmuchever I was hurt!.

A social Outcast. And so out of place in ‘high society’.

Find it so difficult to enjoy myself in a group. I just cant seem to. To make loud jokes that are funny in the company of friends!.

Eight things Im wondering right now

In the good old days (uh, ie, the days before I was born) they had the guts to make movies without happy ‘all’s well that’s ends well’ endings. And ya, Malayalam movies were damn good those days (ok, this time its about the 90s – when Actors didn’t look so glamorous, and didn’t have an image to live upto, and when actresses wore the clothes viewers could also wear, and when stars took pain to talk and act like you and me on screen, rather than the other way round.

Lizards look scary. Oh ya, they do. Especially the ones in my part of the world (a.k.a, the walls of a certain bedroom in a wooden house in a kerala village)

They’ve got balls to still call this ‘Gods own country’

A lot of people spend time trying to convince God why they deserve to pass their exams. Im right now telling Him that I don’t deserve to pass this exam on merit, but please, because, I really don’t want to go through this rigour another time. And anyway, how much I know doesn’t really matter to Him, if He wanted to get me through.

How my life would have been if I had actually passed CA Inter the first time I appeared. Sometimes failure can be the best blessing in your life! How different my life would have been if I hadn’t been so fascinated by the internet. If I didn’t have people to mail. If I ddnt have started blogging. If I didn’t meet some of the friends who were around when I went through the hardest of times. If I was still stuck up in kerala. I shudder to even think of it.

Talking about blogs and the net, WTH is wrong with Rama (I mean, generally)

Why is it that Im always an under-performer at work?

Okay Iv written so much. I wonder how many people will actually bother to read this whole thing!!!!!

Seven things that cross my mind a lot

Will I ever make a friend I can have and cherish for life!

If I actually get married, will I have a ‘lived happily ever after’ story to tell, or will it be another of those cases that just don’t work out in spite of your best efforts.

Will I have kids that treat me like I treated my parents when I was fifteen. Oh freak, thats the scariest feeling?

Will I realise that all my ideas are actually just idealistic cravings only when its too late to go back and start all over again!

No, wait a minute, am I saying that all these cross m mind the most? No. What crosses my mind the most these days is whether God will actually pull the plug this time and decide Ill have to pay for my excesses. In other words, that, I’ll have to write this blasted exam another time. Oops, God, please, just one last time!

What’s for dinner?

How can I be so cool and relaxed in life when everybody else is worrying their heads off? Or am I more than ‘just a little abnormal’

Six things Id like to do before I die.

Meet 'the thousandth man’.

Travel without a destination. Just a backpack to last me till I decide Im sick of living out of it, and hopefully a companion!

Report from Wimbledon.

Conduct a 300 voice choir, Probably even a full-fledged orchestra.

Be a prime-time news reader on TV. (okay, I guess that’s asking for too much, but maybe I am a little naïve) and host a live quiz show!

Write a book unlike any other book ever written. (Of course, I don’t know what Im talking about right now, but if I write a book, it will have to be unique)

Five turn on’s

Music! Four part harmonies, western classical, the 70s pop, violin symphonies. Music that tickles the soul. Conversations about music.

Smiles – oops this should’v been right on top!

Beautiful faces, especially of the feminine variety

Ideas! Arguments. Something to think about. Something to discuss. Good lyrics in songs, good dialogues in movies, good thoughts in books, I hang onto every syllable.

The smell of the rain, the chill of the breeze, the darkness of the night. They rouse the romantic in me!

Four Turn off’s

Secretive people, people who hide more feelings than they show. Actually it makes me more nervous than anything else.

Frowns. Faces without smiles!

Too much of makeup and too less of clothes :-D

Loud music!

Three ways to win my heart

Talk to me! That’s a general rule. No matter what else you can do for me, if you cant spare some time for a decent conversation, don’t expect appreciation :(

Talk to me! Oh ya, long conversations, personal conversations. Open, frank ‘straight from the heart talk. Put up with my, sometimes even excessive, bragging. Appreciate stuff like good music and everything else I take a fancy to. Talk over dinner, take a walk together just to chatter!

Talk to me - :) no, no. just kidding – It should be something like ‘show you care’. A ‘just like that’ call, or a wassup message. Something to show you thought of me, and something to show you enjoy the relationship!

Two smileys that describe me

:-)

:>) - that’s the yahoo messenger smiley with the devils face…. Yeah, I love getting under someone else’s skin. The only problem is quite often, I get into people’s skin and get out of their lives – nevertheless I still :>) a lot)

One confession

Contrary to what people think about me, Im not a very brave person. I would be the most unsure person you would have met, if you really look behind this mask of self assurance. I fret about the most trivial of things. Most of the time, the ‘strong’ decisions I take would be the only sane course of action. And when people think Iv got balls to ‘be different’, Im just praying things wont really get out of hand. In fact, so often I would just wish problems away, and I turn yellow when faced with the possibility of getting into a real fight.

PS : The only time I stand real strong is beside friends. And that’s the only time I haven’t really got my due!

Now finally, to distribute tags.... In case you find your name on the link list to the right, and you havent done this tag in any form, that means you're tagged!
happy blogging!

The Quantum of Solace

2008-02-06T17:36:00.000+05:30

The hardest thing I've ever done is keep believing
There's someone in this crazy world for me
The way that people come and go through temporary lives
My chance could come and I might never know

I used to say "No promises, let's keep it simple"
But freedom only helps you say goodbye
It took a while for me to learn that nothing comes for free
The price I paid is high enough for me

I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world
And fool enough to think that's what I'll find

So here I am with pockets full of good intentions
But none of them will comfort me tonight
I'm wide awake at 4 a.m. without a friend in sight
I'm hanging on a hope but I'm all right

(Another Carpeneter's song. Its amazing the way they come up with songs that make you think "Hey, wasnt that just me?")

*

Iv finally reached the stage in life where you not only stop, look back and notice, but actually accept that maybe things may not be the way they make it out to be. Accept that people can be cruel (though a lot of time maybe without meaning to be) and that you have to get on with and in spite of it. That spreading cheer and happiness and all that jazz cannot be a goal in itself. And that you've got to give your own self some self respect and love.

But surprisingly, once I got myself to accept it, I found it isnt as difficult to live with. And in fact, the last week, Iv been more relaxed than ever... hehe, i told you na, Im done with whining :)

Ok, I know this is far too abstract to make any sort of sense to you. The explanation in my next post, whenever that is.

PS: The above song is actually titled "I know I need to be in love" . I removed that part of the lyrics because well, that wasnt the conclusion I arrived at. But in the course of writing this, I just noticed that never in my life so far have I never really considered being in a serious relationship. The fabled 'love affair". Maybe thats the only way to get what Im looking for, but right now, I dont want to disturb the solace... Haha, Im almost tempted to call it the quantum of solace!
Well, i think I will... so here's the "fooled you" in case you thought I was gonna write about James Bond or his new femme's!

50, Retired

2007-12-29T15:15:00.000+05:30

So, another year’s almost done! And going by what everyone seems to remark, you would actually think that God was actually scissoring out an hour here and an hour there, just when we weren’t looking!

Well, anyways, it’s gone by way too fast for comfort! You’d almost wonder if the Old man upstairs is upto something sinister. As if He was in a rush to get the days done and over with!!!! Or maybe He’s just sick of laughing at the frivolity we put on display. And anyway, I occasionally do get the feeling that he wouldn’t want his angels, or whatever it is that He actually calls his trusted lieutenants, see a lot of the stuff that is on display on earth these days!

Well, anyway, a lot of us are just taking it in our strides. Some of us, like me, have just accepted that there wont be the proverbial 24 hours that we all take for granted anymore! The daily schedule is virtually halved, with the included half consisting of the stuff’s that you really cant avoid, like reporting at work on time, all the choir practices and concerts around the city, and oh my god, we’re forgetting the 7 hours of sleep! Eventually some things don’t get done, but then, hey how can you blame me for God being pissed off with the rest of you? And ya, its God we’re talking about, in case you didn’t notice!

Ok, so back to the reason why I started the banter! (which reminds of dear Princess, she pulled one back on God, writing a christmas plus Happy new year post three weeks before time. Just in case He decided to cancel of the rest of the days of the year, and just announce it on TV or something like hat!) No, this is not another year end post on how ‘the year gone by was a bag of goodies all designed by the Hand that knows all, though some goodies were disguised as pepper flavoured toffees’. Forget it. It wasn’t and it sucked! It was an experience that can only be described as the real fire test for every dirty thing the world can throw at you. Oh come to think of it. I really don’t know why I had to go through most of the stuff I did last year. What joy could anyone have gotten in depriving me of every damned friend I could ever connect to? What joy could anyone, say Anyone, get in making me feel like the most unwanted person in the world. What sarcastic pleasure in seeing me prove that I will never enjoy anything in life that is even remotely ‘work’!

Oh freak. There goes my resolution not to crib! Well, not to the purpose of this post. Actually there are multiple purposes, and counting.

To start with this is my 50th post. Okay that’s fifty posts in a year and a half. That also means Iv enriched the world with fifty pieces of so-called literary experiments. Two, this is the post to mark my break from blogging. Iv been considering quitting for sometime now. Quitting ditching out trash on a weekly basis. I mean, does it do anyone any good? But whenever I think of it, there’s always some good idea coming out. But then, of late, everything ends in a whine like this. So there goes my blog for the next five months. Finally, this marks the end of my whining. Okay that was the decision made before my Christmas break. And its not working to the extent intended. But this time its with more resolve. Its done and over with! The year. Iv seen the worst. Nothing could matter anymore. And 2008, Iv arrived.

So that’s it folks from here, for the next half year. When Im back, itll be with a new look and a new story!
Happy new year and Happy Easter!

Update 1 : Its been the perfect start to a year.. its jus been all goody-goody...

Hey Buddy up there! thanks a million.. Luv ya! I thought You had given up on me....

Rainy days and Mondays! (always get me down)

2007-11-30T17:05:00.000+05:30

Talking to myself and feeling old

Sometimes Id like to quit

Nothing ever seems to fit

Hangin around, nothing to do but frown

Rainy days and mondays always get me down

What Ive got they used to call the blues

Nothing is really wrong

Feeling like I dont belong

Walking around some kind of lonely clown

Rainy days and mondays always get me down

(The Carpenters)

Another rainy monday (on which I happened to listen to the carpenters!)... Iv been trying to write a post for sometime .... but its just not coming... trying to do some homework for my class in the evening. Blank head!

Lost in Reality

2007-11-24T10:48:00.001+05:30

Sometimes I envy the life of a computer. Like all of us it is expected to work, and like all of us, it is treated like a machine who's only job is to work! Like all of us, it gets sworn at when it isnt able to keep up with demands, with impatient fingers belonging to unstable minds nastily giving insensitive senseless command after insensitive senseless command just to mask their own frustration.

But unlike us, the computer has a time tested way of getting back at humans. It stops working with a confused look, turns deaf to all sorts of emotional arm-twisting (which its user's are deceptively too good at, anyway) feigning indifference to the user's plight (serves them right anyway, for confusing the poor thing so!)

And then Mr. User starts behaving like a gentleman, and does something he affectionately calls as CTRL+ALT+DEL. Which revokes all commands given to the computer so far, and lets it start on a new note, of course, giving it some time to rest. The less gentlemanly just switch off the computer and restart, though it serves the same purpose. Ultimately, the lesson is you cant get on the computer's nerves beyond a certain point.

Sometimes I wish I could just do a CTRL+ALT+DEL to myself too. Or a plain switch off. To be able to just retire to some invisible habitat, like an ant-lion. To sleep and never have to wake up. Or atleast to dig my head in the mud like an ostrich, and stay there in oblivion of all the happenings in the world around me!

***

A year or so ago, when I first came up with the title to this blog, I never imagined it would manifest itself as the truth. Never imagined that after all the experiences I had gone through, I would have lose the spirit to fight. Never imagined that I would ever want to give up. That I wouldnt want to go on any further.

Loser with a capital letter L

2007-11-16T15:04:00.000+05:30

Sometimes you feel you dont even deserve to be living!

Sometimes you feel you will never learn!
Sometimes you feel you are just naive to go on trusting people (after all the lessons)!
Sometimes you feel you are a fool to go on seeing only the good side in people!
Sometimes you feel you are too innocent, decent and dignified to thrive in this world!

Sometimes you feel this world wasn't meant for you!
Sometimes you feel God actually made a mistake making you the way you are!
Sometimes you feel God is just having fun at your expense!
Sometimes you feel you are just an object of Heavenly mirth when you motivate yourself!
Sometimes you feel you were fed with a pack of lies about the Omnipotent!

Sometimes you feel you are just vain to go on dreaming!
Sometimes you feel you are just immature when you refuse to accept you are'nt born to win!
Sometimes you feel you will never succeed!

Sometimes you feel you are a loser. Loser with a capital letter L!
Sometimes you feel the 'Loser' is stamped right across your forehead, for all to see and exploit!

Sometimes you feel its just not worth pretending everything's okay!
Sometimes you feel there is a limit to everything!
Yesterday, I think that limit got breached!

I GIVE UP

Give up on hoping things will turn better.
On convincing myself that the past was someone else's naivety!

Give up on cribbing. Anyway, it never made any difference.

Where've all the kids gone?

2007-10-30T17:50:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was by far, the best day ever, to travel on a bus in Chennai. With all the schools, colleges, ad other educational institutions closed for the floods, the busses were all between empty and an agreeable crowd. No getting stamped, No having to make excuses in Tamil, No sweating with someone else's sweat. Oh boy, the list goes on! Even more interestingly, a ride that would normally take me an hour on a Monday evening took just 25 minutes yesterday.

Which led me to a really catchy idea. Why not completely do away with school's and colleges. The busses will return to being the preferred mode of commutation. And we can solve the problem of overcrowding on the roads too!

**

Sunday in Chennai was beyond what anyone could actually imagine sitting in their sitting rooms and watching the afternoon movie. It was raining mad all day (Lets say for 22 out of the maximum 24 hours) and whats more it was flooding like it floods in my home village in Kerala after it rains for 3 weeks on the trot and they open dams. Yes, one day of rains, and I was wading home in knee deep water.

Now dont say that's fun. Of course, it was fun. But that's only if you dont look at the water. Filled with all the dirt on the dirtiest city in India! (okay, you may come with stats to disprove that, but Chennai is dirty. dirty. dirty. period!

Well, that's why they gave an off for th schools and colleges. But would you believe it, in the morning, there was absolutely no indication that it was raining huge cats and mighty dogs just the day before, or that I waded back home in knee deep water! Neat (and maybe a trifle cleaner) roads, and a dry, if not clear sky.

Which again led me to think. Occasionally it should rain this bad. So a lot of people will get holidays and can sit at home and see movies and eat and talk and no, i didn't forget, sleep! The rest of the city can go about their jobs in peace, especially travelling in empty busses.

**

Yesterday the Sensex touched 20000 (finally!, for people like me who grow impatient when it takes so long to move on). CNBC had a rather bleak celebration, which clearly indicated that theyd rather it stayed at 20, if not 18, till it dies, for want of interesting ideas. Even the newspapers were muted in celebration. Okay, I said muted. That's muted in write ups, not in volume. The Economic Times was a 30 page edition. But that pales compared to the Business Standard (70 pages) and The Financial Express (hold your breath, a whopping 96 pages).

**

PS. Actually even today the busses werent very crowded. Infact I didn't actually see any student on the bus today. Either they took to the holiday mood a little too much, or well, a sudden idea, maybe someone from the Govt also noticed what I did and, oh if only was true, actually ordered the closure of the schools and colleges.

Arms of my father

2007-10-29T14:20:00.000+05:30

There is a place that I know

Where I need more often to go

A place of amazing comfort and rest

Where a smile is never rare

And Your love is as free as the air

And I lack for nothing

When I can see the love in Your eyes

And know that it's all for me

I fear nothing at all

When I'm safe in the arms of my Father

And if ever I fall

I take comfort in knowing That You are there

(David Chumbal - Vineyard Music)

18 till I die

2007-10-09T17:41:00.001+05:30

The stock market has always been known to spring surprises. The latest surprise is that there is no limit to the surprises it is willing to hold back. In August, most analysts (including myself, though of course, I still hold on to my views) predicted doomsday for marketeers and the most sluggish period since 2001, which was when we last had a bear market. The sensex responded by having an amazing bull run of 2000 points which had most wise men (again, including me) steeped in losses, apart from leaving them in various stages of depression!

And then today, when it was expected (ok, for a change, I wasn't on th wrong side) to finally give up and crumble under the heat emanating from the friction in the negotiating rooms of the UPA-Left coordination commitee, heralding the fall of the Government (which automatically equates to a fall in the stock market) we have another 1000 point run, the fastest 1000 points ever, and the highest intraday gains, again, ever!

Now Mythali Mukherjee on CNBC TV 18, (and if you still havent heard, I get to watch TV all day at office, albeit CNBC) is very much a la Mandira Bedi on Set Max. She shrieks whenever a stock hits a new high, just like Mandira cheers every boundary scored by India. And she wears Indian colours in the newsroom when India played the final against Pakistan last month!

CNBC, on its part, is bent on commemorating each thousand point milestone for the sensex in a unique way. 15000 was marked by a lot of gimmicks in th newsroom, coffee mugs inscribed with 15k, and what not. But well, it was understandable, as the mark was hit after about 6 months. But 16000 came in just 2 months, and everyone in the newsroom was singing on behalf of the index, "Im on sixteen going on seventeen". For the newspapers the next day, it helped that Yuvraj chose that very day to vent his frustration against Andrew Flintoff, the England team, and the world at large together by hitting 6 sixes in a single over. So the headlines were more or less a combination of the 2 achievements, SIXteen was what it was called.

When 17000 came buy just a week later, it was obvious that noone, not to mention the press, was prepared for it. We just heard a recycled version of 'Sixteen going on Seventeen' with the masculine voice saying "Im on seventeen, going on eighteen, Ill take care of you"

Well, maybe it was the effect of this assurance, when 18000 happened in just another week, CNBC was ready. They had an altered version of Bryan Adams' '18 till I die'. They did it quite well, and was just done, when realisation hit Udayan Mukherjee, the chief newsreader. He mused aloud "But wait, do we want the Sensex to be at 18000 for the rest of its life?" muahahahahaha

The next time they played the song (and they play their chosen song for the rest of the day) the chorus was muffled.

PS: If you thought CNBC has interesting ideas, thats just because you dont read the ET. Its headline simply said 'ADULTS ONLY' (with the A encircled like in the movie posters, and the caption read 'At 18, you can blame it on the raging libido. Boys may have to make way for men as sensex hits a record high of 18200 on the back of eye popping rallies in Reliance and Reliance. From here on, it's no longer for the faint of heart. The illustration for the article was a pic of Catherine Zeta Jones from 'All that jazz' in the movie Chicago, cigarette in hand!

But well, coming from the Economic Times, it isnt surprising. It presented the 2007 budget special with front page exposure to all 007 heroines, prominent among them Ursula Andress just emerging from the sea!

My team, My country, My world cup

2007-09-26T13:54:00.000+05:30

When India meets Pakistan in a world cup final, the contest, for all the hype and the nerves, never goes down to who blinks first, for that rarely matters. Most often it is who blinks most. And true to its word, amidst all the flurry of eyelashes batting against each other, in a match that had phases ranging from ‘excellent start’ to ‘defendable total’ to ‘Imran on the rampage’ to ‘cant lose from here’ to ‘where did the huge gap between runs to defend and balls to bowl dissappear?”, it was a oversight by the last man standing for the losers, that his improvised stroke ended up in the hands of the fielder. Obviously, Misbah Ul Haq never knew (he didn’t get the sms I received yesterday) that in ‘every corner of the world, there is a malayalee’!

It is ironical that India has won a ‘world cup’ at the only instance in living memory (I wasn’t around when we won it before) in which the team wasn’t sent with the fanfare, with cricket bats autographed by the players of the 1983 coup, with the team selection played out as ‘predict the team’ contests by the newspapers in advance and over-debated on news channels, with Pepsi ads and its access to the team dressing room. With Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, and Saif Ali Khan trying to become one of the 'men in blue', with Shankar Mahadevan claiming allegiance with his corporate sponsored songs. with a good luck dinner by the President of the country, and with thousands of loyal fans waving goodbyes to the aeroplanes in which the team flew away till it disappeared into the skies. Oh why, it wasn’t even a World cup till India actually beat Australia in the semi final. Till then, it was just the T20 world cup, if you can get the difference!

Ironical indeed that even without being in the disastrous form the team was in, approaching the last few legitimate world cups, India wasn’t even counted among the favourites. The event was so insignificant in public perception that three of those who would make any Indian all-time cricket eleven, opted out of the tournament citing without really giving reasons, and none of us really seemed to mind! So insignificant that in the first week of the tournament, the media was more obsessed with the non-playing captain’s resignation than the playing captain’s strategies.

But all that was to change. Change so drastically that the pretty young things that make up CNBC TV18s newsroom spoke, more often than not, in cricket-language on the day of the final, the day after the final, and pretty much the day after the day after the final (We’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see what they have for the day after that). All their newsreaders wore Indian team jersey’s to commemorate the victory, and Mythali Mukherjee made up, atleast in shrieking, for Mandira Bedi’s absence, atleast to the few geeks who are subjected to her all day. (oh btw, did I tell you I get to watch TV at office all day) Even ‘the Hindu’ set aside almost half of its front page for the picture of the Indian team with the trophy. I cant even imagine how the Malayala Manorama would have commemorated its favourite son being the one to hammer the last nail in the Paki coffin, even if that was the only noteworthy thing he did all day.

So India has won a world cup (lets say I don’t mind calling it that)! And boy, aren’t we proud? But should we really be? Did it really matter that the Indian flag being carried around with so called ‘pride’ by females in sports bras (mind you, sponsored by India’s biggest company)? Did we mind - I ask you again, DID WE– mind that the Indian National anthem was not played completely to tune at the start of the match (In case you heard the notes of the first ‘Jaya He’)

Well on the other hand, India has just won a world cup. And in all probability, it wont again, unless the ICC comes up with yet another new format of cricket, and catches our media sleeping. So lets just savour the moment, pretend to own the team, (of course, thanking the BCCI for not depriving us of that pleasure), ignore miniscule issues such as what tune the national anthem is played in, and feel proud to be an Indian. In true Indian fashion!

Im The Only Gay Eskimo

2007-09-22T13:41:00.000+05:30

(never mind the topic... just another song thats so addictive! and anyway, Im so starved for topics)

Well, A canary was resting on the road on a cold morning. Well, call it bad luck that a cow was walking along the same road. And call it fate that the cow jus wanted to relieve itself. But can one explain that the cow went and excreted right on top of the sitting canary?

Anyways, it did. but, then, the canary didnt really seem to mind because it was starting to feel warmer now. In fact, it was feeling much better that it felt like singing. So it starts whistling.

Thats when the problem starts. A fox roaming around in the dead of winter, derived off easy prey, noticed th humming coming from inside of the mound of dung. And the fox, being the wise animal he is, realises it is just a canary singing inside. To cut the story short, the fox un-dungs the canary and has a feast!

Now, Moral of the story : Not everyone who gives you bullshit is an enemy, and not everyone who saves you from bullshit is a friend!

(overheard at a meeting yesterday)

Blogging when you're bored a.k.a Im an asshole

2007-09-13T16:11:00.000+05:30

Ay Ess Ess Aych Owe Ell Ee, everybody say, Ay Ess Ess Aych Owe Ell Ee, asshole.

Im an Asshole. Im an Asshole. Im an Asshole

Ok now dont be deluded. Its out of sheer boredom. But let me share how surprised I am that so many people seem to be be bored these days! Like, there seems to be far too many people saying the same thing at the same time for it to be dismissed as passe. There's most of my colleagues saying the same thing. And come to think of it, about the job that I harped I could never grow bored with! Theres so many people on blogosphere. Well, to keep this simple, I get the feeling something like J K Rowling's Dementor effect has grabbed the country!

Well, Im bored, just like Nags, and Lemonade, and then so many others who'se names I cant remember amidst all this boredom, and I come up with this ultra boring topic "Blogging when you're bored" This is what happens......

1. You write as if you you were taking vengeance. You go on drooling and drooling, and drooling, the only tangible effect being, earning the ire of the few readers who still bother to check in. So you start jabbing at the keys, and then deleting after about three paragraphs of utterly boring stuff, only to feel bad about it, going back to typing trash and well, somewhere down the line, writing about the fact that you had written more trash than you had guts to publish, and make a big song about how you are 'literally blocked' and how you struggled to shield the readers from its contagious effects and all that crap!

2. The only topics that come to your mind are the 'duh' topics. Like lets say, the ads I see on TV. oh, btw, I didnt tell you, At my job, I get to watch TV all day. Well, atleast thats the sexy part of the fact. The not-so-sexy part is that its just CNBC thats shown! Well, but India's investing youth know to make the best ot of the little available. One day on orkut, someone came up with the topic, "Who's the sexiest babe on CNBC?". And believe it or not, we had 72 replies in one hour!

Thank God for small mercies, because otherwise its just listening to some company's CEO or the other. And then, theres the ad's. Now dont you go 'atleast theres the ad's', because they just show the business ad's, and then some others just meant to keep you awake.

Theres those lousy girls screeching 'wow' (WOW) every five seconds, till Kajol comes with her 'ready to use' high speed internet solution. I often wonder how come Kajol materialises whenever there is a telephone connection problem, even in people's bedroom's. Well, I guess its the otherway round. Whenevr Kajol is around, all other providers' airwaves get jammed. Or is it really that?

Then of course, I must tell you about this abhorable ad in which a pretty young thing carries some boxes out of her office to her waiting car, when another young thing (male) scolds her for doing it all herself, like only a just-married or just-to-be-married would do. After listening to the tirade in silence, she proudly announces to a bystander "He's not my husband. He's my stock broker". Oh, tell me isnt that depressing? 6 months of stock broking, and I havent even made a start!!! or wait, what wife would go around saying that like that?

I wont even tell you about some of the other ad's, like the Radio Mirchi one, which has the only effect of getting everyone looking at the TV searching for the source of the disturbance in the office. Good achievement, but not when you've just woken someone from a noon time nap!

3. You find an amazing companion in google search. I type in Bored, and it assures me its got a cure. Go to Bored.com. Well, the site seems pretty interesting, with stuff as varied as jokes to results of a Lost wallet experiment! And if it doesnt work, theres another 73400 standby solutions.

Well, I found a joke. ja, a Bush joke. My favorite category of joke! Copied for you.

So, Donald Rumsfeld is briefing George Bush in the Oval Office."Oh and finally, sir, three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq today." Bush goes pale, his jaw hanging open in stunned disbelief. He buries hisface in his hands, muttering "My God...My God"."Mr. President," says Cheney, "we lose soldiers all the time, and it's terrible. But I've never seen you so upset. What's the matter?"Bush looks up and says..."How many is a Brazilian?"

other attractions at the site include website destroyer (oh wait, dont destroy my poor site, or maybe I should check wether it actually works first) deathday predictor, and a long list of names you could call a loved one (now, that should be time pass)

4. Theres youtube always. But you get tired of listened to Gaither Vocals and Beatles, dont you? And Salma Hayek isnt exactly stuff you could search for in the office! Well, today I did see a video of a cheetah chasing a deer. The perfect chase, such a beauty to watch. Till a sardarji comes running, overtaking the cheetah, cradling the deer in his arms, and running away with it. Now, THAT WAS FUNNY!

oh well well well... I guess its getting too late, and yeah, I owe you an explanation for the tirade in the beginning. Listen to the asshole song. Youll never regret it!

Music et al!

2007-09-08T12:16:00.000+05:30

I am a highly emotional person, though the emotions show for the really weird reasons. One thing that never fails to stir the senses within is shows of patriotism. Okay, patriotism stirs almost everybody. Whats weird about me is that it doesnt have to be my country. Just any country's nationals doing something, typically the singing of patriotic hymns with emotion, for their homeland! Notable among them was Celine Dion singing 'God Bless America' on the first Anniversary of 9/11. And in case you didnt know already, for me, international football matches start with the singing of the national anthem by/for the teams. (An interesting observation here - During WC '03, only a pitisome handfull of Indians cricketers looked interested when the Jana Gana Mana was played. Though, two of them went a step further and emulated their Australian counterparts by keeping their palms on their chests. Talk about ignorance!

Well, a little while ago, I was youtube'ing for 'Casablanca' (which is one of the many movies I badly want to see, God knows when). And there was this scene in Rick's Bar, where the Nazi's are singing their national anthem, and Bogart, feeling overwhelmed with patriotic fervour, asks his buglist to sound the notes for the 'La Marsellaise'. They then team up to sing the anthem in brave defiance of the German anthem, culminating in a singing war between in the bar!

A malayam poem has some evergreen lines that goes, 'When you hear of India, you should feel goosebumps, And if it is Kerala you are hearing off, the blood in your veins should gush!" This were lines written when the the freedom struggle was at its pinacle, and served the struggle well. But it is depressing to thing that after we got what we fought for, we really dont care about using it with pride! But thats not for today.

Today, overcome by the beauty of the French national anthem, I went a surfing for that, ended up surfing for the anthem of most of the countries Iv remember, and winded up judging that the Star Sprangled Banner, is perhaps the best. Yeah, the American national anthem. Even though I am as much an America basher as most of us who've only seen them hegemoniously be frontrunners everywhere would be, I couldnt help feeling touched by this performance by the combined armed forces academies choir! Without superstars, without extreme vocal effects. Just the song, like a song, imo, should be. The song, at its best. I literally found myself clutching my cheeks in awe.

As to other national anthems, I have always been a fan of the arrangement of the German anthem, which almost sounds like a hymn! Little, wonder considering that in its land lies the laboratories of some of Gods best gifts to humanity, Ludwig VanBeethoven, and George Friderik Handel. Though I vaguely remember the music for this anthem is attributed to Mozart, an Austrian. Okay, I know Im going into deeply boring territory now, but if you ever go after National Anthems, scout for the Soviet anthem (which many claim to be the best), and even the Argentine one.

But the best video I stumbled upon today was this. An Englishwoman singing the Jana Gana Mana, much better than we ever did in school. Sometimes, it takes a foreigner to make you feel proud of your nation!

PS: Today may very well go down as one of the days I never forget in my life. Ill explain! Iv always had a long list of exotic career ambitions, none of them having anything to do with what Ill do for a living. One of them was singing Handels 'Messiah' in a good choir, which is arguably the composition with the most mass appeal, if not the best classical composition of all time. And needless to say, like, most of the other items on the list, this was more a wish than a possibility. But tell you what, early this year, by the grace of God, I got the opportunity to join the Madras Musical Association, and the first concert we did was Messiah. After about five months of practicing every tuesday evening, today we are performing. And man, will I not savour every minute of it. See you next week!

You'd think I was bored with being bored

2007-09-05T17:51:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, like every other salary day, my ATM was a stop on my way back home. And yesterday, like most other salary days, the ATM was out of order. Well, not one to get put off by that, I trudged up to the bank to confront the manager (again, like I did last month) poor guy, he was packing up after another day at seven in the evening, and there I was with the old complaint.

No wonder he retorted by saying that it was only when I needed it that the ATM was going out of order! say what....

Actually sometimes I do wonder whether everyone else makes a big deal about such small inconveniences. Like, Iv been using a Hutch special card to call mom at a discounted rate. Now, its a pain in the neck actually using the service. And it didn't help my spirits that their toll free number to reach a live consultant was non existent (or so it seems) nor was the automated system which is supposed to tell me my account balance answering!

So I call up the regular Hutch number and get the usual excuses. So i ask to talk to the manager (and I know a thing or two about how things work in a call centre) and it seems he is busy in a meeting! Now would you believe, every time I ask for a hutch manager, I always get the same response. You would think that if they spent so much of time in meetings, customers wouldn't have problems!

Neither is it helping that Iv read TRAI regulations well enough to know that all these are actually 'offenses'. And it hurts even more to know that now Iv got them on the hook, with all the laws lined up against them, so Iv got to actually move my ass and go in for the kill.. Or atleast, do something apart from crib about it. Oh God, you'd think I was bored of being bored all the time!

Moving on, I was just surfing through youtube and chanced upon some videos made on Novak Djokovic (well, its pronounced just the way you did, never mind, anyway) Well, Djokovic, if you dont know, is considered as the practical joker of the ATP who, it seems, took over from where Dmitry Tursunov (if you read the last post) left off.

And he was imitating his fellow players on the tour like Nadal, Federer, Roddick Sharapova and the whole lot of them. Now I always have a thing for mimicry artistes. We seem to have many in Kerala. In fact, it became such a pastime with almost everybody that you could say it was a modern day art form, for its popularity. The favorite was an unlikely actor called Jayan, but soon followed impersonifications of Mohan Lal, Mammooty, later on, polliticians, like VS Achuthananthan, and when i was last there, even the bishops were caricatured on TV shows and sitting rooms!

Well, watching Novak, I couldn't help feeling that these people, they are so keen in observing small things about their models. Like, the way, Maria Sharapova fiddles with her hair before every serve, or Nadal with his, erm.., underwear (btw, I wonder why his mom never asks him to go and get the right size!). The way Roddick feels around for his shoulders whenever he prepares to face serve, or takes off his baseball cap only to put it back on from the back, after every point. And the way Federer greets the crowd after every match he wins (oh comeon, that's almost every match he's played)

Okay, so continuing with my wanderings, I find web surfing amusing for many reasons. One of them is being able to witness fights of all kinds (mainly ethnic).. Like, I was watching this video on Ana Ivanovic who is a serb, and the comments were mainly about wether she was a Serb or a Croat. And it mostly ended with th serb abusing th Croat's lineage (both collective and personal) and th Serb claiming, you can abuse all you want, but she's Serb!

Even better are the American racial fights. Maybe some day ill put up a few transcripts. Today, somehow I feel inclined to let this remain a boring post
chao

Writer unblocked

2007-08-27T16:13:00.000+05:30

A few days ago Devanshi was talking about the writers block. Well, if it actually means what I think it means, she was talking about what all a faithfull blogger can do when he/she stops having the inspiration to write, or something in that line. Anyways, among the options she came up with (some of them, as bizarre as talking about the weather - man, you do that, and you're banished from my blogosphere for life, period) the only one that actually appealed to me was do nothing. And believe it or not, the lady herself seemed to take quite well to the suggestion. But tongue in cheek, the next day she comes out with a new post with an excellent theme !

Now, for someone like me, who is superstitious in a bizarre way, but also understands the concept of probability, it logically follows that whenever you find yourself short of inspiration, you just need to rant about the lack of inspiration, and touchwood, bang come the ideas the very next day!

Or maybe, I thought. ill atleast try to convince the few people who actually manage to reach this space that it isnt because of lack of effort that it seems forever since I last posted. To be frank, Iv started on 3 posts in the last two weeks. (phew!) One about Hutch having changed my price plan without informing me, again. (Oh well, btw thats a long story. last month they did it the first time and I almost took them to court before their chief accountant rang me up and admitted her mistake. And she was pleading so badly that I decided I wouldnt even press for damages - in terms of time and effort wasted digging through TRAI regulations and running from Hutch pillar to Hutch post ( I even felt a lot of our Govt offices give more customer satisfaction than a private telecom operator) - Anyway this time they had timed the change in priceing of sms's for the whole of Chennai to coincide with the day of my having completed six months of being a Hutch customer, so now they could fool around with me, and not give a damn!)

Then I thought, i think it was last sunday, of telling you of my secret so-called fears. Oh yeah, I was really depressed by the time I reached half way, with stuff like the fear that I would forever go on being lazy and lousy, sleep on unmade beds, with the lights on, littered with 2 day old newspapers, and sometimes even the clothes I wore to to office that day, or that I would never become India's answer to Warren Buffet combined with Peter Lynch (Well to save you from worrying your head off on that, they were two of the most successfull investors ever) or Siddarth Basu, Prannoy Roy and Rajdeep Sardesai combined. Tell you what, I got all worked up and started coming up with weird worries like going bald by the time I become 25, that i decided to stop right there! The third post i started on, i actually dont even remember what it was about, though it wasnt worth being on my blog anyway. For leads, it was an answer to a tag i really didn feel like answering

Anyway, today, when work became a little boring, I got hooked on to another blog from an unlikely source. Dmitry Tursunov, a not so famed tennis player, with a famed tennis blog. Somehow I get the feeling that he should be likened to the WTA players. The players that get huge followings for reasons completely unconnected to their game. Like lets say, the length of their skirts! anyway this guy used to have a really cool blog. He starts a post by saying that he wasnt feeling like writing anything interesting today, and goes on to keep you struggling to hold on to your seats. And he very freely picks on all his fellow players, which of course is great reading for our controversy scouting minds!

Well, reading that, like reading anything creative these days, gave me the really pinching feeling that I could write something that is damn funny even when i really dont have a special topic with a four syllable heading and three pages of long and winding prose! But then again, when i sit down to actually do it, Hermione Granger's (yo right, the Harry potter gal who knows just about anything) words keep echoing in my head. You cant make something out of nothing, even with magic. By the way she called it the law of some over-complicated word that even I cant remember.

So now, my only hope is the writers block unblocked, and that ill come up with some breakthrough ideas in tonights dream and tomorrow you'll have the blogpost of your life!

Two for the price of one

2007-08-07T16:31:00.000+05:30

There are songs, and then there are great songs. Great songs with melody persuasive enough to keep you listening to it over and over again. Great songs with out of the world lyrics. Lyrics that are imaginative, and make you want to hear the song again just to catch the lyrics another time.

Among the many songwriters that I have followed, I have always been a fan of Elton John (of course, without forgetting his main lyricist Tim Rice (who wrote 'Candle in the wind', for Marilyn Monroe and 'Can you feel the love tonight' from "Lion King" for him as well as a lot of broadway musicals for Andrew Lloyd Webber). But the song that has enchanted me most is one that was written by Elton along with Bernie Taupin, who certainly had more than his share of disappointments like Elton. During their earliest days together, he and Elton were unhappily trying to be commercial songwriters.

The song talks about a youth who seeks to make a living in the "Emerald City", the land of opportunity, a town where troubles wash away. Instead, the youth is exploited for his talents and decides to abandon this place of vanquished dreams and decides to go back home where his future really lies.

For some reason or the other, this song reminds me of a world I struggled to like, never actually managed to do so, and finally give up for good, not even despairing about it. The world of being a budding Chartered Accountant. A world which, to me, can only be explained as unfairness impersonified. Even cruelty garbed in the sexy robes of hope.

And it appeals to me because it was quite obvious from the start that CA wasnt my destiny. Of course, it was a fine profession. It commanded a lot of respect. Money was there to be earned. They coloured it with the exotic hues of future prospects. But then yeah, the caveat too was accetable. Hard work, dedication. But then wasnt that a normal thing? But well, to keep it short, what transpired was a world where the mantra was work and only work, which again, isnt a bad thing on the face of it. But for a restless, fun loving guy like me, it was a bit too much. And anyway, i always studied it half heartedly.

To me, Charterered Accountants were just pretentious hypocrites. Pretentious, because they pretend they are happy, and that this is the life they yearned for (well, I know a few of them personally), and hypocrites, because they go around with the air of being the most knowledgable persons in the world, when, like most of you now know, they are just a bunch of arrogant self proclaimed intellectuals, who barely know anything (atleast, most of them) beyond the numbers they audit, who make a living -to crudely state the facts- finding fault, and even at their pinacle of professional excellence, cannot be trusted to give the truth (well, to be frank, while analysing companies, Iv been always suspect of the sanctity of its audited financial statements, which ultimately defeats the purpose - with a thousand standards and laws that justify not having to be absolutely certan)

So whenever I hear this song, there is an emphatic statement from the bottom of my heart to all those who think they can fool me about paradise, and to all my co labourers, who still go on believing in the dream that the suffering is for a moment and all that jazz... I actually compare you to the black slaves in 19th century America

So here is a dedication to the lot of you. Chartered Accountants, students, and most importantly, my old boss and colleagues who thought I wouldnt ever leave for all the threats I made. Who thought I actually cared!

When are you gonna come down

When are you going to land

I should have stayed on the farm

I should have listened to my old man

You know you can't hold me forever I didn't sign up with you

I'm not a present for your friends to open This boy's too young to be singing the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road

Where the dogs of society howl

You can't plant me in your penthouse

I'm going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods

Hunting the horny back toad

Oh i've finally decided my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road

What do you think you'll do then

I bet that'll shoot down your plane

It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics

To set you on your feet again

Maybe you'll get a replacement There's plenty like me to be found

Mongrels who ain't got a penny Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground

And oh yeah, this is just my destiny. You choose yours. I decided that hyped up values arent worth dying for. But dont be fooled into thinking that success in life is just about working all day and night, money, deserved or not, and social acceptability. Hmm, maybe success is all about that, but then, Id rather not be 'successfull'... !

Well to leave you in a better mood, heres another song. Again, commemorating a favorite lyricist. Oh ya its ABBA (for those of you who dont know, my music begins and ends there - and Iv loaded my player with every ABBA song) but well, this song is different. For story telling it could rival Jeffrey Archer. Read on

He had what you might call a trivial occupation

He cleaned the platforms of the local railway station

With no romance in his life Sometimes he wished he had a wife

He read the matrimonial advertising pages

The cries for help from different people, different ages

But they had nothing to say At least not until the day

When something special he read

This is what it said:

If you dream of the girl for you Then call us and get two for the price of one

We're the answer if you feel blue So call us and get two for the price of one

If you dream of the girl for you Why don't you call us and you'll get two for the price of one

We may be the answers to your problem, a chance with we two

So call us and get two for the price of one

He called the number and a voice said, 'Alice Whiting'

The voice was husky and it sounded quite exciting

He was amazed at his luck The purest streak of gold he'd struck

He said, 'I read your ad, it sounded rather thrilling

I think a meeting could be mutually fulfilling

Why don't we meet for a chat The three of us in my flat I can't forget what I read'

She said, "I'm sure we must be perfect for each other

And if you doubt it you'll be certain when you meet my mother"

Cheers... Ab

The Gandhiji way!

2007-08-01T16:17:00.000+05:30

So Sanjay Dutt is finally going back to jail. The judge, His honour (excuse me, is that allowed?) Pramod Kode of course had to choose between seeing himself decried on the evening news (which these days, goes on for about 24 hours) by social activists as being lenient to a public figure, and being decried by the rest of the nation as not being lenient to the only public figure who managed to convincingly remind us of Gandhiji's message in living memory.

Well, going by news reports, the scene at the courtroom could very well have been coreographed to oblige some director waiting to finish off a film before the protagonist is rushed off to jail. It seems, (and somehow, reading it in 'the Hindu makes it hard to disbelieve) Mr Dutt, after hearing the verdict, walked back to the witness box with folded hands and tried pleading with the judge (and you thought that could happen only in a bollywood movie) that he had spent more time in jail than with his family (NDTV). Well, to be frank, I think for that one sin, he ought to be jailed for six years, considering that the 48 year old had spent just 16 months in Jail... If he wasnt with family, where on earth was he?

the judge, on his part, consoled him saying that he had 'taken away' just 6 years from his life, and he could go on acting till he was 100! six years people, the judge would have retired by then, and who knows, grown tired of watching Amitabh Bachchan as the omniscient daddy. Oh and yes, and the judge also did mention that he was bound by duty.

So, anyway, pending appeal at the supreme court, the actor is going to jail for 'a mistake he committed 14 years ago'. (Before you laugh at how fast things are done in India, remember that a trial in Canada on a plane hijack in 1987 commenced a few months ago, and had much more loopholes) A few american papers latched onto the words 'with terrorist connections' for their headlines.

Okay, now lets get our thinking hats on. One, do you think its justice, and only justice, is what was done in Dutt's case? I mean, without donning the black robes. Im afraid not. Now dont go gaga about the law taking its course, or that everybody is equal in the eyes of the law.

More seriously, for sometime, I have been perturbed (and their seems to be a huge number of things that dont in the least concern me, that I am perturbed about these days) by the question, Does law, the way it is established, actually give any room for circumstances (as opposed to 'facts') of the case? Lets talk about the Indian doctor who found himself on the wrong side of the by now fabled, 'war on terror'. All he was, and could be convicted was of having unsuspectingly left a sim card in the hands of a cousin, whom he would have known since the younger of them was born. Now look, I exchanged the first sim card i bought with my then room-mate, whom I had known for few months, just because I didn like the number (duhhh!)

How much more common would it be for this doctor to have passed it to his cousin. But there was no limit to the mental torture that he had to endure. So, to repeat the question, does law, stony faced as it is, allow for an arbitrageur to take this into consideration?

Back to the question of Sanjay Dutt, there's no denying he has suffered more than most of his fellow convicts. He had a past. And he was raw meat for a controversy starved nation (hey, Im talking about 10 years ago, when Richard Gere and Mandira Bedi werent at large)

Of course, his peaking career is not a defense in law. His possesion of arms evidenced, as the judge rightly put it, a scant disregard for law. But an uncleared convict is no more free, than a man on parole. 14 years is a long time. And after all, we're all sure he just did something foolish. A foolish thing , which he, Im surer, had no idea carried a sentence of 5-10 years imprisonment.

Me and the Boss

2007-06-26T16:23:00.000+05:30

Heyyo I watched Shivaji (Sivaaji, to read out from the tamil correctly) yesterday.... I mean the tamil movie. yupp..... the Rajnikant one....

oh gosh, now how do I explain? well take it if you wil, but I did i did i did i did i did i did i did!

So now that thats settled, let me tell you what I thought of it.

Of course, I didnt tell you that I watched the movie sans the queue's that stretch all the way out of the theatre and into the nearby bus stand, sans the packed movie theatre, sans the hysterical crowds, sans the whistling, and sans the overpriced tickets... hehe. honest!

Talking about the queue, they delayed the start of movie by three quarters of an hour because, they couldnt without atleast 25 persons to see it. I dont kinow how to convince you of this, but at the right time for the show, there was my brother, me (and please understand that I belong to the genre that considers arriving after the title credits or before the end credits of a movie is half the ticket price wasted) and a stranger on one side of the theatre gate, and the watchman on the other, and nobody else even near. And to think that the bugger wouldnt even let us go inside, take tickets and be seated early. Yaaay, I am indeed talking about the movie that got released 10 days ago... with all the fanfare and whatnot!

Oh, maybe I do know how to convince. I must tell you I watched the movie in Kottayam, not in overzealous Tamil Nadu. Anyway, we had a show when about 25 people had gathered around the gate (now for all you know, they could have been keeping us outside to attract the few college guys who dared to cut classes on monday morning!)

And about the movie, I think it was good.... like, cool (though Shivaji doesnt sound cool when he says it, I must admit) In one phrase, a treat to the eyes. Whether you attribute it to the make up man, or the costume designer, the man looks atleast a few years younger than the heroines dad (who, of course, I havent seen) which is pretty acceptable considering most of the other heroes we have in India, and Im not even talking about Amitabh Bachchan.

The stunts were as usual, breathtaking, for their unbelievability, but then, neither was the Matrix Reality TV stuff. He didnt do anything emotionally stirring, so no complaints on that front. Humour was again from a comedian, but then I have no idea how good Rajnikant is at making a laugh.

Of course you dont talk about a movie without mentioning the heroine. Didnt particularly feel fascinated, almost got the feeling she was there just to bare all, or atleast, almost all. intriguing considering Shivaji wanted a so, so and so Tamil girl (now so so and so is because I dont understand Tamil)

And of course the music. Was good to go with the splendour of the visuals, but you cant help wondering wether this was the same A R Rehman who made the music for Roja, Bombay or even Boys.

So final word about the movie - is a good treat to the eyes, which is quite a good reason to watch something. Moreso when balcony tickets are priced under of 50 bucks... Oh ya, Im telling the truth.

PS : This isnt a movie review or anything. Just an explanation for having driven the wildest of fantasies of people who know me. That I would like a Tamil movie, and a Rajni one at that. But then, you got to accept that the times are changing!

(no offence to the fans of Rajni or Tamil movies please, but then What the heck, its my blog.)

A bird in hand, and the bush

2007-06-06T16:13:00.000+05:30

Lets say you can shrug it off when someone says they enjoy being at work. Lets say you are kind enough to not look alarmed when the someone doesnt complain of having to wake on mondays. Lets even say you are just positively surprised to see that same one intensely scouring through an editorial on Bird Flu in China, as bland as 'the Hindu' can make it. (in the hope that it will give a clue as to the name of a company that manufactures its cure) Or when he asks you how your company is doing, and then clarifies that he meant its business, its profitability and its cash flows rather than yours.

But when he treats a new recruit at Infosys or a new article student going for his first audit, as his informant about the companies they represent, you notice things are getting out of hand. When you notice he sees everything in the world throught he lens of the stock market and exchange rates and what not!

The world in which anything is possible, where everything has its causes and effects, and the effects have their sub effects, and where something like lets say, buying an aeroplane, is a big deal, not the least because its expensive (talk about having people in your office who can actually buy one!) but because theres so much other considerations like the price of fuel for the rest of its life, the planned protests by the many NGO's about carbon emmisions as well as the possible advancements in other cheaper forms of transport that would make the plane worthless.

But even I never knew how much my picking stocks, and the logic I used had started affecting my way of thinking untill i recently came up with my list of arguments to counter my friends assertion that "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush"

Well just think about it. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, provided all you need is a phrase to underline a moral story for your grandson. But then today, people seldom ask their granddads advice when it comes to buying something for the garden cage, or something for their wife to cook, which are the two reasons anybody would go after a bird.
Ok well, there could be a third reason. People hunt birds for the joy of hunting. Tell a hunter that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, you'd rather have a PETA tee shirt on!

But back to the first two more plausible reasons. First, Lets say your looking for some birds for your domestic aviary, and have spotted some yellow birds with a blue beak and a red and green tail. You've got a net around, but you see there are plenty more birds roaming around nearby the bush. You could spread the net over the bush, catch one those beauties, scare off the rest, take the catch home, cage, and then preside over its solitude and eventual demise, ha. But if you waited for maybe a few hours, you could get a dream assortion of birds in your garden. If it was me, Id kill a few hours looking at the birds, grandfather be damned.

Or maybe you were hunting for birds because your children have been clamouring for something 'different' on the dining table. Now remember they are having wild geese after a long long time, and just a helping will not be enough. Either you can take home the one goose you've caught to your three children, their cousin, who has come home on holiday, and of course, your wife and your very own self and endure the muffled cries of "is that all?". Or you try your luck with the second bird, (If it wont be too late by then to cook dinner).

Now, of course, things may not be that bad at home. Still you would have just spotted a whole lot of birds on a certain tree for the first time in all the thirty years of hunting. Chance in a life time? after all, its just a question of one gun shot. But you might decide not to be cruel to the birds that have sought refuge in your woods.

What about your supply of bullets, or the new anti poaching laws, the presence of your vegetarian neighbour or even worse, the fact that it was ominous to kill a mockingbird?

And of course theres the question of your honour. For the last three weeks since you started taking pleasure trips to the woods with your hunting gear, your wife has been very understanding, but the last couple of days, you couldnt miss her enquiring look.

Over the last three months, I can count five different times when i coked myself on a trade that was doomed, just because I couldnt keep myself putting my hands where I shouldnt have. Or call it the difficulty of remaining the only sane person left in an insane world.

Tagged: Reasons why I blog (edited)

2007-05-21T15:46:00.000+05:30

Even I got tagged. Because I was the first person to visit a buddy's blog. Or atleast, because I was the first honest person to. hehe!

Well, Now that I think about it (and it suddenly seems necessary to think hard before answering the question) it could be the following:

1. Because I have to write. Because I need to think in words, and not just images. Because I love it when I write something beautiful (yupp, call it what you want, even naivety, but I do like reading most of the stuff Iv written in the past) Because I love arranging words in my own order. And because Im better off writing considering that these days, just opening my mouth to speak spells as disaster, with all the ways I manage to miscommunicate my poor innocent thoughts. Now, if you ask me whether this is the order I love arranging words into, well, lets think of it as an exception, though it does make sense to me.

2. Because words, when written are not arrows which cannot be taken back. You can edit it, beautify it, then publish, and even better, withdraw it, if you feel you were out of your mind when you wrote it.

3. Because on my blog, I can write what I want to write, rather than what someone else wants to read. Of course, I do end up writing sane stuff, and sometimes saner stuff, but the knowledge that you can!

4. Because blogs, to me represents one of the last remnants of an ideal world. Where everybody has their own free space, and in abundance. Where life is not a zero sum game. Where I dont have to trample my brothers aspirations to reach my destination. Where to be recognised, nobody else has to be ignored

5. And finally, because my best friends mails either start with or end with "Where IS blog post?" or "I want blog post!" Say what...

Now for reading this far, one, thanks, and two, you get tagged! The Tag :- Why wouldnt you paint your face black? (answer here)

Nailed to the idea

2007-05-11T15:23:00.000+05:30

How we love our brainchild's! Sometimes, when our methods fail, we go on a spree of reason-finding. But we cleverly weed out any suggestion that would coax us to abandon our ideas! I particularly loved this story i came across a few days ago.

This is the story of Hyman Leobowitz, a man who came from across the Iron curtain to make a living in the land of opportunity, by carrying on his family trade, making nails. He struggles for decades, finally carving his own niche in the industry -all the while growing old and weak- till his wife suggests that maybe, it was time to hand over his business to his son.

Reluctantly, the man puts his son in charge, arranges for weekly reports to be sent to him, and retires somewhere down south.

Barely a few months into his retirement, filled with weeks of negative reports, he decides he has to go back to see where his son was wrong. So he boards a flight to New Jersey. On the way to his sons factory, he notices this huge billboard with the picture of Jesus crucified, and a thundering legend - "They used Leobowitz nails"!

He storms into his sons office and shouts "Do you know what you are doing? I built this business over fifty years with sweat". But his son assures him that he would take care of this. So he retires back to Florida.

Still the weekly reports are depressing as ever. Finally he decides he has to make the trip once again. Just as he gets off his plane, he sees another signboard. This time, there was an empty cross, and low and behold, Jesus is crumbled beneath, and the caption "They didn't use Leobowitz nails"!

Thank you, dear Utan!

2007-05-08T16:54:00.000+05:30

"If a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her idea is, the ape just sits there and eats his banana - but at the end of the explanation, the person with the idea comes out smarter".

That's the 'Orangutan Theory' for you. I mean, the one by Charlie Munger, investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway, or even more famously, partner of the legendary Warren Buffet,
(You'll be sorry if you did a google search to read more about the theory, because all it will tell you is the disgusting truth that your earliest ancestors were, well, apes!)

Going by experience, I feel nothing can be closer to the truth. I spend loads of effort trying to convince someone of my theories, and at the end of it, I find that it was only then that I had understood the entire logic of my argument.

In fact, everytime I write something, I start off bent on educating the ignorant 'rest of the world', but often I find out that I was the one who was being taught by myself!

So this, is a big Thank You, to all my blog buddies, who've bothered to check in here, and kept me putting something in this space regularly......

By the way, tell me how it feels to be an orangutan!

More than a song

2007-05-03T17:01:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I spent some time in a catholic chapel nearby for some time. Not for religious reasons. No, I didn’t even go there to pray. I just happened to be lured there by some music that was an absolute treat to the senses.

Well, deluded at having had two days of holidays on the trot and completely wasted it (yeah sleeping on a holiday is tantamount to wastage, in my opinion) and roaming the balcony in the hope that the evening breeze would carry the ‘stupid’ feeling away when I heard this same song that I woke up to every Tuesday and Saturday morning. Only, then Id be too lazy to dress and go and sit there for half an hour before leaving for office.

But yesterday, I had this sudden urge to go and meet this organist and tell him how soothing his playing was. I did. Predictably, he was overjoyed (for not often do people congratulate pianists) And then, he told me his story. He used to play in that church since the time anyone could remember (he was now 70). Then he met with with an accident. Being reduced to one hearing ear and one seeing eye, and lost the senses in his right thumb and two other fingers of his left hand, he still continues to play.

For some people, handicaps only serve to bring out the sweetest fragrance that is in them. They are the ones who take life as a challenge, rather than crib about the unfairness of it all.

Well, I wouldn’t be telling you this if it were not for this tiny thought I had during the service. They were singing a song that went, “I just keep trusting my Lord, as I walk along.” when I thought, 'what does my spiritually mean to me today?' Maybe it was another way of asking a question that I was grappling with for a few weeks now. True, there was prayer. There was bible reading. There wasn’t as much of bathroom singing, but anyway I was doing enough of other singing. There was church, which I really enjoyed (because of the improved choir). There was talking about God, telling the world about the amazing things He did for me over the last few months. There was philosophising, as to how God wanted me to live, as an example to everyone around. There was cheering, putting up a smile always, being a godchild of choice, yeah, Really!

But there still was a big void that was making me uncomfortable. And I simply couldn’t get the voice out to sing along with that song. A feeling of unworthiness. Anyways, the service got over, and after talking to the organist, I went back to my room, and wanting to simply pray, I felt the need to sing a song. And I felt like singing a lovely song, “Heart of worship” by a person by the name Matt Redman.

This song was written as the result of an outcome of a challenge posed by a pastor in an English church. In spite of having all the components that make modern worship what it is, the congregation kept feeling that something was ‘up’ with the worship. At first, it seemed difficult to point a finger at what was wrong. On the surface, everything was as usual. The musicians were tuning their instruments; the worship leader was doing just fine. Each service contained a block of songs that were directed towards the cross and gave the chance for people to get down to business with God. Yet they couldn’t help feeling they had lost the spark.
Slowly they started noticing. Even in the worship, all the importance was for the act of worship -The singing, the singers, the preachers- rather than the Worshipped. They were going through the motions, but their hearts were far from Him!

That was when the pastor of the church made the brave decision to dispose of with the sound system, and all the instruments used in the worship. They were challenged to ask themselves individually, 'When I come through the door of the church, what am I bringing as my contribution to worship?'

They ‘fired’ their song leader. They decided that if ‘noone brought a sacrifice of praise, they would meet in silence’. Soon people started singing songs acapella, and the rest would join in and follow it with another song. The service began to have more involvement and went back to being a blessing.

That was when the lead singer, Matt Redman wrote this song from his experience at the church.

When the music fades and all is stripped away

and I simply come.

Longing just to be something that’s of worth

that will bless Your heart.

I'll bring You more than a song, for a song in itself

is not what You have required.

You search much deeper within, through the way things appear,

Your looking into my heart.

I'm coming back to the heart of worship

and its all about You, its all about You, Jesus.

I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it

when its all about You, its all about You, Jesus

Well, singing this song yesterday, I recognised what was wrong. Not just for me, but for most of the organised Christian groups, that are forever complaining that they are not getting anything out of the worship. Somewhere along the way, our worship became the the preaching, the charm of the preacher, the singing, the choir, and a horde of other things. It was fine in the beginning, but gradually, we lost sight of the One we went to worship.

We still went on, attending worship and prayers without getting anything out of it, till one day we found ourselves in need of spiritual guidance, but the church had no more life to give it to us.

Its not just the church. All of us, in all our religions, what have we made of God? Just another topic to philosophise on? Just another being to pray to, to support our insufficiencies? Just another person in whose name we seek to gratify our ego’s?

God, if he indeed is maker, if He indeed is Omni-whatever, deserves much more than what we give give Him. Or rather, I feel He’d rather have just the simple stuff. Just a nod upwards and a wave “Hey there, thanks for being around. I love you”, rather than all the philosophies. Rather than all the things we do in His name, for Him. More than just a song. A heart of personal relationship with Him

Overgrown Baby

2007-04-10T17:48:00.006+05:30

You cant help growing up, but you can help not maturing!

There was a time when we used to be called babies, children and more recently adolescents. Somehow, they give the feeling of patronising. As if you still ought to be let off in spite of your doings. After all, 'they cant be like this all their lives, can they'? Thank God for his infinite mercies. We all had grandparents and distant relatives. Otherwise it would be just parents, parents and teachers.

But then, even they expect you to grow up. When you reach, maybe, 20. When you are old enough to start working. Or for Gods sake, atleast after you’ve started working.

Teenager is not a name that fits you perfectly. So they don’t call you that. Oh forget it, they wouldn’t even want to call you that! The kind-hearted resort to consoling everyone saying they will mature soon. 'After all, they don’t have a family to support, and they are atleast improving'. The more cynical claim they’re just hopes crumbled. Black sheep!

And of course, not to mention the other three quarters of 20-something people in the world. The ones who do exactly what is expected of them. Who graduate after studying the most brainy of sciences (no insult intended), who get into the jobs in the poshest offices and who wait for their mothers to find them a wives!

For some inexplicable reason, I seem to attract the first mentioned set of people than the other three quarters, for not a few times has whichever group I am in been called a bunch of “Overgrown babies” (and I love that term). Now that’s actually surprising considering that many folks picture a long faced, sober, kill-joy when I am mentioned.

But reflecting on it, I couldn’t help noticing that the nomenclaturing is relatively recent, and started much after I graduated from being eligible to be called “teenager”.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help pondering about how I changed. Externally, there wasn’t much of a difference, was there? I still was sober, hopelessly old fashioned when it came to appearance. Relatively outdated when it came to likes such as movies or music. So, then what? My two trips back home earlier this year gives me few answers. Let me tell you what changed.

Being at home is different. Oh no, I mean, being at home for a short vacation is blissfull. Even mom, of all people, rarely, if ever, shouts at you. Whatever small things you do, like helping out in the kitchen, is appreciated. The mess you create is ignored. Don’t mention the food. It is literally a feast for family.

But the best part is the laughing that happens. Never was life at home so fun filled as those days. Who said you needed reasons to laugh? Of course, having a born comedian for a brother, and a sister whose career ambition’s seem to be making others laugh at her, helps!

But that’s not just all about it. It was just being young at heart, and preparing to enjoy the things the rest of your group enjoys.

Like reading Brer Rabbit along with the sis, and laughing, and then fighting over which story to read next together (the argument, predictably, is along the lines of who has read the next story how many times how many years ago).

Like watching Tom and Jerry, and laughing like 10 year old’s (well.. what else does one do watching Tom and Jerry), oblivious to the fact that its just not fair (hey its always the tiny mouse that wins), laughing because life is just as fair as we make it out to be, so it doesn’t really matter.

Like listening to the young girls version of the story of Macbeth, and insisting she read out from the original text (yes, that thick black ‘complete works’, which, once upon a time, made my favourite books list) whenever I didnt agree.

Like singing all those old songs (with the portions of the lyrics that memory was smart enough to retain), trying to teach songs, refusing to learn, fighting over it, and then complaining to the higher authority, you know who!

Like peeing in the backyard (thank God again for a backyard and all the greenery) in spite of all the other males at home using only toilets.

like waking up whenevr you wanted. Waking up to bed-coffee or breakfast. Like sitting up late night trading useless stories. Like wandering around seeing all those faces you simply couldnt remember in the din that was 'life'!

Like imagining you are still the 10 year old who first came to live in Kerala. Making up for all the years wasted pretending you was something Important. Whereas you were just a speck in a mighty desert. And what was expected of you was to enjoy today. Not worry about ten years hence!

Good old Cricky

2007-03-13T18:07:00.000+05:30

A few days before every big sports event such as an Olympics or a World cup, I oblige myself with the ritual of trotting to the nearest bookstall to ‘grab’ (as the ad’s want me to) my copy of the Sportstar’s special issue to commemorate it. Maybe it is to catch up with all the sport I missed while I was too busy to squat all day in front of the TV, to keep abreast of the relative strengths of the teams as on world cup date, to regale memories of the cups past as well as to get the tear-away poster displaying the match schedules to hang on my cupboard. Needless to say, the ritual forms the first act in letting the fever catch to me.

*

The Indian team inspires me. Or actually the Indian cricket team fans inspire me with their never say die attitude. For all the non-performances of the last one year, we still have people as eminent as most of the 1983 world cup winning team saying that there never was a better team than what we have sent to the West Indies to win the world cup.

In fact, even the team inspires me. For about two whole years they’ve been planning the best strategy for the world cup. But they still haven’t got anywhere that can be called foolproof. They’ll surely be going into the world cup saying that, after all, it’s just another game, which can be won like they’ve won so many others. And sure that’s all there is. It also means that for us perennial planners, who never get things actually done till the last minute, there’s hope!

*
Call it what you want, calypso, extravaganza or something even better, but the Carribean sure will be delightful. Just for the way they carry themselves in the stands. It’s a pity they wont be allowed to bring in their beer bottles and huge drums. But you can be assured, you wont see much flag burning. Or hopefully, the officials will be lenient. For the sake of the fun!

We’ll have maybe a few million Indians (as opposed to the billion the journalists claim) sitting late into the night to catch every bit of the action. Me? Well, a few matches. Depending on the strength of the teams on match day and reporting time next day at office. Age teaches you a lot. Not least that there’s more to life than cricket (anyway there’s always football)

*
We have debated enough about the format of the tournament. Is it too long with useless matches? Maybe, but think about the flipside. For me, the cup will start effectively when India plays its match against England sometime at the end of this month. From then, it will be the eight best teams in the world (and from recent results, the closest cricket can get to having equal powers) testing its wits against each of the rest. Have no doubt, only the strongest will survive. Consistency will be at a premium.

*

Now who stands a chance of winning this cup! Well, for all you know, its anyone. It was Australia till a month ago. And then a fateful series final against England and another one day series vs. New Zealand has everyone, and I mean everyone, judging that the cup is now open, not without relief. (Someday, when Roger Federer goes through the same fate, we’ll have critics saying that the beautiful game is good, but competition is the essence of sport. Till then we can resign to the fate of watching a master drooling through competitions for want of a more challenging profession.) But think about it. There were clear favourites for the world cup, and a couple of substitutes for good measure. But today, the only teams going into the world cup winning is India (hooooraaay), West Indies, England and New Zealand.

*

What about India? I think (o yes, even I) they can make it if they get their act together. And as often quoted, the secret will be to get into the semi final. But I wont grudge a loss after that. Hey, you got to be modest with your hopes. Even for patriotism. Sometimes I wonder whether we should be so patriotic. The BCCI has gone on record (and unchallenged) that its not actually “our” team. Its theirs! O yeah. Team India belongs to the BCCI. In that case, patriotism will be watching Mandira Bedi and her hysterical ways of running cricket shows. (Oh boy, if only we could have Harsha Bogle and Geoffrey Boycott back). We would have got treated to some ‘cricky’ that was more cricket that masala!

Happy new year?

2007-01-06T08:24:00.000+05:30

When new year comes, can its supplementaries stay behind? Think about a new year without resolutions. Without decisions, that are not as firm as resolutions, and hence expected to stick around for longer. Without the greetings, the cards or the gifts.

And Hope. Because we need reasons to change. Somehow changing on the 30th of December smacks of impermanence when compared to two days later. And don’t we all have a long list 2 months in preparation, waiting for the new year to get implemented.

Then of course, there are accessories, real physical ones. Calendars, diaries and what not. And they get innovative. I got a diary this year, which, apart from all the usual stuff about air distances between, and the average temperature of, the ‘important’ cities across the globe throughout the year (i think it would be so much more useful if they told things like the railway calendar or, well, even India’s cricket itinerary for the year. For sure, it will get those pages read in full!), it also gives me a horoscope of what the coming year holds forth. And curiosity coupled with idleness commits me to read the predictions for me.

SCORPIO October 24 – November 22

You stand to gain through enemies So much for deciding that I will be happy with everyone as a matter of policy this coming year, and not harbour bitterness This is the time to take bold decisions in life Hey, you know what, Im still recouping from the effect of the ‘bold decisions in life’ I took last year There will be money troubles in your family. Sigh! As if there weren’t any in the past. And as if I don’t know ill be scrounging for the next 2 years and 3 months. And people, by the way, that’s how long I have to go on here. You will spend more time on your hobbies Another resolution made long time ago. If only it would be of some consolation to my boss. naughty smirk Financial worries and additional expenses may have to be managed Hellooo… will somebody say something newww! I thought managing was what everybody did when they had an expense. That too, in a bank diary. The friendship of an elderly and competent person can help you. For all the complaints that Im associating with people too old for me anyway Students will have to revise their lessons thoroughly Ehmagod! Now, did I need you to tell me that? Forget it, does anybody need you to tell that? Those working in the public sector will succeed after March 27. At last, some inspiration. To quit and seek employment elsewhere, albeit after March. O yeah, I got it. For you to yell, April Fool. No, Im not game, sorry.

And you wish me Happy new year!

A year of living

2006-11-30T18:31:00.000+05:30

Its been a year. Yups. a whole three hundred and sixty five days.
now please dont say since what!
Since the day Abraham C Mathews graduated into an employee, a worker, and in a lot of ways, a donkey.
One year. On my own. One year, alone (i swear that wasn't meant to rhyme!)
A year which transformed me to someone I scarcely would recognise before it started, In short, the most eventful year of my life.

Two jobs, nothing could be more contrasting than them. Happiness, fun, mindsets and the pay-packet. But Iv learned to accept that as long as you are the one who makes decisions in life you are not wrong. The decisions have consequences. Many good. Surely some bad. But that doesn't make the decision wrong. Only you have to learn to accept it as a part of your growth. So I was'nt wrong getting back in search of a career. (And come to think of it, a career Ill pretty soon give up) Yes I became a psuedo-philosopher. Armed with some friends as out of the earth as me, I fell into it. Needless? Only time will tell. But again, you can only be what you are. No more, no less.

So what about this year past. Balance Sheet style.

Assets - the unassailable will to make a mark on my own, an attitude weathered by the realities of life that all may not go well, always, but that scarcely matters, in the long run. A much needed indent in my arrogance that I can (do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me by my grace), and the timeless achievement of being a better self.
Liabilities - a pin prick at the back of my mind that asks "Can you?" before each of my crazy ventures, a big drop in the scale of my dreams, and a sluggish attitude of being satisfied with small achievements. The propensity to dream small, in the pretext of taking time off to enjoy life, a complete loss of innocence (no more mama's boy), spiritually beaten, and mentally tired. (Yes, if your still not employed, stop having fairy tale dreams of being the worker of choice. Not that its not possible, but you never know.)

Another thing Iv learnt is dont attempt something, that is job wise, unless your heart, nerves and sinews are in it.
O, talk about lessons, there are many more. Never underrate yourself. For you simply cannot measure what youre worth, even in the obvious .Dont let failure dictate your actions. The universe hasnt guaranteed, nor do i think will it allow, a failure free journey.
Find out what you love doing. then do it for the love of it. For me it is writing. And singing. I do both now.
Take time to relax. But dont get too relaxed. You live in a hectic world to waste time getting back into grove
Remember people. Value relationships. They dont come cheap.
Dont forget to pause to learn something the right way. You never know when it will come handy
Dont forget to live as if today is important, though it really may not be. And sorry, Im not sanctifying myself here. These are things I learnt the hard way,am still undoing the damages.

So, am I happy? yes. Atleast I know what I am. And Im much better off than I was a year ago. Friends, Independence, Adventurousness, yes. I may have been able to do much better, but there is always tomorrow. Maybe next year, I wont be as regretfull, maybe the next year, Ill be a little harder on my lazy self and a lot more lighter on my psychological self, but I promise, I will have grown.
By God. With God

Shat ap, 'm not that styupid!

2006-11-07T21:02:00.001+05:30

Yo there, Mr. American, you who, for all the democracy you claim, don’t have an option but to do with the whims of a Rip Van Winkl’ish figure of a president (who wouldn’t have been that in the first place, if it were not for your electoral systems), its time you stood up for yourself. And spoke out
Spoke out saying “Do you think we are fools?” Because that’s what the people who rule you think you are.
They think they can terrorise your wives and your mothers on every election eve by reminding them of Osama Bin Laden. They think they can laugh off John Kerry as an anti militarist, by pouncing on an easily understandable joke. They think they can inspire confidence by having Saddam captured. And to top it all, they think you will buy all this bullshit!

Yes the Grand Old Party thinks you will buy it all. Talk about accountability, well, there is none. Talk about credibility, O, I’m sick of laughing.

O Bush. Sometimes I pity you. I don’t think you are as evil as the people you call evil. Hmm… Maybe you’re a little too proud to admit mistakes, (on your colleague’s advice. I understand), maybe you’re a little arrogant to go against the laws you yourself drafted, maybe you’re a little supportive of a few friends, that too daddy’s friends, who seem to be having all the fun at your expense. But you’re definitely not evil

No Mr. Bush, I don’t think you are a villain as everybody makes you out to be. You’ll only make a lesson for future students of Political science. A lesson on what will happen if administrative responsibilities are thrust upon an unknowing layman. And maybe, if some critic cum historian cum novelist would deign to immortalise your misadventures in Iraq like Tolstoy did Napoleon’s failed attempt at conquering Russia, posterity will remember you as someone more than an ignorant son of a former president, or even worse, a two time president, who had no business whatsoever to be in the White House even once.

And sometimes I pity you for the jokes they cracked at you. The best was the forward I received in my e-mail likening some 32 of your facial expressions to similar ones on a chimpanzee. And I must admit, there wasn’t much of a difference. (I wonder if the poor chimps got to see
Not to mention the day the front page of the newspaper was laid with pictures of you almost falling off a stairway, and your facial expressions. I wondered why no one approached you to do a comedy film. Maybe they will, after two more years. After all, you can’t be expected to go around the world giving lectures like Clinton. You, who didn’t know Chechnya was a country till you became a president.

O sorry Mr. American, for I momentarily forgot you. But spare a moment today before you go to cast your vote to think of the crazy things you were fed all along. W said he was anchoring a fight on terror. And it started on 9/11. But wait a minute. Im sure every American has the number of people who died on that fateful day at the towers on the towers etched to their brains. Does anyone have the latest count of Americans (Americans, mind you, not Iraqi’s) who died in Iraq. In Malayalam, we have this saying that can be translated to mean ‘setting the house on fire to kill the rodent’. And he still insists on ‘staying the course’. He knows all too well that somebody is too worried about her children to vote him out of power.

So he makes you fund his army, and then he funds the enemy by buying their oil. No, don’t laugh. Only vote.

India is a country known to have the likes of Laloo ruling states for decades, and it was not little flak we called upon for not being able to cut them to size. But three years ago, we proved that we mean business. We voted a government that claimed India was shining out of power (There was a cartoon I saw yesterday, with a beggar congratulating Jaswant Singh on the huge Foreign Exchange reserves, and then asking for some domestic change) and we’re still doing it. Today, every government with a bad performance history is simply bundled out. (That they return after five years in another matter)

And that means that even you can. Tell them to shut up. Tell them you’re not as fool as they think you are!

Remind not just Mr. Bush, and his set of advisors, but anyone who thinks they can take you for a ride the power of the “Tuesday following the first Monday of November”

The grass was never so green

2006-10-28T20:53:00.001+05:30

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Yes, for the last three days, I finish my bath and washing in 20 minutes flat (give or take 5). Cant help it. Its that chill. What with the rains in Chennai.
The never ending rains.
Almost like Kerala. Only thing, there it was much more clean. So you don’t have to watch your step, or fear sores on your feet.
Anyways, and the bath, instead of the singing, I find myself indulging occasionally in self pity. And it was the same thing yesterday, when suddenly, I had this thought, “atleast its not like last year”
Last year
Armed with the youthfull frenzy of determination that says, you can take anything hurled at you, I arrived Bangalore on the 1st of December, of all times to reach Bangalore. And within a week, having a job to call my own, and a room, again of my own, to lay the head, and as much money I could get my sweet mom to lend me, I find, that’s where the joys ended.
Sweater, shawl, socks, even in multiples cumulatively wouldn’t help. Used to shiver at 12 in the afternoon. Don’t even ask how it was to have to wake up in the early hours of the morning (hours Iv never before seen, like 5 am). And having to wander outside in the biting cold, because, Iv never learnt the art of sitting in one place and waiting for a cab.
Bathing was the most horrible. Freezing, the water was. And no heater, we weren’t allowed that in the room.. So Id open the shower, let it run, and stand a foot away from it. First stretch out one arm, letting the fingertips digest the obvious fact that it was cold. Then let the water sprinkle onto the body. It would be atleast five minutes of this experiment before I would venture into the cold.
Today, I have the luxury of bathing in hot water, I don’t need more than a sheet to keep the cold away and Im happy.
Yes, things only get better. Only thing, we are too myopic to compare our today with our yesterday. We use all the wrong parameters to compare. And then blame God
Cheers!

A call to arms against arms

2006-10-21T11:35:00.000+05:30

Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say Im a dreamer, but Im not the only one
And the world will live as one
(Imagine- John Lennon)

O come to think of it. Do we need to have all the 200 countries that we have in the world right now? Did we really have to memorise the names of their capitals in school. Or lets ask, what exactly is the need for the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland to be separate dominions. I’ve just done a wiki on it for you.

It seems that there were 5 countries, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and the Faroe Islands, whose tumultuous evolution through the centuries, saw the formation and disbanding of several unions, which obviously called for wars, and deaths, finally ending up as five sovereign states, four of them now under another umbrella, the EU.

Which prompts one to ask, why? Why did they have to have a distinct name, be a country of its own, have a constitution to follow, of its own? Why did countries that had everything else in common, have different kings, or now, rulers. Have armies, have wars and weapons-when the only threat to their existence could come from themselves- just because they have distinct, though mutually intelligible, language, and a set of power crazy monarch’s?

When God created us ages ago, he gave us whatever we needed. Much more space than we could ever need, food to eat, water to quench our thirst, companions to have fun with, and brains, along with the essential brawns, to protect ourselves.
We went a step ahead. We used the eyes God gave us to check on our brother. And he seemed to be having more vegetables, more clean water, more companions and more space. And we started to become paranoid. We started to second guess his every motive.

We began to worry of having to be less than equals. So we took the offensive. We tried to bring him to the ground before he had the chance to make us bend. And we are playing the same game even now. Getting him before he gets us.

After the Second World War, the Americans, under President Eisenhower, developed a national policy known as ‘domino theory’, to counter the spread of communism during the cold war era. The domino effect indicates that some change, small in itself, will cause a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence, by analogy to a falling row of dominoes standing on end.

Going by the theory, any country was bound to be influenced by the happenings around it, and would try to replicate the neighbours achievements, because, power meant power, and having the power meant warning everyone else by displaying it, and telling your subjects to fear not.

So India tested the bomb, because, well, what else do you do with a scientific experiment, but see if it works. (Let’s not have another debate on its neccessity here) And Pakistan had to go nuclear. Was that the president’s personal agenda. No. It was for national pride. And remember, even they’re entitled to some of it.

North Korea couldn’t resist testing its weapons. Who would take being branded as the axis of evil lying down. So again, pride, national pride, takes precedence over priority needs like poverty and hunger. And more countries will follow. There’ll be wars, and more wars. Once the marbles start rolling, there’s no stopping it. More countries will join in. Because in a world infested with nuclear weapons, you cant afford to be non-aligned.

But where did it start. Where the monarch of one country decided that what he had was not enough and decided to annex its neighbour to its territory, and make its subjects follow a culture new to them. Did we hear any of his advisors ask, why bother. Well, WHY BOTHER?
What good to us is it if some one else, living in a land, separated from us by loads of brine or wasteland, lived as he pleased. Even worse, what good would it do to us if we subjected him to our control. No, we had reasons. Greedy reasons. Take the latest. Oil!

Do we need armies? Why did we have armies in the first place? Think about the millitants in Kashmir, or for that matter, any of the so called terrorists. Does it really matter who rules the Kashmiri’s. Does it matter who they pay their taxes to. After all, taxes are there to stay, and the rulers are deigned to be polliticians from time immemorable..

No, it doesn’t matter who rules us. It doesn’t even matter which national anthem we sing, or which flag we salute. We don’t need demarcations, period.

You may say Im a dreamer, But Im not the only one.
I dream of a world in which a national flag is much more an identity on a playground and not on our modern day battlefields.
Im sure Im not the only one

Simple Math

2006-10-06T08:37:00.000+05:30

I believe in delivering on promises. In this case, to publicise a book. Well, I wouldve done it anyway. the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, by mark haddon (reincarnation of e.e.cummins, is he? not to use capital letters.
No, Im not going to review the book. For one, I still havent even reached half way. two, its the few things in life that i consider wierder than myself (imagine a book with a dog that looks like it's suspended upside down from the title on the cover or one which starts with chapter 2. fortunately the page number stood to confirm the start of the book). lastly, Im sure my word is taken for granted, without having to go to details.
Nevertheless, a sentence before we move on. Its the ultimate lesson in creative writing, and a wonderfull read. Now, Im not saying you would be any poorer for not reading the book. But then, most books dont justify mention under that category. Its very rarely that a book is written as though it is the only one ever. Where the author assumes a pedestal and is not hitched by anything around him. I think "the God of Small Things" falls in that category. So does "The Alchemist".
Its the simple practicality of a boy who goes to a special needs school, and follows logic to the hilt that commands our regard.
And there is this part in the book where someone throws him a random numerical problem, a multiplication of two three digits and he thinks the answer and gives out the answer. He also explains how he arrived at the answer simply by thinking it out.
Well, that brought memories of how I could simply shout out math answers in class, and be held in awe by all and sundry, whereas the working out werent much more complicated than saying that seven times nine is sixty three.
There used to be this theorem I formulated, with much hopes of 'contributing to the science of mathematics', till I found out that it was just a rendering of the basic algebraic equation, (a+b)(a-b)=a^2-b^2 , thats 'a squared'.
Take this sum, lets say, 93 times 107, for simplicity. What we do is convert these numbers such that they are expressed the difference of two well known squares. So taking a as 100, and b as 7, we get (100-7)(100+7), which, to satisfy the equation, has to be 100^2 - 7^2, which is relatively simple, 10000 and 63.
Therefore, 93*107 is 9937 (10000-63). As simple as that.
Now it becomes so easy only when the middle number, the average of the two numbers to be multiplied, 100, in this case, is a multiple of 10 or atleast has an easily arrivable square. What if the two numbers are 33 and 52, the average of which is not even a whole number. Then we try the second method.
This can also be condensed to another algebraic equation, though the pure logic is enough and more of proof. (a+b)(c)=a*c+b*c. We split the sum into two parts, and find the value of 33 times 50 and 33 times 2 separately and add the two.
33 times 50 is half of 33 times hundred,3300/2, or 1650. and 33 times 2 is simple, 66. The two added gives 1716.
Now things could get even further complicated. In case of three digit numbers, where you may have to do sequences of these calculations. Even there the method holds. Though it would call for more involvement and concentration in the problem.
Ah! I forgot to tell you. It calls for two traits. one is simply a brain to which numbers seem numbers and not latin or greek, as the phrase goes. Remember youll have to keep all the numbers in your head. And numbers are as fickle as, well, Im lost for words, but I still wont use 'women'.You lose them from your head unless you have a way of seeing them as objects much more vibrant than digits, like two fat ladies (for 88) or a man leaning on a stick (for 19). But even more important is concentration. After all, you dont have paper to write the steps on. If you had paper we all know much easier ways of doing calculations, though they rarely are applauded.
The first somehow, by the grace of God, I have. the second, by whom i dont know, i lost or never had. Therefore, usually the tendency is to laugh off such situations, unless of course, the stakes are that high.
Which brings me to the conclusion. I feel that most people are gifted witha scientific brain. The ability to use the head to get beneath most problems through logic. But some of us, and Im pointing the blessed finger at myself, refrain from utilising the gift. We feign indifference to all the inventions, the theories etc. that were developed around us. For a lot of us, it could be inexposure to the beauty of the whole thing. For many others, it is simply laziness. So we end up in alternate proffesions. Good. What would we have done if we didnt have craftsmen, lawyers, painters, writers and all. But think again, are they under achievers. No, Im not taking sides, just posing an argument.
I think we can frame a statement like this. You can decide to do whatever you want to in life. But never be an under-achiever because you aimed too near.
Our gifts are for a purpose. And Im sure the giver intended us to utilise the gift. And who knows if He will classify it under sin, if we arent faithfull in the least!

An unusual match of wits

2006-09-30T20:58:00.000+05:30

This is a story that’s been with me for very long. Almost 8 years. The funniest part is that this is one of the few stories Iv never heard said elsewhere or published. So there’s every chance that the story was made by the person I heard it from.

It’s a little weird. About a golf match. The weird part is that the golf match is played on the lush green course of heaven. And the Hosts are witnessing a match much alike a royal rumble, as they call it. Well the best-match wits. There’s the trusted stalwart Moses, the man who with a show of his rod led the Israelites across the Red Sea. Then of course there’s the star himself, Jesus. And to make the pool, playing the host, there’s an old man, old even by heavens standards.

The match, a one hole affair, starts off with Moses putting. Suffice it to say that a good shot ending up in the wrong place. The pool which forms part of the course, in this case. And when the heralds look down, anxious to see what’s going to happen (for, for a change, Moses seems to be on his own) he calmly walks down to the water. He holds his club over the pond. The waters part, like it happened scores of hundreds of years ago, and Moses calmly walks on the bed of the pond, takes the shot, which ends up very close to the hole!!

Now Jesus, the toast of the archangels. He walks up to take his shot amidst deafening cheer (he’s more used to it than Tiger Woods). The shot, again, though well crafted, ends up in the same old pond. Hey, the fans know whats going to come next. Jesus coolly walks down to the pond, and on the water and takes his next shot. Genius, and the crystal ball, misses the hole like it can only when it is torn between the desire to stand up tall for itself and when confronted with genius (okay, sorry, it happens in US Open ad’s also). It reaches the hole, grimaces the edges and rushes out, eliciting the most significant ooh. never heard on earth.

Finally it’s the old mans turn. The audience rub their palms with anticipation. They know who he is.
The shot, as frail as the looks of the shooter, manages to end up in the same old pond (sorry people, but, after all, its just a story) But wait a muinute, the ball, it doesn’t really touch the water. It falls into the mouth of a poor frog enjoying its heavenly swim. Alas, there’s an eagle swooning down spotting its prey and when it rises, the frog is in its mouth.
Now there’s a problem. Ball in the frog’s mouth. Frog in the eagle’s mouth. And the eagle, no less menacing than on lowly earth. The anxiety is apparent. Its turning out to be like some of the cricket matches they’ve watched us mortals watch on TV. Where you lose matches from a position where, even God cant make you lose.

But of course, like all good stories, there had to be a climax. And it had to come in a way no one expected (silly, otherwise how can it be a climax). When the eagle had reached the exact spot above the hole, the frog feels like choking. And you can guess what happened.
The ball is in the hole.
That’s when Moses calls Jesus aside, and quips, “this is why I hate playing with your dad”

(The explanation later)

Sweet nothings

2006-09-28T21:40:00.001+05:30

It is said that M F Hussain, the painter, once exhibited a blank canvas, calling it a work of art

Ive heard about a famous singers (the name eludes me) song which contains exactly 1 minute and 13 seconds of silence, the background voices audible

A Pink Flloyd song I was listening to this evening had around 30 seconds of simply gun shots (or whatever else can sound like a gun shot) in fact, every time I listen to the song, I need to bend over and check whether the disc is still running!

So, here's writing to you, kid (to misquote Bogart in Casablanca)
Atleast Iv bothered to explain why this post is for all practical purposes blank.

Sorry dude Its only because I don’t get the time. That’s after saving the world, and making sure Im still sane (two things that don’t usually go together)

Hail Mary, the absolute

2006-09-18T08:57:00.000+05:30

To anyone who knows anything history, the use of the salutation Hail, brings out either of the two extreme feelings. A chill, from the haunting memory of torture, epitomised by Hail Hitler, and the diagonally opposite warmth of love which is Hail Mary, full of grace.
Once in a while, though inbetweens rarely get recorded in history, they occur, and occasionally in our house too. Domestically she is known as amma.
Mary, because of the name, her maiden name, or atleast what I think is a maiden name. And Hitler because of the Iron rule she would exert.
I know your will’ing to tear at me for portraying her as such, but just wait till you read the extent of the dictatorial powers she commanded.

The Kitchen is mine

I decide what can make its out way from the larder through your food tube to god knows where. And believe me, word was seen by one and all as command. It still is an unwritten rule. She even had to insert a clause to make it possible for her favorite son (no prizes for guessing who!) to help himself while slogging the study holidays. No doubt, the rule had to be suitably amended when her second son also had to stay back home

The house is yours, keep it clean

Not one belonging of yours out of place. She doesn’t destroy it. She makes you clean it up. Books, clothes whatever.

You dirty the dining table, apart from the splatter of words, you’ve gotta clean it up yourself. Now, inevitably she also drops the curry on the sheet. But that’s justified as “After all, its I only who’s going to clean it up”

It’s a sin to be found walking in the house without wearing chappals. The tangible consequence being that your not allowed on any bed without proving to her satisfaction that the feet have been since washed.

The TV is yours to see, but I decide what you can, and when(and sometimes, even who)
(But of course, mamma, that’s only when you’re around!)

Would you believe that I had to nag her for a week, and be the best son in the world, every time I wanted to see a European football match, which inevitably is played only at night, Indian time.
Not that rules were always obeyed, but there was never a lack of fear+ guilt.
Seven to nine at night was strictly off bounds for TV. The only place you can be would be at your table, you’ve got to have a book in front of you, whether you study or not, oh forget it, whether you have to study or not.

Now being outside the house was again not an option. She expected us to be good boys, and in Kerala, good boys have nothing important to do out of home after 7 in the night. (And for the record, bad boys were simply those who gathered together in the late hours and sat on the sides of the small bridges which are everywhere and simply talked. The occasional cigarette or the rare comment at the very rare female who dared to go out of the house is an exception.

Chappathis?, you’ve got to do your share!

Believe it or not, Chappathis were the most wanted item on our breakfast wish-list, and for amma, the most hectic. On school days, she claimed no time, on Saturdays, we cried foul. So she came up with the idea, you want Chappathi’s for breakfast, you’ve got to help out in the kitchen. Well, all three of us weren’t welcome at the same time. That was too tiresome for her, so it was only one of us who had to stand next to her, rolling them, unmade chappathi’s or toasting them, enduring her comments on the perfect round shape, or a little too much oil or even worse, the odd one gone charred (which was, as a rule, reserved for the maker.)

I guess its one heck of a job to be momma. Tell her that, and she'll suggest getting paid for it.

And oh, I forgot, what prompted me to write this was a conversation I had with her last week.
I was just back from home and had promised to call her on Sunday. I called her two days early on Friday, partly because, well, you would have read the previous post by now! And while winding up, I told her Id call her next Friday, when she came up with the idea that next week also, why don’t you give a surprise by calling two days early!!
I said I wont. (but I did)

It’s a pleasure to know that people really appreciate the difference you make to their lives. Well, we do talk about being there when the neighbour needs you. But do we make an effort to make people who love us feel wanted?

To all my friends and my sweet mother(with the most frightening pair of eyes in the world), who gave me a wonderful week, Hail, your the best in ther world.

And by the way people, there’s a rule-the day my mother gets to know my blog, Im quitting!

Yeah, I mean it

Not for reading!!

2006-09-15T16:47:00.000+05:30

I know this is an uncharacteristic post. Its just full of filthy rubbish. So dont read unless you feel inclined to

"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,What stuff 'tis made of,
whereof it is born,I am to learn; The Merchant of Venice Act I Scene i

Well, my condition is not so pathetic. I know exactly what is itching me.

Here I am, sitting in office. And feeling damn bored.
Not like theres lack of work. But no work wont make me feel even more bored than I am right now.
And Im alone here.

So I decide to do what I love doing. Break a couple of rules.

I start with a personal rule. Not to blog during office hours. And Iv broken it.
I play some music. Britney spears. Hit me (somebody out of laziness) one more time
Now for information, to strictly abide by law, I understand that, my employer is to pay entertainment tax for letting me listen to music, or so goes a recent TRAI notification. As if he'll know. For that he has to be in his office! (I know that was a little wicked, but. well...)
I sign on to yahoo messenger. The only contact signed on is at work. busy! God whats wrong today.

Let me tell you what Im listening too.
'From this moment on' (Shania Twain with Bryan Adams) not bad considering that I adore both of them.
Now Im checking on all my other favorite singers. (For the record- Elton John, Celine Dion, Shania, Bryan Adams Britney, Ronan Keating) No difference.
I dont check ABBA. Thats the last thing I want to do. Feel bored listening to ABBA. Id rather suicide!
I even check out Paris Hiltons new album. Slut! Hey, Ms. Hilton, if you by any chance happen to read this, Please undersatnd whats wrong.
Britney Spears sings much better and looks infinitely better than you. Dont bother to even try to compete
Hey, by the way, I have the feeling that Ill be one of the very few Indians who got to see the video. Thats unless somebody's loaded it on youtube.
Now Iv found a good song O Holy night by the Lousiana Choir. But it fails to lift my spirits. Or is it me. DAMN IT. It is you

Sorry, Im writing this real time, alternating between choosing songs.

Glory to God. Ive found what Iv been searching. Handel's Messiah. Thers not 1 christian bookstore Iv not searched without being dissapointed in Chennai or Bangalore.
Finally, Im not letting it go. Let me tell you about Handel

George Frederick Handel
We had to study his story in school. Lived in the 17th century(if Im not mistaken)
His father wanted him to be a great doctor. The young boy of 6, a musician.
And to him, dovctors, didnt waste time learning music
Fortunately he had an aunt, who secretly bought him a piano. He stole away to the attic at nights to practise.
When he was 8, his father took him to the church where the King worshipped. At the end of the service, the boy managed to sneak to the organist.
What the king heard next was the most beautiful music ever. He adopted the boy, amidst protests from the father.
What remains is maybe the best piece of music ever written. The Messiah, which contains the Halleluiah Chorus. A song any chorister will die to perform beautifully. Not that its easy. Ive been struggling with it for two weeks.
Sometimes you wonder what about the countless less fortunate children who dont get to display their talent.
Cruel Fate. Maybe the cruelest fate.
But again, whenever real talent has combined with the unfearing will to achieve a dream, it has never gone unnoticed.

Its around 5:30 and I guess Ill pack up
Now a new fear, Am I becoming a typical government employee.
Shucks, thats ruined my night also!

Afterword: To cap the evening, this damn thing isnt getting published!

Snippets

2006-09-15T08:54:00.001+05:30

Last week
On the Chennai Mail- Superfast
My ticket booked two months prior to ensure I had the seat of my liking. A side-seat
On the train- my sideseat happens to be the safety exit windows, which renders it impossible to rest my elbow on the sill
I try to open the window.
And believe me- the SAFETY EXIT WONT BUDGE
Yes. the safety exit in S9 of the Chennai mail is not safe.
I complain to the TT. he assures me Theyll look into it at Ernakulam.
Later that night. Sitting on a better seat, which took all my strengths of manipulation, I remind him again.
He just smiles.

Yesterday
Income tax Office, Chennai
A small parking lot with the board "This place is reserved for the physically challenged"
But lo, what would appear to the common man as the obvious parking space is sealed off with chains.
Maybe by physically challenged they meant 'Blind'. They wont see the board anyway.

More when something comes up

My Tribute

2006-09-11T19:35:00.000+05:30

Mr Agassi

Only once have I laboured through the wee hours of the morning to stay awake and watch you play. But then, you didn’t play football for AC Milan.
O Come to think of it, Iv never ever switched on the TV just to check whether you’d won or not. But again, you weren’t your wife Steffi Graf or for that matter, Pete Sampras to command such allegiance from me.
The truth is I never really cared. Atleast, I didn’t till last September, the day you said that maybe youd never play at the Open again, where they say, you loved most to play. Remember that night, in front of a sold out crowd you rallied from two sets down to beat James Blake. Poor chap, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Not one person outside his his own box cheering his heroics. That too in his own country. But then, he should’ve known what he was up against. The last remnant of, arguably, the greatest era in tennis.
I remember that week still. Three five setters in four days. Each of them as physically taxing as the previous one. Each against the hardest hitters in tennis, all atleast ten years younger than you.
And I still remember that Sunday, 52 sundays before yesterday. When after those gruelling battles, you came to the last frontier. Roger Federer. Of course, every athlete would want to sign off in style. Achieving what gets crudely dismissed as the impossible. And what better way to show that than beat the master. I think that’s when the admiration started.
When I was young, too young that in my fantasies, only bad boys wore earrings, only bad boys married film stars, only bad boys pulled up tee shirts to display their sneakers and only bad boys beat Pete Sampras, you were the ultimate bad boy of sport.
Disgust turned to hatred when you beat Pete to titles quite often. Hatred turned to sadistic mirth when you ruined your own career by simply being ‘yourself’ and slipped to way down in the rankings, much deeper than I would have ever prayed for. (And I used to pray for my stars, and for you, though for different fortunes)
I think the first wharf of approval came when you won the French open, cementing your place in history. I started supporting you after the dream final of 2002. The last Agassi Sampras clash (not least because on that day, you lost, and Sampras was lost ever since)
But last year was the best of Agassi.
Agassi the teacher. Agassi the inspirer. Who proved that nothing in life is impossible, not even getting Roger Federer to miss the sidelines, if pursued with passion.
That was the best lesson Id learnt in a year. And one lesson Ill never forget.
Die another day!
Maybe you’re too old. Maybe everybody’s written you off. Maybe the mountain in front of you looms larger than life size mountains. But none of these decide your fate.
That you don’t deserve to die today. Maybe tomorrow you wont be there. But that’s only tomorrow!
You faltered on that day. But I dont have any regrets. Atleast you fought gallantly. You lost like a Man. On your feet. Not like most of the other finals we get to watch these days(including yesterday). In any case you hadn’t much to prove. At the end of maybe, one of the longest careers in tennis(Lets forget Navratilova for a moment)
A career in which you changed from the brash teenage icon, to the mature adult we have today.
You’re still not my favourite sportstar. I still wont spend the rest of my life defending every slight somebody makes against you.
But one thing is sure, you’ve inspired me like few other living people have
And that’s my tribute.

An accidental self-discovery

2006-08-31T08:33:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I came across two non-news articles in two different papers about the mathematician who declined the Fields Medal, the maths equivalent of the Nobel's. Well, for sometime now weve seen authors declining awards. It became a serious issue in India and particularly in Kerala, when a lot of the newspapers started advising the govt. to collect a list of non-aspirants to each award. Mostly it is seen as a protest against the award donor. Like in the case of the Chinese author who was selected for the Literature Nobel.

Grigory Perelman's non acceptance of the award was not pollitically motivated. For him the reward was simply the pleasure of having solved a conundrum that had puzzled mathematicians all over for over a century, the Poincare Conjecture. It is said he was obsessed with solving the conjecture, but once he proved it, he didnt even mention it. In fact, it became a problem when others could not get accustomed to the fact that it was no longer a conjecture.

He calls it purity of mind. One newspaper reports a colleague explaining "To do great work, you have to have a pure mind. You can think only of mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. Accepting prizes is showing human weakness. An ideal scientist does science and does not care about anything else".

When it comes to achieving something great, something no man has ever done, it takes commitment. Everybody knows that. It also takes something few others have, passion for the object of your discovery.

This reminds me of the Alchemist in Paulo Coehlo's book by that name. The teqnique of transforming lead into gold is as easy as any other formula that it could be written on a small piece of papyrus. It was this small formula which was expanded to the countless volumes of books that the aspiring (and must i say, unsuccessfull) goldsmiths wrote. They never learnt to turn lead to gold. And all these formulas were left to posterity to expand even further. The Alchemist tells Santiago why the hordes of genius' werent able to get there even with the collective knowledge of centuries of human thought.

Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter's headmaster echoes the idea(incidentally, both of them are talking about the same stone and the elixir of life). The clue to immortality is meant to be unvieled only for the worthy. It is only for them that strive for something only for the sake of it.

For whom passion was for science, not for his own immortality.
Iv always felt that when it is passion that takes you somewhere, the pursuit is ennobled by that very fact. Then you wouldnt care about the pains or rewards, you are oblivious to the acclaim it carries.

But there, another voice challenges me. It asks me, "can you really do something and turn your back to the fame it brings?"

Sorry, I cant. I hate to admit it. But I must. I simply cant.

I cant. Thats not to mean that everybody is crazy after fame. Ive known people who'd rather live in the shadows. and pitied them too.
But Id rather be known for my hard work. Think about the sacrifices. what about the perseverence? Dont I have a right to be rewarded for it. Forget monetarily. But fame. Can you do without it?

Again, my mind reminds me, but that attitude's not going to get you above the ordinarily great. I retort, how can I change myself? I cant. Change myself. Coz, thats what I am. and I cant help being what I am.

So.

No point pretending this small revelation I just had never was. But again I think, Thats how God made me. And I was always happy the way I was. Maybe my destiny is not to solve the accounting equivalent of the poincare.
Hey I got it. My destiny. Is just to shine. With this little lamp of mine. Maybe He wants me just to live my life so that somebody else (Theres the other voice correcting me, "It has to be everybody, not just somebody else") can be happier.
And smile. Always.

Im trying, Lord. For You.

Correction, for me, and also, for You

Pensive gazing- of a different kind

2006-08-25T08:32:00.009+05:30

Remember what happens when Harry Potter finds himself in the Headmasters room and cant resist that muggish curiosity to do exactly what he shouldnt have done. Sneak into somebody else's history. Even better, imagine how wierd it was to come face to face with ones own history, where they play with the time turner. Yeah its wierd, very wierd. Even when your past was not that dark or the secrets being revealed are more of the nature of embarrassing for the less already- embarrassed-to- the-hilt .
Going throught he corridors of your memory is pleasant. Somehow, we tend to reserve the best for such reviere's. But when it is forced upon you, like a testimony of an old classmate, who remembers things that happened in a classroom, which has almost faded from memory, its an ordeal, unless youre OK with being laughed at. The following is a such a revelation, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"You were this really dreamy kid even then! (I sat next to you in the front bench) I think Mrs. Abraham put you and me there becuase she though that since I was OK at Hindi, I would help you pay more attention in class.
But you would be in your own world, especially in HIndi class, and I used to usually pay attention and wonder why this kid next to me was so spaced out...and it used to be pretty traumatic when Mrs. Abraham pulled YOUR ears in class, because I've always got all jittery when there was any kind of violence around me or to me. She used to get really wild with you and shout at you, and whenh you still looked so spaced out she'd just lose it and pull your ears and go something like..aaa nnow now now ABRAHAM!! And I used to think Oh GOD!!! can u please make this kid just listen in class, why is it so difficult!!
I remember we were very small in the fourth, and Mrs. Abraham looked huge. She'd stand right in front of our desk and keep talking/teaching so that when you looked up, you looked right up into her nose holes which were shaped exactly like two kidney beans and i used to sit there and think how her right nostril is bigger than her left. And if, when I grew up, would it happen to me too, and how my nostrils might look if i could see them from underneath. Mercifully i dont remember her having a cold at that time becuase that would have been quite a sight if you had to stare up into her nostrils for 45 mins everyday!!"

A faster way to travel (In India)

2006-08-24T09:17:00.000+05:30

When youv been staying in one place for quite some time, 4 months in my case, you get accustomed to pretending that you have unravelled all the mysteries which the place has to offer and you cant help not being constantly on the lookout for your surroundings to spring a surprise at you at every corner. After all, you try to go to a new place every sunday, and you went to an old spot last sunday only because you couldnt think of a new place to go.
So it was that wide eyed me that displayed itself on my imaginery mirror throughout my first journey aboard Chennais metro rail. What surprised me was not just that there existed such a system of commutation somewhere in India, but that every thing in it was novel to a self-proclaimed know-all like me.
To start with, I would never have believed that there exists such an organised arrangement to travel anywhere in India. Orgainised? Yeah, so what if the trains are running 17 and a ahalf hours late, as long as theres one every five minutes.
Ive never seen the front of a queue disappearing so fast, only to get replenished even faster. They literally throw the tickets at you. As if anyone cares, much less complains, when it is a question of catching a train already at the platform.
Next. okay, this may be due to the inelasticity of my memory, but the trains do look big. Dumb me. they run on broad guage. thats why. sorry about that!
But it is also spacious. theres enough room for me to walk about. Though again, thats subjective. Me walking about is an activity which ceases only with me sitting down, or even better lying down. Ever heard of someone walking around while taking a bath. God, I wonder when i will learn to stand up straight. Or should I join the military. And if I do, will they have to change their procedures?
There are these rings hung from the cieling that make you want to swing.
For the first time Im not complaining having to stand (not stand though per se). The journeys fun, atleast the first time.
If the queues were fast, the trains are faster. Granted, all trains are fast, and I cant compare there. But I never knew the hour I took to travel accross the city every weekend could heve been only 15 minutes.
Long live the rail raods of India. O! come to think of it. Who's our minister for railways? Hes known as the wisest man in India. Now the wisest students in India are going to listen to him. My views on Laloo taking classes at IIM-A and why I dont think he is not as bad as we make him out to be, later.

Independence woes

2006-08-14T08:23:00.000+05:30

Ever wondered why India celebrates its Independence on the 15th of August every year, and not on any other day? Especially considering that Pakistan celebrates it on the 14th. There’s an account in the very famous book 'Freedom at Midnight' (Its a book I would really recommend for reading, though it must be remembered that no book which has only one persons views can be taken to be an authority, granted that memoirs are written to indemnify from the mistakes of the past)
Once the date was publicised, a soothsayer came to Lord Mountbatten and warned that there could be no day more inauspicious to mark the future of a country. He said that the day would see a bloodbath due to communal riots. The last viceroy of India laughed it away. He was going to give a multitude what they were clamouring for since god knows when. He could not believe there could be another side to the story. After all, who would want to listen to a doomsayer.He had handpicked the date because it was a lucky day for him. Some years ago, he had won an important battle in Japan on this day, in recognition of which he was made a Lord.
He later regretted his oversight. He had momentarily lost sight of the fact that India was still the place you could find the 20000 varieties of cheese, as one of his former prime ministers did observe. That this was a country that was to embark on an experiment never tried in history. The experiment of eaters of 20000 varieties of cheese having a few (who inevitably ate the same variety) deciding which was the national variety. The day was indeed a blood wash. And the man who orchestrated the whole independence movement with a methodology hitherto unknown to the world wasn’t sitting in parliament at midnight that day to cheer what was remaining of the nation. The Father of our nation rather chose to spend his day at the eastern border, collecting the ruins of the great dream he had lived to see. Telling what had become a madhouse that it was so that we could live as brothers in freedom that so many people gave there lives, not for us to lose it for some make believe reasons which, as always, rarely make sense. In Punjab and Bengal, people were celebrating, not on the sight of the tricolour, but seeing the red pouring out of their slaughter. Hindus killing muslims who chose not to leave the country of their birth, and sikhs killing everybody.
While Nehru was reminding our forefathers of the tryst the new nation had with destiny, there was the lot rewriting the destiny of who they christened as foes. It hasn’t really changed, has it?
So that brings me to my question, at what price our freedom?
60 years. And what have we achieved along. Our poor are still poor. Our polliticians are infinitely corrupt. And we would have been better off without the set of leaders that stain the face of parliament, the same hall in which Nehru declared our destiny.
There is just one question we can ask ourselves today. Do we value our freedom? And if we do, what are we doing with it? No dont ask that question to those criminals who wear khadi. ask you and we. Because, after all, India is you and me.I received a text message yesterday. Lets celebrate the foolishness of the stupid people who gave their lives thinking we deserved freedom.
Forbid that the tomorrow of India say that aloud

The deafening clinking of silence

2006-08-02T20:18:00.000+05:30

What do you do when youre done with a lifetime of making money. Try making some more. So what do you do. Take a pen and start writing how you made money, or rather how you couldnt. Even worse, why or because of who you couldnt!
And then the controversies. Make sure you put in something that will make poeple talk. Talk in parliament, in the press, everywhere other than on a date. Make sure it was an issue forgotten only because of lack of avenues for speculation. Fuel it with a pinch of imagination. So what if you cant verify every fact. After all, youve lost the previlege of being privy to secrets.
I find the papers very educating these days, now that I catch on to every word.
Two books that came out last week have been shrouded in controversy. Jaswant Singh, former Foreign Minister(and a good one at that), former Finance minister et all. His book started what will be remembered as the great mole hunt in Indian pollitics.
In a way my heart goes out to him. Poor guy. Nothing much to do. For all the pollitical instability, the BJP still seems lost. So he decided to do something different. And maybe attain pollitical immortality on the way.
Well, deep inside, I feel that he did sniff a mole. But then, nobodys (atleast nobody whos read all those hyper exagerated novels) pretending there are no spies in diplomacy. Whether Jaswant had proof is another question. So should he have gurgled it all out now. Now, when he cannot and is not going to do anything about it.

John Wright spent some excruciating summers in India, doing the hottest and hitherto regarded as the most thankless job in India. He slugged it out, bearing the slurs in the dressing room and the ignorance of the esteemed selection. Finally he gave up the ghost and left. Months later he comes out with his book 'Indian summers' which among other things criticises the selection policy and has a small paragraph about Dravids decision to declare, denying Sachin the unique distinction of being the first batsman in the world to score back to back double centuries. Again, did he need to? The selection policy is no news. Everyone who is not a selector has been saying the same thing all along. Then again, you bear the frustrations all the way because you are bound by a code of conduct, explicit, in Wright's case, that you need to resort to something like this to let the world know your side of the story.
But do you need to resort to sensationalism to sell (OK, accept it, thats the only thing that sells). There was a joke going around in America some years ago. "Hillary Cinton's book sold 8m copies. Bill's sold 16. Well, atleast its got some sex in it". After all these are the books that go down in history as famous.
And come to think of it, thats 24 m copies for not remembering anything for 8 years. After all its whats left unsaid that crystalises in these auto's. So do polliticians have the liberty of shutting up saying "Ill 'tell' you so".
Big men. Big ideas. Big money.

Errata. The War... that never was

2006-08-01T09:14:00.000+05:30

If you still are wondering what the lines in the blog below mean, youre not alone. I only remember putting a post which read like english there. In any case, after considerable searching through the recycle bin, Iv been able to come up with something that atleast resembles the original post. So read on...

Last Sunday even I became aware of the ongoing war. During prayer at church. Well, it came as a rather rude shock. A war? Without me hearing of it? Me, who used to be considered as a quiz buff or whatever else you call someone who religiously attends every quiz around.

Well thinking of it, these days my reading of the paper never went beyond the sports page, and mind you, I start from the back. So, hurt, with that stupid feeling that rants in the head saying you didn’t even know about the most read thing in the papers (of course, Zidane’s head war is now a thing of the past), I decided to get as wise as I could about the war.

And I must say, this was the best week to start on such an endeavour. OK, accept it, any week in which Mr. Bush gets the attention of the world press is a funny week. But this time he had a lot of us starters confused. (more confused than him?) For now, what the papers chastely called as the “four letter word” did not essentially have to begin with ‘f’. Well, that’s an achievement, even for the president of the US. And he didn’t stop there. The next day, he was found rubbing the shoulders of the only female who was invited to his meeting. My, what a week for the press. So, with the comic effects from Jay Leno and the analysis from the most respected political authors today, I learn that Bush is not only a war monger (a dumb one, at that), a stubbornist, pretending he is saving the world in (not even from) the 3rd world war as well as a rewriter of history. He has them Americans believe they were justified in Iraq on the evidence of two 1980’s chemical trucks found recently.

Back home there was even more confusion over the sanity of having a nuclear deal with the hegemony of armaments, now that the US senate has approved of the deal. After all they wouldn’t say yes unless the dice were heavily loaded in favour of them. Hey, when are our politicians going to start thinking on their own two feet? Why doesn’t our parliament take pains to dissect every clause and find out its implications for itself? Of course, they wouldn’t get time to walk out, but still. Arundhati Roy was conspicuous by her silence. After all, she didn’t want India to have weapons in the first place. And I, totally ignorant of the intricacies of reactors and how they lead to bombs, refrained from taking sides.

But I must remind you that some time ago, in 1991, they put a man in the dock accused of selling everything India to the world. But now, they’ve made him Prime Minister.

In diplomacy, I guess, its difficult to make decisions that make sense

A war I didnt know of

2006-07-29T15:13:00.000+05:30

Last Sunday even I became aware of the ongoing war. Well, now you cant say I spend 2 hrs at church for nothing, can you? Nevertheless, it came as a rather rude shock. A war? Without me hearing of it? Me, who used to be considered as a quiz buff or whatever else it is you call someone who religiously attends every quiz around.

Well thinking of it, these days my reading of the paper never went beyond the sports page, and mind you, I start from the back. So, hurt, with that stupid feeling that rants in the head saying you didn’t even know about the most read thing in the papers (of course Zidane’s head war is now a thing of the past), I decided to get as wise as I could about the war.

And I must say, this was the best week to start on such an endeavour. OK, accept it, any week in which Mr. Bush gets the attention of the world press is a funny week. But this time he had a lot of us starters confused. (more confused than him?) For now, what the papers so chastely called as “the four letter word” did not essentially have to begin with an ‘f’. Well, that’s an achievement, even for the president of the US of A. And he didn’t stop there. The next day, he was found rubbing the shoulders of the only female who was invited to the meeting. My, what a week for the press. The Germans will think twice before electing a woman as chancellor next time. So, with the comic effects from Jay Leno and the analysis from the most respected political authors today, I learn that Bush is not only a war monger (a dumb one, at that), but also a rewriter of history (literally, he has the Americans believe that they went to Iraq for Weapons of Mass destruction, just because they uncovered two 80’s chemical trucks.)

Back home, there was much more to ponder about. It seems that the nuke deal is the biggest trap we’re all are falling into, considering that the Senate has approved with an overwhelming majority. After all, they wouldn’t approve something unless the dice was heavily loaded in favour of them. God, when are our diplomats going to start thinking on their own two feet. Arundhati Roy was conspicuous by her silence. After her opposition to the nuclear tests. Well, atleast I can plead ignorance on the intricacies of the functioning’s of thermal reactors without having to take sides.

Well, only one thing comes to my mind. In 1991, the doctor was cursed even more. And now? They’ve made him Prime Minister.

In politics, its difficult to take policy decisions that make sense.

Sweetheart, your back

2006-07-22T19:11:00.000+05:30

Ho@##@.
Relieved . That they returned my other half . And honey, youre just as lovely as you were when they took you away. Well, u cant help it, But when was the Govt known to do something which justified both urgency as well as common sense. And why the hell do they have that hopelessly incompetent Shivraj Patil there? When almost everyone had decried his acceptability long while ago. Or is Mrs. G really deaf. She anyway seems to hear only herself.
So thats an incompetent bugger trying to protect our great country from terrorists. And what does he do? Remember Bush in Farenheit 9/11. He just sat there moving his jaws. Pretending to continue reading the story to some school kids. As though there wasnt anything else bothering him!!. And then Mr. Patil, he puts on his golf shoes, and does the most wierd thing imaginable (and must I say the easiest).
For you, Ill do this, Im not voting next time either. After all, the great Indian democracy cant throw up someone who can atleast protect it from bloodshed. Im growing sick of even talking about it.
When are these old men going to comprehend that well things have to be done at times. And if not them, who else. Or is power only about the perks it brings you.
Well anyway, you're back. and thats all I carre about.
just thought about the Ronan Keating song 'If tomorrow never comes'

Now What?

2006-07-13T19:40:00.000+05:30

Some years ago, well, not that long ago, but when Centre court at Wimbledon had not yet been mystified by a sorcerer who would later be their most familiar guest and known as Roger Federer, the King of grass, Pete Sampras was asked, “Now what?”. More than 11 Gran Slams in an era where competition was taken for granted, and proving himself the genteel surgeon on grass, that would be a question he would have prepared himself for. The reply was philosophical. “When you have reached the top of a mountain, what can you do but descend”.

Years later, now, well into retirement, when his prematurely ageing legs are almost sure to fail him, he might be realising that had he lingered a while more, he would have spotted a young Swiss slowly trudging up another mountain, far steeper and higher than his.

Roger Federer still hasn’t reached the summit of Mt. Impossible. That is the stuff of dreams. But he’s a long way up there, and more importantly, he’s on the right mountain.

Maybe, you may say, Roger doesn’t have a worthy rival. No Agassi, no Ivanisevic, no Becker or Lendl. But then, wait awhile, his so-called competitors are in no way lesser to those in the past decade. We’ve seen Roddick and Hewitt play tournaments of enviable tennis. And then they come to the last frontier.

The last four Gran Slam finals Federer played, you couldn’t say he wasn’t challenged. No, they, Agassi, Baghdatis and Nadal proved that the man was mortal, and not carved out of a Greek legend, as was rumoured to be. They pinned him to the baseline, made him sweat, forced out marginal errors and tweaked out a set from the master. And then, when the world started to relax, satisfied that at last, they could now watch a match along with elegance rather than simply elegance on the last Sunday of each Gran Slam, there was the angel turned into a ruthless killer, who killed, because he had nothing better to do, and ruthlessly, because well, for all you know, he was feeling hungry. Agassi, 6-1 in the 4th, Baghdatis, 6-2 in the 3rd, and Nadal, 6-3 in the 4th. And the dream final melted down to a no match at all.

Now he struts around Centre Court. Well, why shouldn’t he? After all he bothers to religiously take the long trip there every year only because they wouldn’t deliver the trophy to his home, wherever that is.
He wears a blazer while walking on to Court. And nobody complains. Mike Bryan, king of a parallel world explains why. “One, because he’s Roger, and two, because he’s such a humble champion”. Humility. A king’s rarest quality. And that’s what he is. King, on court. And simply Roger off it.

So now, back to the question, Now what? Well, Sampras had 8 Slams when he was 24, and we know how long he took, and how many obituaries the rest of us wrote before he reached his fourteenth. That Federer will meet the same fate seems to be a distant possibility, but then, sport continually astonishes us with what everybody calls as reality and who knows what his stars, that is, if he has stars dictating terms, hold. And we have hope in the form of a young Spaniard named Rafael Nadal. One rivalry Federer’s not particularly relished, at least till Sunday. Two finals on the trot. A win each. Each winning on their most favourite and losing on their least favourite surfaces. Now we can wait and watch them negotiate on turf that promises to be neutral, the hard courts of the US and Australia. Hopefully, next year, by the time they lock horns on clay, we will still not have arrived at a clear answer. Maybe, though God forbid, he would simply have gotten bored and started trying out squash, to go along with some modelling. Or maybe, the Mallorcan would have run away with this rivalry.

If none of these happens, the AELTA will do well to retire the prize money for the Wimbledon champion, and engage some of the best Japanese scientists to create a machine that will do to a tennis ball what a Rolex watch does to time, and mind you, no less; Then, they can consider playing two tournaments, one for the runners up trophy, to be awarded to the best of the 127 remaining, and then one for the champion, Roger Federer, who will match his wits with the machine.

And I think I already know who’ll win!

Guys, this is the best Ive ever written in my life. Sadly noone wants to see it. So yr lucky. . OK I was warned getting something published is even difficult than this

Shashi Tharoor, and some patriotism

2006-06-23T19:45:00.000+05:30

Shashi Tharoor. Hey he already sounds like hes the Secretary General. So diplomatic and all that.
"The world would benefit from a wider array of choices" and "Pakistan also has a right to field their candidate"
Bullshit! Thats what. Why does Pakistan have to be so jealous about such a big neighbour making it big. We didnt clamour when they got their guy to head the ICC. And the arguments they put forth. Even the BJPs explanation of Sonia Gandhi's sacrifice two years ago wasnt as pathetic. Ho, politics is funny, diplomacy wierd. But often it gets tiring..
We know that. They know that. They know that we know that. And we know that they know that we know that. But still the game goes on. For the minnows, they need to prove that they are around. For the stalwarts, its to prove theyre still around. Whatever, it never seems to rise above 'that'. And we, fools, hang on to their every word, skip coffee to be the first to read the print version of yesterday nights news.

Now Shashi Tharoor. He's sensible. "Theres no point in visualising a UN which antagonises the US". And what could be more true. He's got guts. To say the same in a country where some commie dictates what the Prime Minister can say and cannot. Yeah, hes not another run of the mill.

And what about India? Do you think we needed this elevated position? Yes , we do. And Arundhathi Roy, Im sorry, but Id rather India be seen as a (nuclear) power. If not for anything else, simply for pride. Maybe just like Id like to see us win the world cup (no, not in football- because that would mean four years of waiting wasted). But its a feeling that could do a lot.
It is Americas national pride thats helped them set and reach such high standards of living. That Hum kissi se kum nahin! And the only way to emulate that is by acting like we are the best. Yeah we deserve a place in the Security Council. Atleast we dont spend time biting the corners of a Made in America towel like the guys currently out there do.

Proud, Arrogant, Loser, whatever the hell you feel like calling me.

2006-06-16T19:47:00.000+05:30

Do I need to be a professional, much less a CA? Well, do I really need to be a white collared professional who gets others to do work that he himself hates? (Id better qualify that. In India, here from seing things, its all about doing somebody else's dirty accounting and auditing when youre still a student and after youve passed that stage, get some other unfortunate student to do yours. Maybe its not that obscene, but my explanation's pretty close. And about hating the work, I know CAs who claim they hate being one. Sadly I dont see them doing anything about it.)
Anyway, back. Must I? Do I really have to have some three lettered word after my name on my visiting card? I can promise you BCom wouldnt find a place there. Im too proud for that. Do I need to have that air conditioned room in my own office where Im boss to be taken seriously in the social circle. God. Do I care?
Well, the answers negative. If my happiness will be dictated by a fear of what society will take me for(and while were at that, a society that doesnt really care!), then somethings seriously wrong. After all its my life. One small life were all trying so hard to prolong as far as possible. Why the heck should I spend my time doing something I detest? Only thing is Im too young to foresee how miserable my future may become if the plan doesnt hit base. Ok its a risk. and a risk Im more than willing to take. So Im a freak, lost in fantasy. but Id rather be that way. And after all, the only way you can judge me will be at the end of days.
Yes, we've heard too much about dreams. from the mouths and pens of people who havent really risked or put everything at stake to make that leap in the dark. Yeah its nice to read about inspirational people. And its marvelous to listen to people who say these stories. But thats all it is as long as were not willing to risk everything for that which we truly want. And I wasnt satisfied with the way I was till last week.

And I dont wanna be alone

2006-06-06T19:09:00.000+05:30

You get used to being alone. But break that once, and youve gotta get used all over again. Says Bach in his book Illusions. (Now thats a book you could read, if you already havent, though I cant assure you you can retain all of your sanity)
That why do I, how is it that I always end up alone feeling. No matter how many friends or relatives we have, or how close they are to us, there is an aloneness in all of us. Well, were not neccessarily alone. But we feel alone. That no one else thinks the way I do. No one sees things or has the same attitude towards things as I.
It could be that everybody sees things the way I do. But I dont feel it. So again Im alone.
Or it could be the child in us. Never satisfied with what we have. And, I believe, we dont have a damned right to be.
Again, it could be because of the uniqueness in each of ourselves. We are all unique. Just like everybody else. What we expect from relationships. And this is what sets us in the quest for more. The quest for someone just like us. The perfect friend. The perfect friend does not have to be perfect, only perfect for you.
Whether this pursuit will turn out to be futile, ask me after, maybe, well i dont know how you can ask me after I die, but, if you wanna know, try.
But whatever, being alone is disgusting. One of the few (and there seems to be many instances of those few) when you wish you were back at home.
And I dont wanna be alone

The song 'Alone' by the Beegees was a favorite of mine. This post has glimpses of its meaning as explained by Barry Gibb.

Back to insanity

2006-05-16T19:32:00.000+05:30

Well, I tonsured my head yesterday (and while were at it, I must tell you I dont look as bad as I expected myself to look when I did it). Of course theres the question, why did you do it if you didnt expect it to look good. Well, to be honest I dont know. But I have some theories. First of all it was revenge. Revenge against the estimated 6billion+ in the world for keeping my mailbox empty for over a week.
Hey, by the way, just for your information, Im on the lookout for friends. Friends who are not too busy for me. I seriously dont understand how someone whos 21 can be busy. I try to pack my day with as much of work as possible, and I still seem to have all the time in the world.
Theory number 2, and by far the more authentic, or rather sensible, is a break. Yeah a break from sanity. Do things simply for the sake of doing it. Well, I think thats why the chicken crossed the road too. Simply. And why not? Without thinking of the consequences. Reckless abandonment. Childlike. Well thats how I used to do things sometime ago. But then, I guess, even I grew up. Started working. Hated my job. Hated everyone who encouraged so far. Hated my friends you know why. Lived in self inflicted misery. Pitied myself god knows how many times.
Then somehow, I guess, when God got tired of the whole thing, He decided to put some sense. in. Thats when I realised that I had to take control. Forget the past. Rather, dont let it dictate your present. Rather move on. And most importantly start relishing the job youre stuck with for 3 years(God!). And thats exactly why I decided to shave my head. Do something you wouldnt normally do. Do something for the sake of doing it, even if it makes you seem crazy. After all, its all a mental thing. And you know what, its worked.
After so long, I did an honest days work at office.
So this is what I suggest. forget about appearing sane. Live your life your way. And DONT CARE.
This world is too silly to accept it, but it doesnt pay to be straight necked all the time!!!!!

Where democracy makes sense.

2006-05-10T14:10:00.000+05:30

Well, by now you must all have exercised your right to change the future of whichever part of India you belong to. Yeah, by voting. By exercising the right bestowed upon us by our fathers who declared India as a democratic country. Where each and every one of us gets to decide who will take care of our Motherland. And govern the country the way we would have done, if it was us. Yes, and we can throw out every criminal, anti-social and traitor.

Do I sound sarcastic? I beg your pardon.
I used to be a patriot!

Hey you who live in a fools paradise, proud that India is a democracy. When are you going to realize that India cannot be changed by politics? Why? Because THEY DON’T GIVE A DAMN, And accept it, you can do nothing about it. All you’re going to do is throw out the tyranny of an incumbent. And the very same you is going to get him back in. Albeit after 5 years. You don’t have a choice!

Oh, now we have the Lok Paritrana. Big Deal.
We need to Act, you say. Yes act. Take action.

OK But let me ask you this question.
Does it really make a difference? to us, lets say, a middle class Indian. No it doesn’t Chennai will always have the roads it has, Mr. Narayana Murthy will always have time to read the paper on his way to office as long as he is in Bangalore and my sweet sister will get a holiday every month on account of strike.

Where we need voices are places like the Narmada, where Indians, and I repeat, Indians are rendered homeless. But we don’t care! Those who do are either branded as publicity mongers(as though being known as the best actor or the best writer in the country isn’t enough) , or are put in jail(Hush, The Supreme court can never err)

Yes, we have a responsibility. But that is not to play the dirty game, which doesn’t make any difference to India. We have enough politicians to do that. And more.
.
We must Act. Yes, ACT. Like Shah Rukh Khan.
Lets see, this is a challenge. Put on a new face. The face of India’s youth. And tell yourself, for starts, I will keep my country clean. By fighting. By refusing to accept the vulgar disparities of life, the corruption and the unspeakable violence around us. Because we can make a change. India is waiting. Yes you can make a change. By ACTING. By responding to the needs of a society who is waiting. Not by immersing ourselves in a game no ones going to win.
Don’t let there be the hole tomorrow

I used to be a patriot.
Maybe I still am!

Now this was meant to be a reply to a mail I recieved asking to vote for the new look youth party, Lok Paritrana

The unessential me

2006-05-10T13:55:00.000+05:30

Why you need to read this? Simple. Bcoz I wrote it. And its about me. And Im unique. Of course just like everybody else!
So read on .
And you don’t need my permision to answer these questions. Well, Don’t tell anybody, but the questions are not mine either. But post it as a comment!!
1. First name? Abraham. Officially. The calling is usually Ebbrew or Avaran
2. Were you named after anyone? Of course. Well, don’t ask me which Abraham
3. When did you last cry? Don’t remember. Im not claiming I never cry!
4. Do you like your handwriting? Yes. Though I am the only one who can read it
5. Do you like work? Yes. No, not overwork. Rather work for fun
6. Kids? You mean parents?
7. If you were another person would you be friends with you? Yes, As long as I, the real me, will be friends with the other person I am
8. Do you have a journal? Nope, well, actually that’s why I started this
9. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Not on purpose. That’s unless you are decidedly stupid
10. Do you still have your tonsils? To be honest, I thought it was supposed to be there for life.
11. Would you bungee jump?. No. Heights bring out suicidal tendencies in me. Now that’s a revelation
12. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Yes. That’s unless Im not already asleep
14. Do you think you are strong?. People see me as strong, I mean emotionally, but Im not sure. Again that’s a revelation. And physically, dont even ask me!!
15. What is your favorite ice cream? God. I must get back to eating ice creams
16. Shoe size? 10
17. Red or pink? Red
18. What is the least favorite thing about yourself? Being a miser. Well, when I try to change, Reality plays spoilsport!!!
19. Who do you miss the most?. My sister
20. Do you want everyone to do this list as well? Itd be damn good.
21. What color pants and shoes are you wearing? Black pants. No shoes
22. Last thing you ate? Should be my lunch. Unless of course, a fingernail found its way in.
23. What are you listening to right now?. Nothing. Well, I can hear the fan turning. And a couple of kids screaming in the park
24. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Blue. or is it black? I like black
25. Favorite smell? The rain, after a hot dry summer
26. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Mahesh, my friend. Yesterday. No one called today. Or is my cell on silent?
27. First thing you notice about people? Whether they’re smiling
28. Do you like the person whose blog you got this from? Yeah, he appears cool
29. What do you miss the most? Well, a real friend. Its like this. Im the kind who makes friends with every other person I meet. But that’s it.
30. Favorite sport? Football. Soccer if you’re an american
31. Hair color?. Black should answer your question. But for your info. Its pretty much gray. And hey im only 21
32. Eye color? Blackish brown. Is that known by any other name?
33. Do you wear contacts? Nope. As if the soda lenses im wearing isnt enough
34. Favorite food? I eat almost anything that that doesn’t bite back.
35. Scary movies or happy ending?. Happy endings.. well I wouldn’t watch a scary movie even if it had a happy ending
36. Last movie you watched?. Erin Brokovich, on TV 2 mths ago
37. What color shirt are you wearing? Theres red, green, and yellow, in small qtties. The prominent colour I cant identify. It’s a bluish, greenish, grey.
38. Summer or winter? Summer
39. Hugs or kisses? Both
40. When do you miss your (a)partner the most? When I read the paper, yeah itd be fun. Especially those tabloids.
41. Who is most likely to respond? Mmm…. Priyam. Yeah she does these things. That’s if she gets to see this
42. Least likely to respond? Lots of people. Mom, for one. And shell never get to see this
.43. What books are you reading? A christian book. ‘The strong name’
44. What's on your mouse pad? My mouse , the wire connecting it, my right hand, and some air
45. What did you watch last night on TV?. Nothing. But I miss ‘Friends’
46. Favorite sounds?. Thunder!!! And a fooball stadium in Europe
47. Rolling Stones or Beatles? Definitely the Beatles
48. The furthest you've been from home? Exactly half way across India. Nagpur
49. Do you have a special talent? Yups, lots of. . only thing no one seems to agree. Well, I write. A lot. And I talk
50. When and where were you born? 1984, Bangalore
51. What condition are your hands and feet in? well, im not impaired. its not exactly clean now. My feet because my boss thinks you shouldn’t walk around office in shoes and my hands, because I live in Chennai.
52. Who is your favorite author? Paulo Coehlo, Jeffrey Archer, and Rowling