Turning 40

All those years back in mid-2000s, when I was still learning to deal with living away from my parental home for the first time in my life, while handling all the newfound independence to eat/sleep/drink/roam/laze whenever or however I wanted to and generally learning how to live by myself, I got bitten by the blogging bug. Blogging was the exciting thing back then, and the new web (or Web 2.0) as it was called then, had this layer of interaction and communication built on top of it that caught the attention of people around the world, young and old, and inspired them to start “creating content” in blogspace, social media (or whatever its avatar was during those days), or even within snarly “discussion” boards where the newly minted web media editors naively believed that they could solicit public feedback on their media and use it to improve their content — little did they know about how unshackled human minds, and thereby human civility, becomes when provided a guise of anonymity. Truly, those discussion boards were the birthing places of first online trolls, and probably also of those epic “most liked” youtube comments.

Anyway, I took upon blogging because I did feel that I could do something with my love for language, literary humor, and talk about the issues of the time plaguing my young mind. I wrote about everything from politics, break-ups, self-commentary, travelogues, nature of art, current affairs, etc. I also had a somewhat decent output, and I did spend a lot of time on crafting my narrative and chiseling my words. For a while, I did FEEL like writer, and even though no one noticed (or even derided) me except a few friends (which was fair because I never tried to publish anything formally in any case), I still felt content about the fact that I could write about something from start to finish, and hopefully make a few good points along the way. This period of self-expression in my life lasted from 2007–2009, which was also a time of emotional and professional upheavals, and so it was advantageous to have a channel to express myself. In the next few years, up until 2014, I also dabbled in Hindi/Urdu and occasional English poetry. This was mostly due to a great appreciation that I have always had for poetry, and thus the desire for imitation, however talentless that might be! OF course, my dwindling article output too contributed to that. Unlike a long time that it took to conceive of, write, and edit an article, poems were a bit easier to write because those just “flowed” and I could also hide behind abstraction without a need to establish the point being made. The wordsmithing involved was no lesser though. Unlike the political/satirical nature of my English articles, the poetry, as can expected, was deeply personal, and it did give me an ability to convey something without conveying it verbatim, and that was a relief.

In the years that followed, I got busier with life and the professional and personal responsibilities and though I never gave up on the dream that I will write again someday, I actually never did, unless you count emails as “write-ups”! To be honest, I generally gave up on writing because I got too busy in pursuits that took less of time and effort and gave a more “instant gratification” of sorts. Also, I realized that the lesser I wrote, the more I thought about things than can be written about. I made numerous idea notes, and spent many a evenings ruminating on what is worth writing about. Expectedly, mental fatigue set in, and nothing materialized beyond a few sentences.

So how am I here now? Well, I turned 40 recently. So how does that connect to writing? Well, I thought this was an opportune occasion to revisit a blog that I wrote when I turned 25. I was pretty proud of that post at the time, and I still am in a way. However, the kind of dramatic language that I used, apparently to humor the reader, and an attempt at wisdom on the journey thus far and the foreboding that I conveyed for the life ahead made me cringe a bit. Well, cringe is a bit of a good thing because if I agree with what my 25-year-old self was thinking about, where is the growth per se? Anyway, one interesting thing that did catch my eye in that post was the concept of dreams of what you want to be in life, and how a distant target makes you put off the planning needed to achieve those dreams. In effect, my 25-year-old self lamented about dreams from my childhood about who I was going to be when I grew up, and when I did “grow up” (read, turned 25), I wasn’t even close to achieving any of many that I had envisioned. Of course, your childhood dreams do get shaped or even replaced based on your circumstances and experiences growing up, and so the place where I had landed at that age in life wasn’t something totally unexpected or even unwanted. However, in this age, at 40, having some of the very same “dreams” (however evolved those may be from the time) as unfulfilled does make me wonder if I really understood what those dreams were and whether I was prepared to put in the work needed to realize those, especially when I had the time, energy and circumstances to do so. Or maybe, having unfulfilled dreams is the key towards desire and the general zest for life? I wonder indeed.

So, what thoughts do I have on this birthday? Same person, who chose to record his thoughts back then and is doing so again now, and thus it does create a narrative about the passage of time and its effects on me, to anyone interested in knowing. Well, for starters, I still have a sense of perspective on the time gone by and the time left, just like I had back in the day. Also, I continue to think that options of who you can be do get narrower as you age, given the constraints on time and the general brain fatigue that starts presenting itself as you age and which can no longer be hidden by all the energy you have as a younger person. But what is truly different at the age of 40 is the sense of helplessness for what lies ahead, and an inevitability of loss. That you are crossing the boundaries of irreversible changes in you body, your perspective and your relationships. There is also a realization that your life will not center around just you anymore. Finally, there is little to no desire for any new relationships in life, because you are too weary of the work it takes to build those and you have seen how easily those are lost — basically keep what you have close to you and put all the “work” into maintaining and cherishing those.

Those the truths.

Well, what are the lessons on the journey so far then? To begin with, the very fact that you’ve had a journey is something to be very proud of. There is gratitude towards that and the chances you’ve been offered because you’ve seen many journeys falter or derail, or even fail to start. Secondly, there is an acknowledgement of memory being a fickle thing and that forgetting details of your everyday misery goes a long way in keeping you sane — sometimes this also breeds a false sense of nostalgia as certain periods of life seem much better than they actually were, but that is a bearable side effect. Lastly, there is a certain sense of relief in financial wellness that you achieve at this juncture in your life, and while it is not guaranteed for everyone, people in all walks of life can attest to the fact that you tend to have more dough at 40 than you had in your 20s.

How about the plans then? In writing this piece, I have overcome almost a decade of writing block, and given how much I have liked doing this, I hope to keep it going. My wit and observation-power may be at a near zero level now, and I would have surely seemed self-absorbed to a fault here, but hopefully I can explore some other facet of my writing in this phase of my life! I hope to inculcate deep-insertion hobbies and quit the whole trying-it-out-before-buying-it attitude towards interests. I also hope that I develop fortitude for the personal experiences I’m going to have in this decade of my life, which will inevitably be completely alien to what I have seen and been through so far.

Au revoir, and let’s see what this fifth decade brings!

Bihar Govt comes clean

(http://ibnlive.in.com/news/forbesganj-firing-still-no-action-by-the-govt/159686-3.html)
Faced with heavy criticism over its silence on the stout defense of a an upcoming starch factory to be built on a highway in Bihar (a first of this kind) by Bihar police from the marauding villagers opposing it, the government has finally announced the state police awards for the heroic acts and selflessness of the policemen involved.
Confirming the development, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi said – “We apologize for the delay in official recognition of the bravery of Bihar Police in the incident. They have not only contained a war unleashed against the nation, but have also set an example in police procedure to be replicated across India.”
The anti-national agitation by the villagers of Forbesganj was a resultant of their senseless opposition to the starch factory that has been commissioned to be built on the connecting road between Bhajanpur and Forbesganj towns. Announcing this unique location proposition in a press conference, the company had attributed the idea to its core team of engineers, who found that “the existing foundation laid down for the road could be leveraged for the factory foundation, thereby leading to sustainable saves”. However, when a reporter present at the conference pointed out that the road in question had been constructed without any attention to frivolities like foundations, he was informed that the road in question was part of the Golden Quadrilateral project of an erstwhile Prime Minister and its integrity was un-debatable, just like the same of the erstwhile Prime Minister. The road anyways had little or no traffic and the people of Forbesganj were hardly ambitious enough to move out of the town (because had they been, they would have already done so), they further reasoned. However, if the villagers still needed to move around, the company promised to build an alternate pathway, but naturally after the factory had been built and a breakeven had been achieved for the business.
Following a quick official sanction to this innovative idea, the company started the construction, following which the villagers of Forbesganj attacked the construction site, heavily armed with lathis and stones. The local police, ever committed to the idea of sanctity of private property, launched a brave defense of the construction site, armed with nothing more than conviction to the cause and a few hundred innocuous bullets. Also, during the incident, a few policemen, paying no heed to their personal safety, proceeded to play a game of football with the head of protester(still attached to the torso), bravely showing to the world what ‘kicking-out-the-protest’ literally meant. Despite being outnumbered by a dangerous creed of outlaws, including a pregnant woman and a 7 year old ‘goonda’ (rightly decreed as one by Forbesganj police about 2 months back as part of the state police drive to identify future hooligans in their childhood itself), the policemen displayed conspicuous courage in containing the mob.
Lallan Singh, a police constable, who single handedly shot a protester in the head from close range and was also the one behind the football symbolism, was awarded Bihar State Police Medal for his ‘indomitable courage in face of seemingly insurmountable odds’. In a chat with us, a visibly buoyed Singh championed the Forbesganj model of policing and vowed to take it in every nook and corner of the country, which is visibly troubled by similar protests against nation building.​

Crossroads Galore: Part 2

What I really found missing in the last post is a character profile of the main player – that would be me – in this tale of asinine stupidity. Your’s truly, as I like to call myself affectionately at the time of debacles, thinks that he is a celebrity traveling in vintage Europe whenever he is traveling in a train in India. Cashless travel is thus a way of life to him. And this cocktail of assumptions becomes even more intoxicating on a day when he has already had quite a rollicking dose of ‘attempted-and-failed’ travel, like on the Tuesday in question. If you get the drift, when I was seeing that new train standing on the promised land of platform number 4, I was cashless. Real, hard cash I mean to denote to be bereft of, apart from the customary couple of hundred’s bills in the wallet. In a strange enthusiasm which clouds your mind when you are panicky and you happen to come across anything that will take you out of the panic state, we(me and the law student cum businessman guy, hereafter referred to as ‘Guy’) boarded the train on platform 4. Of course it helped that the train, Gondwana Express, stopped at both Bhopal and Jabalpur on its way to some obscure destination in Maharashtra, making me and the Guy real lucky people.
Once in, we sprawled on the first available, as-of-now free berths, and, ‘gizmo freaks’ that we were, logged into our laptops, visited irctc.co.in to cancel our ticket in the missed train, and get a new reservation done in the current one. Truly the ambassadors of a new, emergent, & technologically driven India, weren’t we?! Well, almost. E-tickets, unlike the normal ones collected at the ticket counters, can’t be cancelled after a train departs and they can’t be booked after chart preparation of the current train. So, after all the excitement we caused in our fellow passengers, as is caused by any ambassadors of a new, emergent & technologically driven India - identified solely by their laptop usage - we sullenly closed our machines and let out typical system-is-rotten sighs. The public gaze, earlier fixated on us filled with amazement, slowly turned into one filled with sympathy as it became apparent that we were traveling without ticket.
Now traveling without ticket, as you must be aware, isn’t the colossal sin that it used to be. An on-the-spot ticket dispatcher , not a TTE, is present on most of the long distance routes and sells you the tickets at an amount he arrives at by adding up a lot of variables which include a fine amount & the fare based on the distance desired to be traveled. That the train-commuting denizens of this penurious country, who are also its true representatives by the virtue of them being poor, would be quite laboured to pay the hefty amount, is paid scant regard to while arriving at the final figure of payment for the above mentioned transaction. Penury is of course a virtue, and you are obviously subject to state benefits if you happen to be somewhere between a pauper and a BPL(below poverty line), but ignorance and indiscretion are subject to formal state discouragement(as it should be in a society that firmly aims to tread the path of reason), this discouragement showed primarily by the swelled ticket amount. That the nation is in a state of kakistocracy since time immemorial is obviously not subject to such frivolous and opportunist line of reasoning though. Ah, how I tend to digress!
Coming back to the situation, we were then summarily introduced to the ticket dispatcher(TD), who gave us the final amount of our tickets’ cost, which neatly shot off our current cash reserves by a margin of about Rs 700. We then indulged in some frantic and actually romantic efforts to convince our man that we would pay the remaining amount after getting down at our destinations, to obviously no avail. He however pointed out to us the importance of a need of camaraderie & trust amongst fellow passengers, ending his note with a hint to borrow the money from a couple of men sitting on the yonder seat. In a space of 30 odd minutes, we were reduced from a burger-munching, cola-sipping state to beggardom. Well, beg we did, telling the men that we were merely borrowing the amount, with a promise of repayment at Beena station which boasts of an ATM on the platform itself, as informed our wise TD. Beena is the last station before the train’s arrival at Bhopal, which the train reaches at 12:00 AM in the night, with Bhopal being reached by 2:00 AM. The lenders were surprisingly generous with their money, as human compassion won over materialism in what should be a lesson in marketing for prospective borrowers. The tickets were bought, and we settled, once again, for a ‘comfortable’ journey back home.
Meanwhile, I witnessed the following conversation happening between a typically & hopelessly overweight constable(OC) of the GRP and a hapless passenger(HP).
OC: “Sat Sri Akaal Sardaarji!”
HP: “Sat Sri Akaal Saab.”
OC: ”Coming from? Going to?”
HP: ”Coming from Delhi, going to Nagpur.”
OC: “You look like a tough man. What work do you do?”
HP: “Well, I run a small machine workshop.”
OC(sitting down): “Machines! Interesting! What kind of machines Sardaarji?”
HP: “Mostly power related. Generators, inverters, etc.”
OC: “So, they are big?”
HP(flummoxed): “Hain ji?”
OC(extending his arms): “ Big, BIG? Are they large in size?”
HP: “Yes Sir, they definitely are.”
OC: “So it implies that your workshop is also big!”(by now his arms had reached their maximum natural limit. Belly protruding, arms stretched. He was quite a sight)
HP: “Yes Sir. By God’s grace, we somehow manage.”
OC: “Yeah, God’s grace shines on a lucky few. BIG machines, BIG workshop. So obviously you must be earning BIG money as well!”
HP(shifting uncomfortably): “Well, as I said, we manage somehow.”
OC(punching HP in the arm): “C’mon Sardaarji! You can tell me! I’m not going to order a tax raid at your place”(laughed uncontrollably for 2 mins after this)
HP: “Yeah its good, if you wanted to hear that”
OC: “Now Sardaarji, being so rich, won’t you like to help a poor constable of the railway police, who is deployed 24x7 to ensure your safety?”(OC’s expression at this point of time was more pained than that of Somalian children, minus their impoverished bodies, of course)
(HP now looked like a man suddenly enlightened.)
HP: “How much Sirji?”
OC: “Arrey, I just want to have some chai-paani. 100-200, whatever you can dispense with.”
HP quietly took out a Rs 100 bill and handed it over to our enterprising cop, who merrily got up and walked off. And that, folks, is the most bizarre transaction of ‘convenience money’ that I have witnessed over the years. The Guy, simmering with all the anger that his 22 years could muster, with the anger quite conveniently coming up after the cop had left, swore a couple of choicest abuses at him. One other guy lamented the system, not too long after he had bribed the TTE to get a confirmed seat. I, meanwhile, yawned at the spectacle, and dozed off.
We arrived at Beena by midnight, i.e. at the right time. This train, as I mentioned earlier, went to both Bhopal & Jabalpur. At Beena, it divided itself into two parts, with one going to Bhopal & the other one to Jabalpur. The stoppage was supposed to be of 30 minutes. I was jerked awake by the Guy who promptly reminded me to get the borrowed money from the ATM. I, quite drowsily, ambled off the train, leaving my luggage with the Guy, in anticipation that he would wait for me, and thus quite idiotically forgot that in order to proceed for Jabalpur, he had shift to that part of the train which was supposed to go towards the same. So off I went to the ATM, off the Guy went to the other part of the train, and in the ensuing time, apparently, off went my handbag, firmly clutched in the hands of a thief. I became aware of this third movement after coming back after withdrawing the required money and paying up our benefactor.
Now, how does your average Indian reacts to crime & injustice? Iconic ones don the role of a gut wrenching, sweat dripping, muscle flexing role of a fighter. Their deeds are immortalized in cinema, like those of Shankar - played by our very own ‘Gunmaster G9’ - in Gunda( I have always believed that Gunda was based on a true story, with the depicted surrealism always getting linked somewhere with stark realism of its time). The weaklings run away, crying foul. But the average guy? Especially when the crime, theft here, has occurred on a train that is supposed to break into parts which are going elsewhere? Well, one can rake his/her mind to search for that right reaction, not me. Because, ahem, for that to happen, I have to be average. Cutting short the suspense, I, after finding my bag to be absent, imagined that it, for some godforsaken reason – security, perhaps - would have been taken by the Guy, and hence, got out of the train again to search him out in his part of the train. Forever a believer in the inner goodness of man, theft was obviously an out of question proposition to me. Well, find him I did, sans my bag of course. And by the time I reached back to my compartment, or rather the area on the platform which housed my compartment, all I found was fresh air. The train was there, chugging off into the darkness, with its tail light disappearing. The philosophizing part of the preceding post I forcefully clobbered this time.
So, effectively, there went my train number 3 for the journey.
And even that is not all folks. Due to a sheer lack of knowledge of the geography of Madhya Pradesh(this despite spending close to a quarter of a century there), I chose to hop on into the part of Gondwana Express going to Jabalpur with the now-my-great-friend Mr. Guy, in my quest to reach Bhopal, when maps, railway time-tables, and idiots-of-the-first-order(as succinctly put by Dad) know that Beena is only 2 hours of railway time away from Bhopal. This last error in judgement is however outshined by the ones preceding it, and therefore may not come across as too glaring. But the GRP cop ensured that it did; read the epilogue please.
(I reached Jabalpur at 7 in the morning. Guy’s family showed tremendous hospitality in putting up with me for 2 hours and cooking a sumptuous breakfast for me. It took a couple of trains, with a change at Itarsi, to finally reach Bhopal at 5:00 PM on Tuesday a good 46 hours after I had set out on this travesty of a journey. I now wonder how could the term ‘journey’ be ever used as a metaphor in philosophy!)

Epilogue
"Sirji, tell me seriously. You seriously want to file this FIR, or shall I give you the number of a very good psychiatrist? I think your son needs counseling.”

Crossroads Galore - Part 1

Analyze this. Yours truly, while aiming to travel from Delhi to Bhopal, missed 3 trains in 28 hours; took 44 hours to complete a journey that should ideally have taken 10; survived on a couple of sandwiches, equal number of cold drinks & an amazingly inedible Railways 'thaali', coupled with a Good-Samaritan sponsored utthapam during the ordeal; had zero cash for about 11 hours in which he resorted to begging to uplift his economic status; lost(or rather gifted, as suggested by a sarcastic cop of the GRP) luggage that included ‘sheerly worthless’(suggested again by the same cop) items like branded shirts, trousers, joggers and- hold your breath femme fatales(though I wish you actually did)- about 50 photographs of yours truly.

Zoom back to a chilly Monday night on the roads of Delhi. I, with my unparalleled wisdom, thought that 2 hours is enough time to reach Hazrat Nizamuddin station from Noida via Green Park. Now, any Delhite wouldn’t find anything particularly wrong with this assumption, unless he/she knows that this 2 hour window lay in the infamous rush hours of Delhi traffic. Add to this the fact that I had already missed a flight in Delhi owing to the same traffic an year before during the same rush hours, and so, ideally, I should have been wiser, which, as it turned out, is something that should be a life time goal for me. But nevertheless, the journey began smoothly enough with the rickshaw driver crooning classic Kishore Kumar numbers, laced with sudden genitalia describing outbursts at erratic drivers, with the blaring speakers of the vehicle complimenting his, ahem, unique voice, while I enjoyed the night view of Delhi, peeping out of the rickshaw like Tarzan visiting a city for the first time. When the lights whiz by, you don’t exactly get to know the speed, and to make it worse, it was me. Rest is legendary stuff as, after hitting Green Park at 8:40 PM, we(the rickshaw driver & me) still tried to make a dash for H. Nizamuddin, in a bid to outshine Schumi or, lately, Rossi. Which we obviously could not, though it was heartening to note that we were only 10 minutes late, a delay about which I boasted almost pompously about in a later encounter with Dad, about which I would talk, quite naturally, later.
“What touches me most about missing flights and trains is the philosophical angle to it. The disappearing lights of the locomotive signify the adage – “so near, yet so far”, they give you a reality check as to how your cherished goals leave your side even as you watch them go, they also signify the lullaby of life and the ultimate truth that you leave everything behind…….” –
(the intention now is to create a loud, jarring moment here which denotes that my phone rang, but it was on vibrate mode, and the ‘jarring moment’ is thus better understood than expressed, so…anyways, lets just leave this crap)
“Hello?”
“Boarded?”
“No Dad, actually I missed….”
“(pause)…Quite so expected when you are concerned!”
“Ya, I mean I just missed by 10 mins. Remember, you too missed it once?”
“Yes I did. So?”
“So nothing…I’ll just call up when I manage a contingency boarding”
“No boy, I’ll list out to you the earliest options which you have….blah blah”
“Fine Dad, I’ll see what can be done and call you back.”

Can/could notwithstanding, what was wanted to be done was to find a comfortable reservation for the next morning, and sleep off the ensuing time, given the mental fatigue that is common if you spend a full day at work doing, well, nothing. So I did the same, and logged off comfortably from the current ‘adventurous’ day, after getting the reservation done for a train due to depart at 2:17 PM from Delhi to Bhopal(New Delhi – Jabalpur Superfast) the next day, oblivious of what lay ahead.

Next day, I strolled into the Hazrat Nizammuddin station again, almost whistling Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be wild’ – ‘almost’ because I have always believed that it would be quite bizarre to do so actually, movies notwithstanding - taking an intelligent margin of 17 minutes. Not one of those who get all worked up and act silly after a minor mistake, I introduced a sexy swagger with a cocked-sideways-gaze while walking up to the ‘Enquiry Window’ and enquired about the platform at which the specific train was supposed to come. “4” came the reply from the utterly bored human sitting across the window. Hence I marched to the platform number 4, found a train with the words ‘New Delhi – Jabalpur’ & ‘Superfast’ written on it, confirmed the train with a fellow passenger and perched myself on the allotted coach and seat number. All seemed perfect. The luggage was tucked in. The fellow passenger was a law student cum business man – an interesting case for fruitful conversation, given the fact that I had rapturously laughed at a lot of lawyer & businessmen jokes recently. The weather too was perfect and I looked forward to reaching Bhopal by 12 AM in the night.

Only, the train just didn’t start.

Not at 2:17 PM, not at 2:30 PM, not at 3:00 PM.
While we shifted nervously on our arse a couple of times while looking at our watch during our very engaging conversation- which covered almost everything from Laptop power issues to the Chennai lawyers going berserk over their ‘brethren’ in Sri Lanka- we didn’t exactly panic until a family came in and started settling themselves in the adjoining seats, casually mentioning that they came a tad too early before departure. By that time, during our conversation, we had scoffed at a couple of bachelors sitting around, asking whether they had reservations or were just freelancing on railways and had smirked at their miserable existences when they had sought to confirm the train name, which was, incidentally, different from what we were assuming it to be. The family angle brought a lot of credibility to the now grounding theory of ‘wrong-train’. We rushed out to check the train name and lo behold, this was actually a certain Mahakaushal Express, which indeed goes from New Delhi to Jabalpur, at a super fast pace, but does NOT stop at Bhopal in between.

And it was standing on platform number 5.

Yes, yours truly mistook platform 5 for 4, & thus got into the wrong train which was incidentally going towards Jabalpur, and watched the right train leave the platform over the edges of a lively but ultimately futile conversation.
So effectively, train number 2 missed.
Now, my eyes drifted to the original Promised land – platform 4. There was another train standing there as I watched, now with a strange & sudden fear of trains on the ascendancy.
(to be continued)

“And Here We Go”

– I muttered, in as Joker-esque fashion as possible. Curious eyes, had they been there, would have followed my gaze all the way yonder, expecting an explosion (ala ‘The Dark Knight’), but would have been exasperated to find the gaze ending on a clock having its hours, minutes and seconds hands doing a simultaneous vertical handshake, reminding them of the infamous conspiring clockwork theory all over again.

While I, well, would have stifled a yawn, which I dutifully did.

The statement that birthdays used to be pure, unadulterated fun at one point of time seems to be pure, unadulterated comedy today. Back then, my pretty uncelebrated existence seemed to wait for this day to dawn, in an almost frenzied, nail biting anticipation. There were two very solid reasons for this anticipation in the pre-adolescent times. One, you got a bagful of toffees – the possession of which is a highly coveted, but perennially insatiated (thanks to the prevalent dentist propaganda) desire among kids – which you were supposed to distribute amongst your classmates, with that being the only day in the year when you yearned for more absentees than ever. Two, you got to wear the ‘coloured dress’ - stating colloquially - which, given the mundane dress code of the school, was a pretty refreshing change. That’s it, two reasons to commemorate my arrival on planet Earth – toffees & ‘coloured dresses’. Thankfully, I think now, I wasn’t asked to write an essay on “My Birthday” back then - when writing ones on “My Dog” & “My House” was a commonality. Because of the presence of the above-mentioned reasons and the absence of the usual teacher-friendly rhetoric in the essay, the Parents-Teachers meet would actually have been in a danger of being pre-poned, or worse, extended. Needless to say, few things in this world are more demonic than a PT meet – and this is a fact that would be known by any person who never ever topped in his class, or liked to talk to his friends in the classroom, or preferred a quick peek in the textbook to burning his midnight oil in case of a test, or used to bunk a whole lecture under the pretext of emptying his bowels, etc. Phew, good-possible-riddance!
As I entered into adolescence, the onset of September itself started bringing out the good human being in me, much to my inner chagrin, and much to the amusement of my family. But it was inescapable if you wanted money for that party you wished to throw. Money that bought balloons, cards, return gifts, and, quite importantly – pop music. 90s was an era dominated by the likes of Ace of Base, Aqua, Vengaboys, Backstreet Boys, Dr. Alban, and that song called ‘Macarena’ , all of which were, I must admit, damn good dance instigators. So once we were done doing our bits of being gawky teenagers eyeing each other sheepishly in those parties, some noble soul or the other used to muster up enough diligence to politely usher the elders out, and turn on the music, volume max. And then we used to dance our ‘a double star’ off on those numbers. Thankfully, such parties used to be usually stag; otherwise our already diminished reputation in front of the fairer sex could have suffered a final, beyond repair damage – it being directly proportional to the radius of our gyrations. What we never realized then was the fact that the feared damage had already been done(perhaps due to some other, equally grotesque acts); this being the real reason for the stag nature of those parties, and NOT that widely circulated, albeit fake theory which projected girls as mere irritants to the process of having fun.
Then came college, where the term ‘birthday’ finally came out of the dreamy-anticipation mode into the territory of stark realism, if not fear. There was this realization that there are people in this world who were so damned euphoric at your birthday that they go a step further than the usual, boring old-school handshakes and hugs – they lace your arse with the choicest of assaults. Assaults that started innocently enough with a few harmless pats and kicks, but which soon deteriorated into a full blown attack involving punches, slipper-slaps, leather belts, sticks & what not. The ordeal was stopped when the decibel level of the screams of the birthday boy passed a certain threshold. This crucial data was provided by a person designated specifically for this part; a person who was seemingly non-violent, but derived immense sadistic pleasure out of watching the greetings unfold on the birthday boy’s arse. This was, of course, followed by a gala for the ‘well wishers’ in one of the dhabas located around the city – a treat which they deserved after tiring themselves out by extending their wishes in so unique a manner. For the uninitiated, the greeting affair was called GPL. Its quite amusing, that inspite of not being a masochist, I kind of miss it.
Once you move out of that cocooned existence you enjoyed at college, things change radically. Hairs grey, paunches knock – saying a very unwelcome ‘Hello’, and birthdays become quite an insipid, if not irritating, affairs. It’s a usual day after all, your senile mind reasons. Same climate, same surroundings, same people, same damned brush-to-hush existence. Hell, even after prolonged deliberations on my contribution to the society by the government, its not even a dry day. Perhaps the only thing that looks to be different is that you can strike off one more year from your pending time on Earth. Every other point regarding it induces a yawn – and that includes the cake with the number of candles on it equaling your numeric age.

Perhaps the time, my friends, has come when I should say that I am aged 26 years, or that I’m a 26 year old, hoping that you grasp the obvious emphasis put accross through the emboldenments.

A Looming Orwellian Summer

There is an eerie silence that follows an explosion. Something that sounds like vacuum, piercing your ears. It lasts for a while, and in that time frame everything becomes sluggish, everything exhibits a similar kind of vacuum silence - rather than emanating sound from itself, everything looks to be sucking it inside. In that moment, if you are a victim, you seek a place where you can hide and save your life, somehow. If you are a perpetrator, you celebrate, perhaps. But if you are an observer, you think, seek justification, & look to find at least some semblance of reason even in insanity.
I am playing the third role.
I try to empathize. With both of them.

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The victims, my heart goes out for them. No one was spared. Not women, not children, not the sick housed in a hospital ward which was bombed.

I stop midway, and abhor whatever I have thought about. Over the years, these are the very people who have been silent spectators to and some even perpetrators of violence, discrimination & exploitation of my community. Their innocence is a myth because both the meek spectator to injustice and the one who commits it – are equally guilty.

Do you think the unborn child or the 10 year old boy who died in the blasts understand even the literal meaning of the words ‘discrimination’ & ‘exploitation’?

In great causes, minor damages should be overlooked. There is always some collateral damage in a war.

A war is a physical act of conflict between military arms of two rival ideologies. The pre condition for any engagement to be termed a war is that the two sides should be armed. In case one of the sides is unarmed, the engagement is termed genocide. And if you call these damages something that can indeed be overlooked, why don’t you overlook the deaths of your kin caused at the hands of the State enforcement agencies during their search and cordon operations? Why do you then term it part of a bigger conspiracy against your community?

You are saying all this because you haven’t had any hardships in your life. You were born into a safe environment, with complete financial & social security. You got a hassle free existence, which you used to get educated, get a job & lead a privileged life. All this time, you least cared about what happened around you. Now, after settling down for a comfortable life to follow, you open the newspaper, get to see a news item about some explosion somewhere, and out you come with an opinion and a twisted logic to back it up!

You have to decide on which count do you hold me guilty (and thereby sentence me to death in a bomb blast) – being an enemy of your community, or having a more privileged background than yourself. If it is the latter, as seems apparent, is it not a similar birth-based discrimination you yourself harbour that you claim to be fighting against?
And what does drudgery brings about in men? For winners, a drive to excel; for others, jealousy. And a violence that brews from jealousy can NEVER be called a crusade. At best, it could be termed a vengeance, a revenge which you take on others for your failures!

It is indeed a crusade, as it is fought with valour by wronged people against the enemies of righteousness and religion. We are fighters of the God, unafraid of any consequences whatsoever, and are ready to sacrifice even our lives for the causes we believe in. If this is not crusade, then what is it? Where else, but from God, can we get such determination and success?

How do you define valour? Is it sheepishly entering a harmless crowded area, benefitting from the basic trust that humans show towards other humans? The trust which isn’t shown towards animals, like stray leopards, which are usually killed when they enter a human locality. Or does valour lie in leaving a scooter laden with explosives in that area, while walking out surreptitiously, carefully avoiding inquisitive glances on your way out? Or does it lie in celebrating your ‘combative action’ holed in a hideout hundreds of miles away from the point of action? Or perhaps in running away and hiding from the law enforcement agencies in a manner similar to what hunted animals adopt while evading entrapment? Or -in the case of being captured- in hiring a lawyer, applying for the Presidential pardon, and in parading your parents, wife & kids in front of the media to display a more ‘humane’ sight of yours to the public?
Isn’t it so with you that the mere possibility of danger or death (to you) in your actions seems to make you a coward? Don’t your actions to evade punishment end up validating the same law and constitution you claim to fight against? And from where does the word ‘sacrifice’ come in your dictionary? Sacrifice may be of two types. One is self-sacrifice, in which man himself dies for a cause, after waging a battle. In the other, man sacrifices a loved one – akin to Abraham’s intention of sacrificing Isaac, as I read in the Bible story. You do neither. What you indeed sacrifice is an unknown human, your compatriot mostly. What ‘loss’ do you refer to while talking about sacrifice?
And for your claims to divine warrior hood, here is something which I once read written somewhere –
“There are two types of warriors-
The first fights injustice, the second creates it.
The first protects the innocent, the second kills them.
The first sacrifices himself for others, the second sacrifices others.
The first is a tree that provides shade, the second is a tree for firewood.”

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And so on goes the conversation.
Meanwhile, people keep dying. Not by old age, not by diseases - which are greatest killers in our country, but by being blown into smithereens by crude bombs in the prime of their lives. What remain are the remnants – a severed head, a torn abdomen etc. of what had once been a vibrant, lively human, with its own set desires, dreams, and its capacity to carry other, much newer, lives on its back.
And meanwhile, India’s electronic media keeps asking for citizen reporters on the blasts. “We want pictures, videos” one popular news portal says, of anything that “you see around you regarding the attack.” Implicitly, it means that if you can spot gore, why reserve it for a private viewing – let’s share it across the world so that the wounds of the unfortunate become the cynosure of the public. Pictures taken hours after a blast are impact-zero ones, and hence don’t sell. So let’s get it straight from the horse’s eye!

Following the Ahmadabad blasts, in an interview with the Gujarat Home Minister, a journalist pops the following points - “There is a perception that such blasts were expected in Gujarat after the 2002 riots. Also, add to that the dimension of most riots victims still not having got legal justice.” and “Some people argue that when riot victims do not get legal justice they feel like taking revenge.” Hats off to the lady, who did exactly the task for which the terrorists planted all those bombs! She, through her ‘insights’, echoed the very ‘logic’ that the terrorists so erringly tried to champion – that in order to make the deaf listen, you need explosions! Only, unlike in Bhagat Singh’s case(if you recognize the dialog in the previous sentence), these explosions killed innocents. Why does a discussion involving mindless, savage acts like bomb blasts needs to seek any explanation/logic for the occurrence of the same, everytime?!!
Lastly, another piece of rattling stupidity – a news portal recently published the name of an anti-national, venom spewing, (and absolutely irrational, if I may add) blog which is written by suspected terrorists, in a speculative article regarding the new names acquired by familiar terror outfits in India. They didn’t publish the link, noble souls, but the esteemed fellows don’t seem to know that naming anything controversial in a public news forum actually incites a lot of readers to seek it out, and read it through, especially in an information friendly world like ours. I’m pretty sure that the morale of the blog writer in question would have soared by quite a few degrees, seeing so many hits all of a sudden, mores so because the blog was almost inconsequential and irrelevant for most of its pre-fame life. Secondly, his ‘message’ may now actually be in a position to spread into some unpolluted but nevertheless fertile minds, thanks to the site in question. And how is the blog, the one and only update of which came almost an year back, still floating in the public domain? What have the scissor-quick honchos of the Department of Telecommunications and Information & Broadcasting ministry been doing, apart from banning television channels & ‘obscene’ films? And the only sane answer to this problem, which will eventually conceive in the minds of these ‘information controllers’ would be - and which I personally fear the most - block all blogs; similar to the traditional strategy that has been employed to get rid of all the world’s evils over the centuries.
The same strategy that seems to make sense in this mad world today - destruction– of people if they differ from you, of information if it doesn’t corroborate what you say. Simple, efficient & with immediate results. At its start you have something, at its end there is nothing. Nothing but thin air. And you don’t need any theorems to prove zilch.
An Orwellian summer somehow doesn’t seem to be so far away now.

Fawk'es' eyes!

There has been this tendency with the conspirator, this extra special orientation, towards realizing the threat probability to everything. So, as a kid, he used to look for loopholes in a shop’s security in case of a theft, when others starry-eyed the toys. The conspirator always used to wonder about how in the heavens name would the short, potbellied shopkeeper, in all his engrossedness with his account book, would come to know about the unprotected, hanging GI-Joe being quietly plucked off its lowly abode by the conspirator - for whom even the counter wall separating the Joe from the shopkeeper’s vision was well a metaphor for the Himalayas. This question lingered on until he came to know about RFID tagging, of course; but by then, the possibility of an implementation had obviously become negligible, it being inversely proportional to the conspirator’s ever increasing height.

Also, when the conspirator, in his grown up, but still uncanny self, stumbled on into the John Woo way of Indian airports, it was revelation time. He found, after doing so, that he could transport a pocketful of crude firecracker bombs in his backpack through the security checks of the national carrier, all the way to its destination. The motive behind the coup was innocent enough – the conspirator didn’t want to miss out on his Diwali celebrations, his first and hopefully the last in Andamans - but that is outside the scope of this discussion; if at all this be considered to be a discussion (It is expected that the conspirator’s young and tender age & innocuous intention will be excused). And if that was not sufficient enough, the conspirator found that he could reach as deep as the international terminal waiting area entry gate, without, repeat without, his handbag being frisked, let alone even glanced at. The handbag could have contained anything from something as harmless as Reader’s Digest to, well, use your imagination. All this analysis has been done while assuming, for obvious reasons, that the conspirator was not ‘frisked’ by any intangible sensor rays enroute to the waiting area. Its a situation that may perhaps go untested forever, unless he decides, at at a later point in time, to explore the interiors of a Tihar cell.

The last pin in the straw came when, after being enlightened ad infinitum about the grandiose & political importance of the European Union and its headquarters at the Berlaymont building in Brussels while travelling towards the same in a Belgian metro, the conspirator found, to his utter shock, that the train stops right below the huge EU edifice, and that the stairs towards the ground level(from the underground level of the metro station) lead directly to the entrance of the building through an alley flanked by its support pillars. Mind you, to the entrance of the building, not to the entrance of a compound surrounding the building. In fact, there was no compound, as a compound area is usually characterized by a surrounding wall, which, in the case of the European Union headquarters, was absent! Lo behold, there was a structure, which supposedly houses ALL of the European political elite and their attached machinery, at a stones throw from the conspirator without a S of security, or a P of the famed Belgian politie. He could conveniently go to the nearest support pillar, place a bag not containing Reader's Digests alongside, and walk away whistling, in a trademark John Woo fashion(sans the cigarette, of course), with the building going up in flames at his back. Makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it, Mr José Manuel Durão Barros?
But don't you worry Mr. Barros, he is no Guy Fawkes, you are certainly not King James I and there is a difference of seven letters between the words Belgium & England- with the difference being obviously more than linguistic.
Talking of the politie, or 'our esteemed contemporaries of the government enforcement staff' as Erle Stan Gardner called them, they happen to be be one of the most missed species by the conspirator here in Europe. Well, 'missed' may not be the right term as their absense has given the conspirator an opportunity to get into an overdrive with his element major time. That restaurant could be bluffed, that signal can be trespassed, this house could be broken into - the list is endless. After the Berlaymont surprise, only one question had come to his mind - How could Poirot hail from Belgium, of all places?
Now he knows. Practice makes a man perfect, and one needs incidents to practice the art of detection. Lots of them actually. And there is no better 'incident' incubator, than the vast, unpoliced Belgian/European hinterland.
And the only fitting reply that Europe can give to him for all the above crap is getting him arrested for criminal suggestion within 5 minutes of his publishing this post, the probability of which is........... :-)

Of writing woes, bad finishes & an unbridled romanticism!

Two unfinished posts, or drafts, on my post list & about half a dozen unfinished ideas on the hard drive made me take this decision. The decision to put overthought in the dustbin and write straight from the gut over here. I have been a terrible finisher always. And if writing unfinished poems(yup, did that back as a kid - even bordered on the mushy genre occasionally!) and articles was not enough, I have been one lousy finisher in the material affairs as well. Having struck only once in the 7 interviews I faced in my life - that 'once' being responsible for the laptop on which I type this and also for a very sumptuous meal which I had an hour back, I have always had a very hazy idea of what-it-takes. So even a childish phrase as 'pulling your pants up'(as is advised to be done in climaxes)- in my context- becomes nothing short of a herculean feat.
In my romantic delirium, into which I fall a lot while doing a lot of useless activities like writing (& listmus*), I have even contemplated about writing something about writing. You would be amused to know that I got stuck at this idea because I, while writing about it, thought about writing something about writing as a further sub-plot. That made it something like writing about writing about writing, which, as I later assessed, was not exactly what you would call a healthy activity if your mind is the host; thereby making me abandon it totally. The explanation that I gave to my heart for doing something so ghastly? 'The world is not yet ready for it ol' chap! We'll together write a masterpiece someday, and we would include it as a sub-plot in it.' Boy! was he happy!
Then there was this urge to write about the Jaipur blasts. But then, there were already plenty of them around, with their big, lofty thoughts. I, surprisingly, love to write about lofty thoughts, while I hate to confront them myself. Perhaps my heart desires all the loftiness in the world to emanate solely from me, and having to share its dreams with the other sources seems to put it off. Perhaps that is the reason (my love for loftiness, that is) why I, in a moment of intense admiration for Latin phrases, decided to choose the URL for this space as absolutumdominum. But wait a second, shouldn't the 'n' be followed by an 'i' there? Yes it should be, but the original was already taken, and I quite safely assumed the people around me to suck badly in Latin. Hell, they suck in Hindi, forget about Latin!("Guys, 'Shaurya' ka matlab hota hai bravery!" - courtesy, an anchor of MTV Wassup. Got a sleepless night due to a stomach ache that followed the guffaws.)
And boy, they did suck. No one, amongst an enormous, jaw-dropping audience (which consisted of roughly 5 visitors in the first few months) could tell out the glitch. I too, pretending to have forgotten counting beyond 5 as a counter-measure against an extremely low blogger popularity - okay you have it, an extremely low internet popularity (and I'm not going beyond that!) - decided to let it stay, until one day, the romantic delirium returned with one helluva quote, which screamed for itself to be made the headline of the blog -
'Connoisseurs of Latin maybe a touch disappointed about the missing 'i'; but let me assure you, that 'I' has been stolen to be sprinkled over every nook and corner of this space!'
I was bowled over by myself with this one, and it took some time to regain the footing as the pendulum keeps coming back in such instances. It hits you, you smile, and soon it returns, hitting you again. The cycle continues, and takes some time to subside - and with it subsides your smile of self-admiration!
During these moments of intense contemplations, which are usually the moments of romantic deliriums, another queer thought had struck my head. It was again influenced with the extremely low level of visibility that this space enjoys. Well, the thought was about - to put it simply and while maintaining a straight face- a post-apocalyptic scenario in which all the literature of the world has been destroyed. Every single letter totally erased from everywhere. All traces of written text, symbolic or graphical, totally wiped out. Only one piece remains. Yes, you guessed it right - this blog!( This is my space, remember, so the one that remains can never be yours!). What would happen then? I would be a legend, father of literature for the future generations. The greatest writer ever, because, frankly, I'll be the only writer ever - in the eyes of the future generations at least .
Wow! what sweet revenge would that be! On the other hand, it could be a very disheartening experience if the advertisements on or to this page still walk away with the Nobel for literature. (Shivers!)
As I said, just a thought!
Anyways, I think thats enough deliriums for an insomniac for now.
Insomnia and romanticism somehow don't go well together!

* listening to music

That Nasherkan Legacy

(Ahem(clears throat)...Ladies & Gentlemen, I hereby assume great pleasure in announcing that I have completed my first ever work of fiction. It is full of amateurish glitches and inconsistencies, but it is nevertheless mine, and, as a proud Father, I firmly stand by it. I also got it published on Sffworld here, and would be waiting for some frenzied criticism from all quarters. Brickbats ahoy!)

Odin watched in horror as the sweat drop fell to the floor, splattered against the surface & disintegrated into numerous droplets. For hours he had been guarding against this very event and now just a short nap had undone all the hardwork. The alarm soon reached its crescendo, and even in midst of the cacophony, he could hear the clamour of machine parts down the tunnel. He had about 5 minutes before the installment’s tracker application pinpointed his location in the maze, and another 30 seconds before he got executed through a high voltage jab sent at the corner where the sweat drop was detected – his corner. The security system always worked this way, ruthlessly terminating any attempt to transgress the boundary of the installment. It had been a bad idea to escape, right from its conception, but still Odin wanted to take his chances. After all, a chosen death is preferable to an inflicted one.
It all started off with a simple game of Nasherkan. It was in this very installment that he had challenged Oni. Odin had always been a good player, but more than confidence in his skills, it was a sense of adventurism that had made him challenge Oni, the reigning champion of Saarga multiverse. In his hot blood, even Oni’s dark & mysterious ways hadn’t deterred him. An uproar was expectedly caused when Oni put down his conditions, as was customary for the challenged. The game was to be played locked out in this installment and the loser was deemed to be terminated. There was no way out, he contended, when the clash is for the title of ‘Champion of Saarga’. These conditions were ratified by the Council, Nasherkan’s regulatory body, and it was decided that all the other rules would be kept intact.
The game of Nasherkan was played in a two player mode in Saarga (though in other multiverses, there had been instances of multiplayer games too). The game was both virtual and physical in nature - virtual for the players, as they viewed everything in the game with Nasherkan headgear, and physical because the actual action was performed physically through the simulation controllers. The game’s playground was a small spherical ball known as Terra, portions of area of which were divided equally between the two players, the division being sporadic like polka dots, as per the player preferences. The players were then expected to create their own ‘growths’ – patterns of quasi-intelligent characters and surroundings, collectively known as societies, with the help of the simulation controllers, placed at a short distance from the Terra, which was enclosed in a glass chamber. A Ring of Ignorance (ROI) was also established around the Terra, so that the growths remain concerned with themselves. These growths were reared to be antagonistic towards each other and, in the ensuing warfare, the player whose growth got eliminated first was deemed the loser. Thus, the wholesome objective of the game was total annihilation of the rival growth, and any steps taken for building, and maintaining growths were mere means to the end. The moves were made in real time and could be made even simultaneously; and the players had full freedom to manipulate their growths in any way they wanted. None of the players were to directly expose themselves to their or their rival’s growths, but, with the help of the simulation controllers, they effectively ‘played God’ to their societies. The Terra to be used was to be picked from a heap of lumps from the installment itself, as per the rules of Nasherkan. After a read-out of this full charter of rules, a bluish lump was chosen as Terra and the game was on.
It was fascinating to see the two of them play – one a hardened champion, the other a courageous rookie. Both went about their jobs with utmost dexterity, working out patterns, surroundings, & characters effortlessly with the simulation controllers. In the initial part there was not much to do. The players had mutually decided to increase the time rate on Terra to 2.3 Billion of the rate on Saarga, so that the game could be over in just under 2 days time. Initially, both of them went about creating characters with little or no intelligence. As they had put in tough surroundings around these characters, the societies became more engrossed in survival than in countering each other. As a result, no evolutionary version increase was being achieved. Without a version increase, the growths were lesser likely to fight, and there was the danger of the game ending in a tame draw. So, both the players agreed to wipe off everything, and make a new start to the game. After a brief lull which followed the wipe-off, the players moved on to create their most effective foot soldiers – the Naras.
The Naras were totally different from the characters that had been created till now. For the first time, the most effective weapon (MEW) of a character race was not physical. In fact, the Naras were one of the weakest characters on the physical scale. But they were provided with an unparalleled intelligence as their MEW. This set them apart and changed the whole approach to the game for both the players. Instead of the earlier skirmishes & petty fights between the growths, now planning and strategy came into the picture.
While being almost perfect miniature copies of their creators’ race (as a tribute) in physical terms, the Naras were engineered to be far different on the cognitive scale. The people of Saarga had long renounced violence (it existed only in virtual games like Nasherkan now) and related grade II attributes, whereas the Naras were made to be suspicious, quarrelsome and inimical towards each other, the society, and the surroundings. This constant sense of enmity in Naras was crucial to the game’s outcome, and was thence mandatorily incorporated in them by the players. As they were provided with the superior most intelligence on Terra, with its help they gradually spread over to each and every corner of it, and became the ruling class – perfect for the battle setup of Nasherkan. But because of their enhanced intelligence and resulting inquisitiveness, it was difficult for the players to maintain the ROI around Terra which had been easy to maintain in the case of the prior characters. Ever since their conception, it was not uncommon to spot a Nara looking up towards the pseudo-sky (which had been created along with the Naras, as a key component of the ROI) with a puzzled expression on its face. This increasing curiosity made the Naras attempt research in a major way, and, though this was desirable to the players as far as the research was military, it was anathema for them if it turned non-military. For any non-militaristic research had a chance, even though a miniscule one, for overcoming the ring, and such a scenario would have resulted in immediate termination for both the players. Also, both Odin & Oni wanted more control over their ‘foot soldiers’ – who, given their intelligence, had a very high chance of going the peaceful Saargian way. So they gave the Naras’ cognitive scale a loophole in the form of superstition & herd mannerism. As direct contact was not allowed in Nasherkan, this was the perfect channel to control the Nara mind. And with its help, every major attempt at non-militaristic research was vanquished by the players by turning the majority against a handful of researchers. However, a little quasi research was allowed to be carried on, as a part of the ROI.
After all, ignorance too has to be taught in order for it to remain ignorance.
In order to exert their influence and strengthen their growths, the two used entirely different modus operandi. Odin relied more on symbology & myth-dispersement, mostly extolling grade I attributes in filling up the Nara scale with an unwavering faith and commitment to Odin. The approach was direct and, given the natural Nara affinity to revere grade I attributes - much akin to the Saarga people - was convincingly successful too. Hordes and hordes of Naras joined the ranks of the Odin society, and Oni’s growth started looking hopelessly outnumbered. The Nara design had been a joint venture between the two players and both had retained an equal number of Naras at their conception, but the influence of Odin slowly proliferated even the highest Onian Nara ranks, and an exodus of sorts towards the Odin side happened. Odin, naturally buoyed by this success, went about creating societies with the same theme, and made his many symbols to be worshipped by each one of them. Whatever that belonged to Oni was labeled as an arch enemy, and was deemed to be attacked on a spotting. Grade II attributes, another Oni domain, were ostracized and shunned, and thus that every possibility was thwarted which could have possibly become an attempt by Oni to access & influence a majority of Naras.

The only catch was that Oni had no such attempt in mind.
Oni was a Champion of Nasherkan. And Odin forgot that. Oni’s technique was never confrontational. Instead, it was better off for him to have his growth reduced to miniscule proportions as it made detection more difficult and even resulted in collateral damage to his adversary in form of fake encounters. But what Oni conspired was something far more sinister and damaging that a collateral damage.
The two growths fought a slow but steady war for most of the time. Sometimes the conflict was made to reach a crescendo deliberately by Odin, so as to get a decisive verdict sooner. War I and War II were the result of such efforts. The wars were a treat to watch, and on more than one occasion, it looked as if the game would be over in a few more Saargian microseconds, but at the last moment, due to one glitch or the other, the wars could never be decisive. It was a glitch to the neutral and the Odin eye, but it was a maneuver to the Oni eye. He believed in slow and steady eating up of the Odin growth as it spoilt itself with its own grandiose & imagined achievements. With each war, which Odin seemed to have won, he actually became weaker. Soon, it dawned upon some Odinian Naras that war itself could be the root cause of their downfall - if it ever happened - and they decided to counter it. And it was here where Odin made his biggest mistake of the game. He paid no heed to the non-militaristic viewpoint of his able and intelligent growth yet again, and chose to eliminate the section of Naras which had gone the anti-war way. What could have been a winner strategy was curbed even before it could materialize into something substantial. The inevitable War III happened, decimating all Nara population with it, barring one – an avatar which Oni had judiciously kept out of the war zone. Avatars were the Nara versions of the players, which were totally controlled by the players themselves, and were another way of controlling the growths. This avatar had been the major disperser of grade II attributes into the Naras as it roamed around even in the rival growth without arising suspicion. But just prior to war III, it was safely tucked away by Oni, only to be resurfaced at the war’s end, proclaiming the Onian victory. Odin had been caught totally unawares by this, as he had expected complete annihilation. Had that been the case, the game could have been continued with creating new characters and societies. But now, it was all over.

The voltage jab came as soon as this thought process of Odin got over; it was often said in Saarga that all the moments in a person’s life flash before his eyes before he dies, but somehow it was only the fast forwarded memory of this game that touched his eyes. After that, it was only white light as Odin of Saarga was terminated as a prisoner trying to transgress the boundaries of the installment.

In Heaven, meanwhile, God punched his palm in exasperation as he suffered another setback while playing the game of Nasherkan with Lucifer on that lump called Saarga.

An Arthouse Interpretation...

Well, I wanted to pen this down before the worldly opinions & factors malign my pure thought yet again. So trying something different now – writing what I felt after watching the movie Khoya Khoya Chand about half an hour back. Three scenes stick to my mind indelibly-

1. The male lead, Zafar, is directing his debut movie. He chooses the story to be that of his own life – a childhood and a youth ridden with angst against his casanova father. In the climactic scene that he shoots, the actor in this movie – which is actually a screen avatar of Zafar himself, asks his father something that he wanted to ask all his life, but could never do so until now. The sincerity and the painfully curious, screaming-for-an-answer-look is shown to be shared by both the actor and the director Zafar, before and behind the camera respectively. Zafar is so emotionally involved in filming this scene that, for him, the difference between reel & real ceases to exist. He looks earnestly, searchingly towards the father, and, in the process, forgets to ‘cut’ the scene.

This scene shows what art means to an artist. Art is not only self expression. It is also a medium to attain salvation for him. It gives him a chance to rollback his life, change things he wished he could – even if those changes are on something as mercurial as a celluloid. A piece of art can be understood cent percent only by its creator for this very reason; it is a self constructed code language, a sort of personal diary, an expression which is, to a certain extent, directed towards himself. A commercially viable piece of art would be directed more towards the audience and would have practically no personal connection with the artist, while a non-commercial one would be directed almost totally towards the artist himself – being as unintelligible to others as scribblings in a personal journal are. The difference between these two lies totally in the target audience that they have.

2. Zafar’s movie’s premiere is greeted with yawns and other general displays of disinterest. Watching, a critic asks Zafar, who is sitting besides him, his opinion on the whole debacle. Zafar watches him broodingly for a moment, seeming ready to burst out in exasperation any second. He does burst out, albeit into a big, ear-to-ear grin.

This scene is a continuation of what I said above. After making a personal-journal piece of art, and understandably not being understood by anyone, there is nothing left for an artist to do but to smile. There may be two reasons for this smile – One, he smiles at others’ ignorance. In a mocking way, he may consider himself to be ahead of his time. He may consider others dumb because they couldn’t understand his metaphors. Two, and this one is difficult to explain. The artist is so deliriously submerged in his art that he doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s opinion on his work. Visually, the situation looks like a sculptor who, after creating his sculpture, has settled down to worship it, as we worship our idols.

And, well, there also are a few, who, with their ingenuity, understand this beautiful but abstruse piece of art, and end up smiling too, albeit for reasons entirely different than those of the artist!

3. Zafar, who had left the industry and his actor girlfriend after the failure of his film, has returned after many years – in order to make a comeback, only to find that his ex-girlfriend has become disillusioned & alcoholic since. While talking to his friend who has since taken care of the girl, about her condition & his reasons for coming back, he says, while looking straight at the girl, who is immersed in an intoxicated slumber –

‘Kya karein bhaisaab, ab in se duur bhi to nahi raha jaata’.

I found this to be swashbucklingly brilliant. The identity of ‘in’ here, in my opinion, is two pronged. He is referring to the two things which were irresistible, and probably irreplaceable in his life –

i)the film industry: An artist can never run away from his art. No matter how much he may try, whatever else he may dabble in, or however disillusioned he may become, he just can not throw his art out of his existence. Perhaps this is the difference between an artist and a non-artist. The commoner has taught himself since childhood that an unproductive part of your being should be cut out from your existence. There is no reason whatsoever for retaining anything so unworthy, so unusable – and so, he adapts himself to any vocation that will satisfy his material wants. An artist can’t do that. He is a person who will retain that pencil with which he has practiced all year long for the final test, even though it may have reduced to such a small size that it is practically unusable.

ii)the girl: This excessive sentimentalism is evident is his human relationships as well. Even well after they end, he can perhaps never get over any of them. Just as he can’t cut away his creative organ however unrewarding it be, he similarly can’t do away with the people he loves. But because his self-expression would be as abstruse as his art, he would be constantly uninterpreted (or worse – misinterpreted), giving way to his failures in these relationships.

So these were some riveting moments from the movie. But watching this movie added more fuel to a greater debate raging inside me for quite sometime now. This debate concerns itself with the relevance of art today. Do we really need it? Does it represent a useless outcome of human creativity? Does it not, by the virtue of its existence, and by its propensity to hypnotize minds, waste human time and effort? These questions can be better understood if we take a peek into what we aim to head towards. Human upbringing is all about mechanizing. Since childhood, we are taught discipline, laws, doctrines, manners, etc. and are constantly conditioned to become ‘civilized’. The rules stated above are imbibed in every inch of our existence, and are generally viewed as prerequisites for living in an organized society. Any deviation from these is regarded as abnormal and unacceptable. Our ideal existence looks, thereby, to be chillingly similar to a machine part. We are intended to be the well oiled, formulaic & unwavering pieces of a larger machine (visual imagery*: a clock mechanism; also a military parade for the broader sense) known as the human society so that it may run ad infinitum. In such a pursuit, art is necessarily an unneeded enterprise.

And art becomes necessary just because of a need to demechanize. Both its construction & understanding involve the uninhibited side of human nature. A side which is perhaps the sole factor distinguishing us as human beings (to quote a character in The Matrix Reloaded – ‘To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human’). The keywords here are ‘uninhibited’, ‘free’, ‘creative’, ‘romantic’, ‘impulsive’, ‘un-dogmatic’, and, to a certain extent, ‘illogical’ – with the definition of logic which one chooses making the difference here. And it is these words which represent the basic tenets of the concept of art. Art involves a skill which is almost totally impulse based. Its outcome is an expression which is not externally controlled or dogma-resultant, but is free. A shackled expression can therefore never be called art. Art is inherently iconoclast, because human spirit is inherently unrestricted.

And therefore art is needed - to give an expression to the demechanization. By giving an output to this unrestricted side through the medium of art, we keep some semblance of that human element alive in ourselves in this fast changing world.

‘Of all lies, art is the least untrue.’ ~ Gustave Flaubert.

Pretty apt, eh?

* Refer to the previous post for more elucidation on visual imagery

The Vagaries of a Senile Mind!

There is a certain visual imagery associated with most of the intangible forms that we come across or think about in a lifetime. What that might be for the particular forms differs from person to person. Like the word 'Envy' comes about as written in green & wrapped in ivy in my mind whenever I think of it; 'Olympics' always bring about a track & field event's image, the font colour of ‘Ice’ is always white, ‘Angry’ written on a text pad somehow always looks angry, and so on & so forth. But the manifestation of number '25' for me, oddly enough, is not shackled to such mundane avatars. Envisage a Twentieth Century Fox movie’s opening graphic, replace the luminescent studio name by ‘25’, add some firecrackers to the background, and increase the glitter quotient of the whole spectacle by infinity.
Yes, THAT grand.
This romance with ‘25’ started perhaps when there was a bash at my place to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of my ol’ folks. That’s when I got to know that completion of 25 years of togetherness is SOME thing, the numeral 25 being the key in the sentence, rather than the word ‘togetherness’. Mind this - had it been 24 or 26, the celebration would have been dampened, and the statement’s worthiness would have reduced to that of a news report in Dainik Sandhya Prakash claiming itself to be a cryptic message from an alien civilization. The interest waned for a while when I got obsessively interested in cricket statistics - especially the batting averages - and has waxed ad nauseam since I turned 25 three weeks back!
Suddenly there was a difference in me, over a period of 24 hours, as if I had jumped across a major crevice in time space (which I obviously had, except for the exaggerating ‘major’). The hair seemed grayer, the shoulders seemed slouched, & the skin seemed saggier (the word ‘seemed’ was zeroed upon after a later, more relaxed examination). If the physical transitions are any indicator of the colossal aftereffects that followed this event, the mental ones were even more telling. An uncomfortable thought that the two hands of every clock around the world were joining hands in a conspiracy against me at precisely 12’oclock during the night of 13th September made me panicky. As the Sun crept across the globe on that fateful night, I could envisage those zillions of clock parts in millions of clocks working in tandem in order to rob me off my {X: X is equal to a thing which you lose when you turn 25 – and it is not YOUTH, you teeth barer!}.
25 is an interesting age to be at. It is where you start becoming unquestionable. After years of asserting your independence of opinion, it is here when you finally start getting your due. You are THERE- with that ‘Adult’ tag firmly in place now. The interesting part? You don’t want it now! Why? Because it doesn’t matter, and what does matter now is, again, heartbreakingly, out of your grasp. When you were a kid, as Kevin Arnold said in ‘The Wonder Years’, you were a bit of everything. You wanted to be that everyone who fascinated you. Before I knew it, I wanted to be a scientist, a fighter pilot, a computer engineer, a computer hacker(even before I knew what that meant), a cop, an intergalactic voyager(under the guise of a NASA astronaut, of course),a rockstar, and last, but not the least – an international sportsperson! As being any of these was quite improbable at that young age, I settled down cozily to dream of a fairy tale future – which included rescuing the world thrice from invading aliens, developing the world’s deadliest & longest-ranged ICBMs, revising anything Newtonian, playing electric guitar to the biggest sold-out audience ever, & hitting 6 sixes in a row in cricket. The play was written, the stage was set, and the only thing that I had to do now was to set a time for the show to begin. So I chose 25 – the age when you are supposed to be big and burly and spitting off even the minutest traces of adolescence (selection criteria – “gosh! People are married off in that age!”). By that age, I was supposed to be at least one of those great figures mentioned above. The ‘sportsperson’ dream ended while growing up and watching contemporaries making it; the pilot dream ended in one Pilot Aptitude & Battery Test, the rockstar dream ended in oodles of lethargy, and the causes of the rest of the debacles are unmentionable in a civilized discussion. Our childhood dreams, I often think, are like a pendulum’s swing – they start with a huge sweep between two very different and even contradictory ambitions (what else should a desire to be an astronaut and a rockstar be termed?) - covering a wide range of wants in between, and, with the passage of time, get smaller, slower and more & more limited as that sweep does, and end eventually with a stillness which signifies our one and only unipolar ambition in the end – to live, somehow. This ‘end’ in my case, it seemed to me, had come with this birthday. Hence, the dismay!
Well, my chagrin notwithstanding, the Sun did creep, the clockwork did tick, and before I knew it, there I was, hands flung in air, eyes redefining the term ‘deliria’, and chest thrust forward – more due to a push, rather than a self-thrust - breaking that ribbon which has ‘Gotcha’ written over it! (That, again, is a visual imagery associated with the event)- with the identity of the addressee for the word ‘Gotcha’ being a matter of high & wide speculation.
It is the beauty of this eventuality that saved me.
Because, in any case - whether the age ‘got’ me, or I ‘got’ the age - the finality was that I was over that threshold. And this threshold is like a hill top or a plateau you encounter in midst of a long and tiring journey. You climb it, stretch your arms, breathe in fresh air, look around, and then look back at the long way that you have traveled to come this far. You see that smooth initial portion of the road that you started your journey on – believing it to be one hell of a joyride all the way; you see that little thorn ridden patch of the road that ended your honeymoon but which you could still navigate through, unscathed in the end; you see those rollercoaster like sections of the road, full of crests & troughs which you journeyed through with a lurch in your stomach, and a twinkle in the eye; you see those hairpin bends which made you slow down in spite of you prior breakneck speeds - this slowing down being attributed usually to fear, and sometimes to respect; you see those wreckages of cars you passed by - silently swearing that you would never let this happen to yours, only to end up narrowly missing a crash; you see those lifts that you gave to strangers – and how close you came to being robbed by them; you see those torrential rains which made going on hell for you, but you still admired the cleansing they did for your then-dirty car! And then, when you see all that, you realize that the drive was indeed a joyride all the way, that honeymoon actually never got over, because in the end, and on that hill top, you were still there, with your very own car, your very own road, and more starry eyed for the path ahead than you were when you started it all!
So, I finally did what should have been done – wiped that brow, snapped those fingers, and got on with that drive!



PS - Pray to your Lord Almighty that you are not around when I turn 50!

Cooling Illeya!

That during rounds of post-ethanolic discussions with co-conspirators, a lot of beautiful and unadulterated thoughts diffuse, is a no brainer. But, when the thoughts tend to encompass burning social issues like the relevance of heat in an average Chennaiite's day, and, regretfully, night - a jaw dropping display of human agony & helplessness emanates from the faces of the tortured souls. Usually everybody - and that includes the normally sedate ones - howl, at the top of their voices, and with such conviction that would give any dog enough belief to file a copyright protection suit. But sometimes, the conspirators get into a more creative mood. Like suggesting taglines for the 'Welcome to Chennai' boards on the serpentine highways that lead unsuspecting souls to this 'melting pot'(no, thats not being said in the usual literary sense, but in a more literal sense). A tag line which may have a global appeal, but which may strike a personal chord. Which could, in a couple of words, bring out the spirit of the city. Which could make the dwellers smile - either wistfully, as in the conspirators' case, or nostalgically, as in the locals' case. And thus, after tremendous contemplations & deliberations, the conspirators finally come out with the most apt one.
"Cooling illeya boss!" - replies the irate general store owner - while scratching his belly, when queried about the lukewarm status of a 'cold'-drink bottle he has recently uncorked. Notwithstanding the fact that the bottle in question has been, thankfully for the eye of the customer, withdrawn from a cooler that supposedly brings down the temperature level of liquids to near-zero levels.
"Cooling illeya boss!" - replies the irate liquor salesman - while scratching his belly, when queried about the warm status of a beer bottle - usually being one of the many international brands of beer that Chennai has produced - Vorion 6000, Kalyani, Bullet, etc - which he has withdrawn from, you guessed it right, a cooler. That he gives a puzzled look when asked about the availability of KF Strong - similar to the look that is given by liquor salesmen in Bhopal when asked about the availability of Budweiser - is a different issue altogether.
The list goes on, with people of different capacities & customs spending their regular days chanting this phrase and scratching their bellies. God must have recovered from a severe bout of hypothermia when he was about to create this city. So he made heat a religion here. He created the four seasons here as - hot, damn hot, sweltering hot, & warm - in that order from Jan to Dec. And whatever that was left outside the scope of climate, like the human brain, he filled up with an unwavering thermic faith. A faith so strong that even the technological innovations like refrigerators & air conditioners couldn't break. To keep up with the changing times, some enterprising folks like those mentioned above did adopt these inventions, but found a brilliant way out - they kept the coolants shut. Hence the lukewarm cold-drink & the warm beer.
Indeed, heat manifests itself in various antics of Chennaiites. For instance, the plates in a restaurant to which a few fellow conspirators once went to, were warm. The reason for them being so, was, apparently, not environmental - as the restaurant was air conditioned, but was a result of a manual deliberation. The reason, of course, was incomprehensible to us non-believers. This was after the conspirators had refused a tempting offer to drink boiling Black Knight beer at a place cooled by table fans. Also, the fact that in addition to having the regular tap, most water-'coolers' here have an extra tap to pour out warm water too. A conspirator once suggested that commodities which have to be served cold, like icecreams(thankfully!), should come with a statutory warning especially for Chennai - "Consume with caution/Keep out of reach of subjects with a weak heart". An insignia portraying a frostbite would serve as a perfect deterrent for the faint hearted but still-maverick gourmands.
Another specialty of this place, which is also a brilliant attempt by the residents to preserve tradition and prevent cross mingling of cultures, is the custom of inequitable distribution of heat. This is one custom which makes the city mindblowingly different from the 'other world' - as they call it. So, your finger bowl will necessarily hold cold water, while the drinking water in the accompanying jug would be sure to set the mercury levels rising. Your 'Hot' Dog will be invariably cold, while the dishware, for some godforsaken reason, will be hot. 'Heating up the wrong things' - as it is called in the conspirators' theory, but truly being a custom that goes a long way to show this city's utter thermic devotion and its penchant for isolation.
Sweat inspiring stuff, this!
I'll wind up with writing a definition for this beautiful phrase, hoping that Oxford may consider it one day.
cooling illeya [kool-ing il-ā-yuh] adjective
Phrase describing lack of cold in an object that should otherwise be served cold; an unnatural state of being, involving the dimension of temperature
ORIGIN : 'cool' - Victorian English; 'illeya' - Tamil (meaning - 'do not have')
REMARKS : The adjunct 'Cool' used here may not be considered in any way as being of American English origin. The phrase, though, may be used as an antonym for the word 'Cool' as it appears in American English.

Le mot juste...

The perfect word.
The eternal quest of Flaubert. The antithesis to foot in mouth.
The logic behind 'Eureka'. The courage behind 'Molon labe'.
The thought behind 'Neti Neti'.

This phrase just struck me. You know, sometimes, words strike you like that. They haunt you, never leaving your imagination or memory. They grip your mind, and persuade you to think. It needn't be universal - your reaction that is, for any couplet or adage or quote - that is something very relative. Something like the fact that you don't always like a commercially successful movie and also that you almost never end up liking the Oscar winner for the year. But one fact is certain (came to think of it, isn't every fact certain?!) - A written word communicates so much more than what it was initially intended to. Under every pair of eyes it comes, it assumes different, contextual meanings which may depend upon the background - both social & personal - and also the foreground, of the reader; a process which may visually be like shape formation in a kaleidoscope - a different shape for each turn, and it may end up creating a most personal note for individuals. For instance, I like the word 'Intense' since my earliest association with language. If you ask me for reasons, well, I dont have any. Probably its because of a longtime fascination with intense, broodish personalities. Or probably because a flame is intense, and I happen to love flames. Or maybe just because it is such a hard hitting, deep and, well, intense word!
Words - these groupings of letters, brought together to supposedly convey a meaning - this meaning been suggested by our neanderthal forefathers, who obviously shied away from any traces of non-phonetic logic while suggesting the same - are such a bizarre, yet interesting lot. This very invention of man, this written/spoken script, comes around to challenge & dominate the man and and his mind from time to time. We have been governed by Geeta & Kuraan, incensed by speeches, enraptured by poetry, moved by tragedies, enamoured by songs, educated by books, inspired by anthems & swayed by slogans. Forget about the proposed takeover of human race by 'AI'ed robots, we are already ruled by one of our most antiquated creations - Words. Any human interaction with the world outside the limits of his body requires communication, and any reliable communication system which may be an 'All Terrain' deployable one, and which does not rest on the foundation of a structurally word-oriented language, is still a distant dream. I'm able to type this because I'm interacting with a keyboard that is modeled on English and you are able to read this because, obviously, you know English. We can dial phone numbers because we know the numeric text. We can speak because we know the spoken language. We can make computer programs which serve us because we know the programming language & the processor knows how to understand it. In short, in our every interaction with anyone or anything except ourselves, we employ words. Even symbols, when used in communicating thoughts, are modeled on a language - with each symbol effectively conveying a sentence or a word in that language; Yes, even for the deaf & the mutes, who have never spoken or heard anything in their lives - let alone a language. Forms of communications which delve into realms beyond language too are said to exist, with notable examples being parapsychology, but our current knowledge is too frivolous for them to be taken seriously as communication facilitators, Uri Geller notwithstanding! So, the way it turns out to be is that we would have been nothing but a bunch of nomadic beasts, groping in the dark and searching for ways to organize, store, pass & utilize information, had it not been for language. Even an alien civilization - in order to put up an utterly unavoidable communication channel - would need a set of symbols, governed by a common rule so as to convey the same meaning to its inhabitants whenever a particular use of the symbols is made in a particular order - and yup, that is precisely what we call as language!
But words do not merely fulfill the role of communication facilitators, though they remain to serve this very purpose for a vast majority of us. They become an expression of self when coming from the honest, an expression of a dream when coming from the poet, an expression of reality when coming from the grounded, an expression of passion when coming from the incensed & an expression of hope when coming from a believer. Then, in these situations, they rise above their literal meanings. They translate into something that is free, that is unbounded; something that is quite ironically free from restrictions posed by the very language that helped it materialize in the first place.
Ever read a Param Vir Chakra plaque? You will know that something if you did!

Impromtu...

Well, here goes - three thoughts crossed my mind today- they suddenly morph into four as I type this.
Third: I thought of writing straight here, right here on this 'New Post' online textpad, instead of creating something on my wordpad and then copying it here. My first post was done this way, and it also became my last one done with the mentioned modus operandi because of a sudden blogspot whitewash of the page which took away all of my work just when I was about to save it. Ever been robbed? Well that only could express the exact sentiment I experienced that moment. Then onwards, I wrote everything in my smug Windows Wordpad, because of a sorry situation involving a 'good-for-nothing' Microsoft Office 2007 which didn't work in spite of a 300 MB download due to subscription expiry, and religiously copied everything here. When you write something in a wordpad, its something very sculptor-like. You start off with a premise, as a sculptor starts with a stone slab having some vision in his mind. Then you start crafting and chiseling letters/slabs into words/statues as you go on. Finally, you smoothen the edges & sharp corners, and, after a final re examination of your work, place it for viewing in a display. I want to move away from that model this time. Let this one come straight from the gut! Let there be no editing and no retakes. Let there be no spell checks and no grammar recommendations. Let this one come the old way - not as old as bhojpatras and not as new as Office 2007 (can't help but crib about it). Let there be no scramble for structure and none for a classical approach while writing.
Let there be light!
(Our greatest fortune is that God doesn't file copyright infringement suits!)
First: My Orkut fortune today said : 'You are going to have some new clothes'. Got me thinking. No fortune teller - mystic, astrologist, cheap robotic machines or even our very own fortune cookies has ever given such a prediction! They had their own reasons for doing so - the first two for obvious commercial concerns & the last two to escape bludgeoning through the hands of customers. So obviously, this prediction is just a case of silly whatevers. But the case of 'what if its not?' made me think a little. Usually, statements regarding activities like shopping for apparels, which fall within your range, are very enticing to entertain. Imagine yourself reading that fortune, then moving out of your place, chancing upon a 'SALES ON' board at one of the retail outlets nearby - something which you wanted to happen since some time. Because of that fortune's sheer rarity, those words stick to your mind, and the first thought that crosses your mind upon seeing that board would be to shop - especially after seeing that sale tag. And after you are done, you would also revel in being a part of events that led to a prophecy coming true! Now imagine this : Orkut has a tie up with that store, and you have been manipulated into a buying spree with the store. Well, not exactly manipulation, this; but smart tie-up of business and technology. Imagine the consequences, if this becomes run of the mill. Every web user has done his share of zodiac analysis, name analysis, numerological analysis, psychological tests, personality mapping and various other tests of different occult & psychology related disciplines at one time or the other on the web. The reports generated by these usually are very generic and which may advice folks in the matters of general merchandise like stones, metals etc to wear. If these are interspersed closely with business areas like retail, imagine the amount of money that this could bring! Users would actually become the target consumers of a totally different marketing campaign - one that exploits the inherent instinct of every human, i.e. interest in the sciences which are not empirical in nature. We would be bombed with heavy advertising of a product without us even getting aware of it. Though here, brand unification would be of foremost importance for the business houses because a prediction cant mention that the shirt you are going to purchase in some time would be a 'Louis Philippe'! Is this duping? HELL, yes! But isn't that a norm online these days!
Second: We have an office canteen in place, run by Sodexho. Sodexho is a foodservice company operational in many states in India, and therefore recognized in those many states in India. For self promotional purpose they have tied up with many food outlets across the country and have come out with this concept of Sodexho passes, which are recognized by the same as a form of currency. As my firm has a tie up with Sodexho, we, as employees, get a booklet of passes whose worth is decided by our designations in the organization. Their equivalent worth in hard money is deducted from our monthly salaries and is given a tax exemption by the government. These passes can be used in our canteen and also outside at the outlets which have collaborated with Sodexho. Now, our canteen runs on the prepaid principle, i.e. we first pay for the dish we want to have, take the bill thus received to the person in charge of the food counter, who, in turn, services us with our request. Obviously, there are lines involved in waiting for both the cashier & the food counter guy. The payment mode is three pronged - 1. Hard cash, 2. Sodexho pass, 3. In house Sodexho coupon. 1 & 2 can be used with the cashier, who in turn gives you the bill. 3 can be used straight at the food counter guy, so it nullifies any effort & time wasted in standing in the first queue. This in house coupon booklet can be obtained at any point of time from the cashier by payment of an equivalent amount of cash or the Sodexho passes. So thats how the whole show runs. Now, something happened yesterday which made realize the simplest reason for most of the conflict in this world; yes, something - even in such an insipid setup. Here goes. I dont have have any in house coupons with me, as I procrastinate when it comes to buy them. Today, when I got up from my seat for lunch, I was feeling particularly hungry. This could be ascribed to an idiotic decision of skipping breakfast for the day. So, I ambled downstairs to the cafeteria during the mad hour full of crazy, hungry humans which is called the lunch time. To my utter dismay, the cashier's line was quite long and I had to wait for around 10 minutes or so to get my bill. As I approached the food counter queue, I spotted, from a distance, a couple of females getting into the queue. I hurried on, and before anyone else could reduce the distance between the food and my stomach (esophagal feets notwithstanding!), I got myself in that line. The hurry was actually due to the dish I was planning to have and in whose distribution line I stood. It was naan, and naan is usually served hot. So, it is brought from the kitchen in pairs, triplets or quadruples as soon as it is cooked and not stored in vessels like the other forms of food. Therefore, it may happen so that even though you are the second in line, the person in front of you may get served and you along with three people who are behind you may get served together only after an interval stretching upto 5 minutes more, this, being irrespective of the fact that you came earlier for that naan! This can be quite a pain in the arse considering the fact that the thought of food first crossed your mind 20 long minutes back, and you have been hungry ALL along, trying to find food like a scavenger on prowl. So, naturally, the hurry! Anyways, when I got there, at the end of that line behind those two ladies, I could see, amidst their excited chatter, their Sodexho in house coupons clutched firmly in their hands.
I got inflamed.
After all, it was I who did all that hardwork in waiting patiently for my turn in the cashier line, it was I who had hurried down to this line in order to get served earlier. And what these good for nothing nubiles did? Just walk down from their comfortable chairs in their modules upto this very line & decided what they wanted to have mentally - thats it! Done! They will be serviced with their request before me! As usual, I immediately got into contemplative mode - "Why isn't hardwork rewarded in this world? Why do the men of labour always languish in ignominy and denial?" What those girls did was to apply their minds, get themselves the coupons to free themselves from the queue hassles, and all my physical effort goes waste! Apply their minds - this hit me! Isn't this the root of all conflict in the world around us - this tussle between men of labour & men of mind? Trade Unions Vs Factory owners. Small time vegetable vendors Vs Reliance Foodmart. AAI strike Vs Privatisation of airports. In short, Poor Vs Rich, or, to put it in a more apt manner - Communism Vs Capitalism. Before this thought, I was tilted more towards the 'right' - pun intended, courtesy Ms Rand. Now, after experiencing the 'left' - (ditto!) side of the above given analogies, I find myself shifted a little towards the centre of the balance. Physical hardwork ending up being unrewarded can be a very frustrating experience. So much so that it may actually make you blind to reason. Today's is a knowledge based society, and any labour without a mind behind it could be equivalent to 100 fools trying to push back the Great Wall of China by brute force. Also, applying mind without putting in, or extracting, physical labour would be equivalent to winning Age of Empires II and actually imagining yourself to be the King of the world.

So these were the registered ones. The fourth one was a feeling of amazement at how increasingly subjective I'm getting these days on this space. First my views on Theism, then the defense of my room, then my unabashed display of fanship for IO, and then finally - this! So, are the days of objective & impersonal reporting gone at this space? Well, you never know!
There was a fifth one too, sorry to hide it till now! No, you dont need to throw up your hands in the air in exasperation, this one is a serious observation. Read the order again : 3-1-2. Ever seen Olympic Medal ceremonies?
Drop the idea of carnal harm, its only your computer screen you are gonna end up damaging...