Elections, Predilections and Predictions!

Five years ago. Same Month. Fat chance of even coming close to his elusive dream, that of resting his base in peace on that CM ki Kursi at least once. Few days go by. And Wallah! Whaddaya know? RedD did it! And so began the reign of Free Power, Feigned Dams, Infamous Scams, Boring Meetings, Lavish Airports, and yes, status quo on whatever Lunar Bob did about Cyberabad. Five years roll on. Present day. The oasis metamorphosizes into a river. The dream turns even better. Too good to be true! A second term? So how to live this too-good-to-be-true-dream for half a decade more? More free power to farmers, this time up to 9 hours a day, more lucky rains, more boring meetings, more 'no industrialization' and more rural em'power'ment schemes and airports with Mem Saab's family name. Greatest achievement in the first term? Well, he didn't let one Telugu Bidda's 'truth' spill over into mass hysteria about other Telugu Biddas, did he?

Lunar Bob spent five years plotting vengeance and hypocritically worshiping his late father-in-law. Now he can continue doing that. That and praying the rain god for no rains in the coming five years! Over the next few years, you will see Lunar Bob and his cronies develop innovative methods of using the tiniest iota of anything negative about RedD and publicizing it , like the length of RedD's whiskers, along with ground-breaking techniques to disrupt the proceedings and sanctity of the Assembly and 'decibelize' the place. There is no way Lunar Bob is going to allow RedD to do anything, not at least while both of them are in one room. And he might already be in the process of bidding for the 2036 Olympics in Hyderabad!! Surely, he will be back at the helm by then!

Five years ago, Ever Lasting Man had an idea. In every road show celebrating his movie's success he attended, people flocked in their thousands to watch him; just to get a glimpse of him. I am born for the people, he thought to himself. Four and half years roll. Fuelled by selfish flatterers and drawing together an assemblage of other-party-drop-outs, he tries put on a much hackneyed garb of serving the people. Braves the heat and roams the state with exemplary enthusiasm in the sole anticipation of becoming the King Maker. Imagine the mood swings he must have been through for the first few hours of yesterday, when everyone was predicting a hung assembly. Next five years? Very tough to predict. Will he hold fort and try to play a virtually non-existent and certainly much neglected 'opposition'? If he still decides to go back to fondling cute women on the Silver Screen, does the larger-than-life image he inspired still exist? Yours truly recently came across a picture of Ever Lasting Man 'consoling' an anthrax affected woman, an old woman, by maintaining a safe distance from her and holding her hand by her wrist with the tips of his thumb and middle finger, as if the woman's hand were an extremely exquisite and delicate goblet containing French Wine, and yes, there might have been an Arabian Carpet on the floor. Clearly, all Screens that glitter aren't Silver!

Spare a thought for the Centre! 5-Pass Singh is still the King and Red Face has been left red-faced!!! 5-Pass is the meekest man in India, a gentle genius, and an ideal man-to-be at Mem Saab's disposal. The author's prediction? Two Years hence, India would be in the hands of Mem Saab Ka Beta and, who knows, his Colombian girlfriend might just be Mem Saab's understudy! Iranians, Arabs, Mongols, British, Italians and now Colombians, possibly.

Mumbai to Hydera...

8 40 PM
It was bad. It was gory. It started in that fateful local. That phone call to Sandy confirmed that worst suspicion which was lurking somewhere in the confined corners of both our minds. Waitlisted? What the hell happened to the fax that was supposed to enroll Dols and me as official 3rd Ac passengers? Maybe Sandy was playing a cruel practical joke on us; but just because he had internet in his room and we were helplessly on our way to CST with a helluva lot of luggage, the thought seemed quite unfair. No, it just wasn’t a PJ after all. Another phone call, this time by Dols, and a glum silence overshadowing his usually animated countenance meant that another god forsaken fax had gotten lost in the commotion and clutter of that World Heritage paperwork of the CST.

8 45 PM
Man looks up to hope for his existence, and it was that very speck of pristine hope left in me that egged me on, and, though I knew the answer, I let slip out “Wassup?”. “We’ll look out for an extra compartment, but tell me, are you ready to travel sitting in the aisles or near the doors also, just in case?” pat came the reply in the form of a question. Now I’m no good at adventure travel, but the situation unravelling in front of us presented us with exactly that kind of a challenge. And when you don’t know how to do something and you have to do it, the best thing to do is to trust someone who’s been there and done that. So, like a loyal soldier to his general, I said “Aye aye Captain”, without hesitation.

9 00 PM
CST was like the pre- and post- 26/11 time, bustling with people and activity. Husain Sagar was on the 9th platform and we went there, with another iota of hope, to check out the list. And as expected, there weren’t our names. That did it as far as Dols was concerned. We weren’t going that day. Maybe next night. Out came my mobile and I immediately asked Sandy to book two tickets for the next day, even though it was quite a huge waitlist.

9 30 PM
A quick meal in one of the restaurants, and suddenly hope rekindled in Dols’ mind. “Let’s go, maybe there is an extra coach, let’s check out”. We both made our way to Platform No 9, without 3/4, with our bulky luggage rattling along, and discovered that there was, indeed, an extra coach. Another vacillation of thought later, we found ourselves talking to the Ticket Inspector of the Ac coaches. The train started moving but still, no deal was fixed. Without a second thought, both of us swung our luggage into the moving train and got into the Ac coach. Well, we made it!

10 00 PM
After being shoved and pushed into the attendants’ seat in the 3rd Ac coach, we found ourselves talking to the electrician of the coaches and the attendant. An agreement was reached and we shoved 400 bucks into their greedy palms. “Meekemi paravaledu…Evadochina memu chooskuntam”. Nothing will happen to you…we’ll take care if the TTE comes along. Ah, the honest bribe of Indians, how true of Linbaba in Shantaram, I wondered, speculating where the place for 3 men to sleep was. As if in answer, the attendant shoved open two box like compartments, about 5’x2’x2’, usually used to store blankets and stuff, and told me that was where I was supposed to sleep. We were sitting innocuously when there the TTE was, a pugnacious little pig of a man, demanding us to show our tickets. Nah, they weren’t even valid, we had to pay up 2100 bucks. It transpired that he had sold the ‘berths’ to 3 big burly Muslims and they were in a pretty belligerent mood.

11 35 PM
We dragged ourselves to the other end of the compartment, led by the attendant who was desperate to give proper value to the money we gave him, to another pair of those boxes. Only this time, they were about 3.5 feet in length, which made me look at my hopelessly long legs in agony. Somehow we climbed into our ‘bunks’ and tried to sleep. It was dark and stifling. But the worst part was that I was trapped in a torture cell with my legs askew and the sliding door was banged shut, lest the TTE sees us. I felt like a waiting lover in there. Every second seemed like an eon. Count Dracula must have been sleeping in an under-sized coffin. No wonder, he was longing to get out!

12 55 AM
Completely suffocated and sweating like mad, I came out of the torture cell and was rather happily surprised to find Dols also in the same state, which meant that I wasn’t claustrophobic. We saw that the TTE had pulled down his shutters. “Enough is enough”, we thought and decided to move to the other end of the coach once again. Meanwhile, Pune had arrived. The TTE would change. The incoming guy shouldn’t see us or we were doomed for good.

01 10 AM
There is always a thin line between extreme bravery and foolhardiness. Both of us did something of the same kind, bordering on bravery and trespassing on insanity. We tiptoed into one of the toilets and locked ourselves in. For 15 minutes, 15 heart throbbing and gut wrenching minutes, we bore the overpowering stench of the ill ventilated toilet and never made even the slightest sound or movement, for fear of discovery.

01 25 AM
Once the train started moving, we got out of that hell hole, sure and happy that nobody could catch us. No way. We went back to the other end of the coach again, took out some blankets, put them on the ground and began relaxing. Alas! That happiness was short lived. No sooner had we begun to unwrap ourselves, than that accursed shutter opened, and in came a swarthy, rodent faced new TTE, as if on remote control. He had pin point accuracy when it came to locating illegitimate travellers, which meant either that he had a very powerful spy satellite at his command or that Pig Face had alerted him of the flagged people.

01 40 AM
There is a beautiful aphorism in English ‘From the frying pan into the fire’. “From one frying pan into another” I wondered as Mr Rodent Face started repeating that we did not possess a legal railway ticket and all that and demanded a fine of 2500 bucks. “500 more? Probably this guy has a deal set with Mr Pig Face” I thought. We didn’t want to give him any kind of moral or monetary victory, so we told Rodent Face to call it quits pestering us and show us the way to the Sleeper coaches. That ineffable attendant offered to watch over the bulkiest parts of our luggage, probably out of a feeling of remorse, and opened up the shutter to the Sleeper side of the train.

02 10 AM
It was a lair full of people, the sleeper side of the train. There were people occupying every little attometre of space they could find, on the berths, in the aisles, near the doors, possibly even in the toilets; sleeping soundly, as if they hadn’t a care in the world. With our backpacks and all, in another situation we might’ve been people from the Red Cross in a war ravaged country. But as it was, we travelled coach after coach in search of the TTE. When we finally found one, he told us he had given up finding places for people. Somehow, we had to convert ourselves into legitimate passengers. As luck would have it, we found an industrious-looking Squad member doing exactly that. He didn’t ask many questions, just our names and ages, scribbled off a receipt for 1200 rupees and shoved it into my waiting hands.

02 25 AM
The quest for the elusive space to sleep continued and we weren’t doing well. However, at the end of the last coach, near the door of the coach, there was some place to rest our bottoms. There were streaks of dusty brown on the silvery white aluminum floor; still we decided that we would lie there in wait, and whenever the slightest opportunity presented itself, we would pounce on it.

05 00 AM
Time passes in huge dollops whenever we need it most.; when we want it to pass quickly, it takes an epoch for each second to tick. After what seemed like ages, squatting in that narrow aisle and discussing virtually everything under the moon, Solapur went. And with it went some passengers. We began our combing operation, our frantic search for unoccupied berths. Luckily, we found one just 2 coaches away. Dols was gracious enough to gift me that berth, while he continued his quest. And I didn’t whine because it was a side middle one and that, under normal circumstances, I would never fit in that monster berth. I just shut up and slept.

10 05 AM
A mad tapping on my shoulder woke me up with a start. I turned round only to see another black coat. I had gotten so sick of seeing black coats that I made the dislike palpable. ‘Same old question about the ticket’ later, I explained the whole story to him and that my friend had the receipt. Black Coat asked me to call Dols up immediately, while he would be out on further inspections. Then the killer blow. I realized to my horror that my phone, my Moto phone that I had purchased because of its Six Sigma quality, was indicating low battery. And when a Moto phone indicates ‘Low Battery’, it means low battery. I tried calling up Dols but he wouldn’t lift his phone at all. 10 missed calls later, I realized that he must have put his phone inside his back pack so it wouldn’t disturb his deep slumber.

10 35 AM
Another tap on my shoulder and I was so relieved to see Dols that I spilled a huge grin. “Whew man…where have you been? I was sweating” I said. “He’s already seen the ticket. No Probs” said Dols. I had a quick brush of my teeth and gobbled up two shiny red apples like a thirsty camel.

12 10 PM
We went up to the Ac coach to collect our luggage and just then, Begumpet station arrived. We did it! We got into and Ac coach and got down from an Ac coach; whatever happened in between was history.

12 20 PM
All is well, as they say, that ends well!

000,02 Leagues Across the Sea!

Folks and Folkettes,

I have been wondering whether I have put this hobby of mine to rest when suddenly that latent writer-monster-thingy in me awoke with an ear splitting yaaaaaaaaaawn. All the flowers and the brickbats for the text below should go to the WMT and not me. Anyway, I have been fascinated by how two things that the Indian people crave about and are crazy about are happening simultaneously.

1. The pentennial democratic extravaganza

2. The annual muscle-flexing exercise of the BCCI, the Indian Premier League

Hmmmm, so what am I excited about the most? Tough ask really. On the one hand there is the IPL with all its hype and hoopla, with its superstars, the Shah Rukhs, the Preitys, the Shetty Sisters and the Ambani Bros, chirping around, giving out fascinating sound bytes. There is this 450 sec 'strategic (also read money spinning, time-wasting, and boring-the-hell-out-of-the-spectators) time out', in which one team say to themselves "We need to score faster mates!" and the other team thinks "Yeah, now we realized, we need to take wickets yaar!". I have no idea what the players do in the remaining 449 seconds :P

And then there is Mr Lalit Modi, who realized that he did not market himself too well in IPL 1 and is more than making up for it here! Every third frame in the TV shows His Modiness' inspired, proud figure doing different kriyas...Lalit Modi in the dugout, Lalit Modi in the presentation ceremony, Lalit Modi in interviews with Mandira (who, for some strange reason, looks like an Afreeki mem in that hairdo of hers), Lalit Modi signing autographs for his 'fans'(come on...believe me, he has 'fans') and so on; in short, he's all over the place, you see. Oh yeah, and there are the cheerleaders too, whose cloth covering is inversely proportional to their distance from Sainiks. Whenever we watch the IPL in the TV room, there is always a fierce debate as to which team has the best CLs. Happily, Deccan always comes out trumps!

There are over-enthusiastic commentators who say things like "The last 10 overs are very critical!". Excuse me...its a 20 over game, not a 50 or a 450 over one!

Aaand yes, there is good cricket as well...the tables have turned on many teams, and some teams just don't change. Still, it is always exciting to see how Indians and foreigners gel together...kind of like watching a multi- multi-starrer movie really!

The sum of all these parts adds up to more than a whole, and makes the IPL a summer-tolerating remedy for me.

And now to the big one, the centre stage of the hypocrites...err...democrats(not starting with a D), where we get a darshan whom we have elected 5 years ago for the first time (Caution: If the person isn't contesting again, then there is no first darshan at all). And what don't they do to woo more than 1 billion Indians(themselves included)!

Thinking of it, that IPL and this IPL(Indian Politickers League) have too many similarities to be ignored. Every politician, irrespective of his success has an oscar winning actor in him. This should give you an idea of the magnitude of Indian politics: there is atleast one Lalit Modi in each and every constituency. And when it's time to turn on the heat, there they are, all over the place, making democracy into 'dramacracy'. Promises galore! Money, gifts and liquor unabashedly change hands with the speed of light. An interesting anecdote. I should be writing this tukda of prose in sweltering heat and sweating profusely in the unbelievable humidity of the Mumbai air. Because normally for about three hours every morning, the electricity just gives up and takes rest. Guess what...today, on the election day, it doesn't happen! Coincidence? Perhaps. Serendipity? More perhaps.

TV analyses, exit polls, innovative and freakishly omnipresent campaigns (you do find one face staring at you whenever you open a website these days), leading to mind numbing permutations, combinations and probability distributions as to who would win, by how much and who wouldn't and by how much less.

And right in the middle of all this pandemonium and bedlam, there are poor voters like me(I haven't had the chance to vote this time though), who don't know whom to vote for. Each alternative is just as bad as the other, just like the multi starrer teams of the IPL(oh they aren't bad, the political parties are).

It's a carnival happening here on either side folks, and I'm stuck in between. Which one possesses greater enticement? The theatrics of the IPL or the extended melodrama of the Indian Democracy? Judgment reserved.

Till Later,
Adios Amigos.

The Erythrocyte Chronicle

Being a Mumbaikar for the last 2 years, writing a blog and not even mentioning about the lifeline of Mumbai is as good...err bad..err..good...oh whatever, as heresy. As they say, Mumbai's strength is derived neither from its infrastructure, nor from its heritage, not even from raking in the moolah...no...No, Mumbai's blood is its people. And the blood vessels are the emormous network of ...you guessed it...the locals. And so before I can be deemed a blasphemer and burnt at stake, I take this precaution of presenting my perspective: that of an average erythrocyte. There is a reason why I call myself that and not a leukocyte, which will be clear by the end of this 'work of art'.

Now, I take the great liberty to confine myself mainly to the Western Line, though I believe one or two anecdotes from the Central Line would be condoned. I have always had the great 'fortune' of going with the flow. Bombay Central to Jogeshwari/Andheri between 7 pm to 9 pm should explain the previous sentence.

I always arrive at Bombay Central with the great hope that I will not see as many 'heads' as I had seen the previous day. Out goes the previous local and you get a glimmer of hope seeing a seemingly deserted platform. When the announcement for the next local comes, first in Marathi and then in Hindi, and still there's nobody, the glimmer swells. When the LED display shows 1 minute to go and with platform population at status quo, that faint swollen glimmer transmutates into a beam of light(of hope, that is). And then reality strikes. Heads come popping out of nowhere and there you have it in no time: a fully populated platform with exponential population growth rate proportional to the amount of time remaining for the local to arrive. It is at this time that I always hear a faint pop, that of that swollen bubble of hope, and I say to myself "Here goes nothing!". I try experimenting by waiting at the place where the last compartments are anticipated or just next to the first class or the ladies compartment. But the fact of the matter is that there is always that terminal pop. Add to that the additional twist of the train being a 9 dibba one instead of the traditional 12 dibba one and there is always this mad scuttle of people, in which I am invariably a part of, trying to reach the right compartment.

Mumbai's locals have given me a practical insight into many of the theories that I have learned during my engineering. The real good understanding that you get is of Fluid Mechanics.You should see how the incoming fluid(read people) fills all the empty spaces in a matter of seconds(amidst cries of utar oye, chadho chadho and araam se bhai). It's in a different dimension and timescale altogether! Once you get in, you have got to 'align' yourself according to your 'objective' subject to certain omnipresent and omnipotent 'constraints'(this is O R though). There are always 6 rows of people near a fast local entrance(that is the maximum extent to which I have been able to delve into in a fast local and I am utterly unaware as to what goes on in those inexplicable interiors of the coach). Rows 1 and 6 always get their anteriors pinned unto the anterior portion of the seats and typically face sideways to the exit. These are the portions which represent the viscous drag exerted by the wall on the fluid: people in this case. As in the case of the fluid, these people also rarely move. They are the of the long distance endurance type. Row 2 is of people trying to get down at Jogeshwari. This layer of fluid(read people) is a bit more 'drag-free' than the 'back-benchers' and is comprised of medium distance voyagers. Normally this is the zone that I try to get myself into. And then zone 3 is comprised of fast moving fluid(again, read people) who are short distance travellers getting down at Bandra or Andheri. Zones 4 and 5 are same as zones 2 and 3 except that they are comprised of incoming fluid. My movement in the 'container' on a typical evening would start with entering zones 4 or 5, working my way through these zones, doing a back flip, slowly but steadily overcoming the fluid viscosity to enter zone 2 or 3, depending on my 'objective'. The best part is that while boarding or exiting the train, all you need to do is nothing, just go with the flow.

You also get subjected to different types of tension tests and torsion tests to determine tensile, fracture and torsion strengths, and experiments in engineering mechanics which subject a simply supported beam to different types of loading. I experienced this bending moment test in a Central local from Kanjur to Kurla. The journey was only for 10 minutes, but I felt and experienced each and every second tick by. One thing is for sure, now I know how those Mild Steel bars and beams feel!

In a nutshell, the constraints include oxygen (I always make it a point of thanking God for making me 181 cm tall; had I been a foot shorter, I would have died of CO2 poisoning), handrails and squarefoot area(I strongly believe that a FULLY loaded compartment has the highest population density in the universe). Mumbai's locals are amongst the most technologically advanced vehicles in the world in terms of space utilization. Ever heard of Pushpak Vimaan, the legendary flying vehicle in the Ramayan which had the unique feature of accommodating any number of people? No matter how many got in, there would always be space for one more. I'd bet my bottom dollar(rupee in this case) that Pushpak wasn't actually a Vimaan, it was an evolutionary forerunner of the present day Localosaurus Mumbainsis.

Now onto my fellow erythrocytes and leukocytes. Erythrocytes are those who never like to pick up fights (though there is actually enough space only to shout; no chance to move even your toe), adjusting and accommodating. Leukocytes are radicals who love to engage in verbal duels and the occasional thumb-fight(space-constraint). They are basically good 'cytes' but it is when a virus enters the system that they are at their most active, making life miserable for the virus. An example. You normally find many of these leukocytes in these long distance trains, especially the ones to Virar. Once in my nascent days as a 'local'ite, I made the gravest possible mistake of boarding a Virar local, intending to get off at Andheri. Immediately one of the leukocytes recognized me as a 'virus'. "Tere ko Andheri utarna hai??" And he laughed a mirthless laugh. And then he passed on the info to his fellow WBCs "Is ko Andheri utarna hai". "I'm a dead duck now" I thought. And then came the free flowing gaalis. Greatly damped and all swear words removed, the saraansh of their outrage was that for this blasphemous offense, I was not to be let down at Andheri. My ear drums were being bajaoed but I had no choice. And then I started to explain to them that I'm new to Mumbai and just about beginning to understand the 'code of the brethren' of the locals. I asked them to see reason; "Why would I board a Virar local else?" I argued. After hearing the accused, a bit of sanctity and quiet returned. And then one of the WBCs took pity on me, did a Lord Krishna, and started teaching me the local Gita: how to enter a train, how to get off a train, the limits of decency within a train, which trains to board, which ones never to board, and how to position yourself in the train in order to get off at your 'objective'. I heard all of this in typical Arjun style(as far as the space permitted). I had given up hope for Andheri and was already thinking of my travel plans from Borivali to Andheri(provided the 'mob' let me get down at Borivali). And then the final twist arrived. Vile Parle went by. All the WBCs did a U turn on their stance towards me, and actually asked(read pushed) everybody to make way for me to get down at Andheri. Once I had gotten down safely at Andheri, I could not help but give them a thumbs-up for their camaraderie. It was one of the biggest triumphs of my life! I had boarded a Virar local, got down at Andheri, and lived to tell the tale!

I have heard all kinds of topics being discussed in the dibbas, literally anything under the sun. I have heard expert opinions about how to change the fate of the Mumbai Indians("Wo saala Nel ko bech daalna chahiye"), 'animated' discussions between perfect strangers about their companies' pension benefits and accident relief schemes and policies, or plain simple banter; like I said, literally anything under the sun. Pity that I wasn't able to board the locals during the time of the Lehmann Bros collapse and the time when the world economies were being sucked into recession to hear the opinions of the 'local' Krugmans, Sens and Fishers, otherwise I would have been an expert in Depression Economics! I particularly enjoyed a conversation of 3 men who appeared like stock brokers, the way they talked. Started off with the typical Badhai Hos for the Sensex crossing 10000(10003, one person was saying emphatically), Nikkei crossing 8600, and some other bourses(some unheard of) breaching some other point barriers. And then a vivacious and heated discussion about the day's trading. "Wo saala short pe short ja raha tha, short pe short ja raha tha, to maine kya kiya? Maine socha b***c***, wo agar short jayega to mai kya kam hoon; maine bhi 20 taka badha diya, uske baad 15 taka badha diya, uske baad uski bolti band ho gai ha ha"(pardon the profanity, but it is just that without it there would be no spirit left in what he was saying). Now exactly why the other guy was going short and what did this guy increase, first by 20% and then by 15% to shut out the other guy was beyond my comprehension. But I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. One thing that I did understand was that this was one guy who knew what he was doing. "Fortune favours the extremely brave" I thought.

My fellow erythrocytes are of different types: there are these serious types who mind their own business and read their own newspaper(would you believe it, in a packed cabin with a temperature of 45C and a humidity of 223%!). There are these Radioheads, the bindaas types, who use Chinese mobiles, and flaunt the incredibly high sound that their mobiles can achieve by listening to FM khul ke. And then you have this funny type, jovial and take-it-easy kind of people, usually experienced campaigners. I once heard a guy saying to people who were trying to get in to a packed compartment "Andar bahut jagah hai bhai log, aa jao aa jao". The pity was that everybody getting in missed the sarcasm. Amidst all this chaos and kerfuffle, when the Akash ki Vani says "Pudheel Station Jogeshwari"(or Andheri btw)or when I see that hope of life, that manned rail crossing that heralds the end of my tribulations, I feel all my bodily functions returning to me after a state of temporary freeze. And once I get off the train, in my dishevelled shirt of course, I invariably feel a whiff of fresh air. I take it in for a full 2 seconds and proceed towards the overbridge.

The Juke Box

Right-ho!! Here's another scintillatingly spectacular foray of mine into Cyber-nature's megaphone!

Loads of strange things have been happening last Q3 and continuing into Q4...ha you must have by now recognized that I'm referring to a period of three months of a year as a 'quarter' ... 'Q' in fact! Actually that forms one of these weird things that I've been alluding to. Since there have been so many bizzare events unfurling in front of my eyeballs that its difficult not to miss anything and keep the eyes open simultaneously (Okay, I agree its a weird excuse), I have made a list of the top 10 'happenings' across both the Qs. So here goes the same (in no particular order, neither preference nor chronological)...

1. 26-11!!! And all the poltergeist-ish politcking!

2. Well, before I forget it, let me tell you that the editorial page in the Economic Times has become the thing that I look forward to the most every morning these days. No day ever seems complete without me 'absorbing' all its contents. Now if that ain't weird, what is??!???! Hey, I HATED that paper. I said it had yellowed pages; whenever someone said the content was good, I said the line spacing wasn't 'ergonomically suited' for reading with the eyes without using a Sherlock Holmes brand investigation lens. I'm not clear as to what exactly happened...the details are too sketchy...probably a recessionary spin off. But presently, I began to ADORE that paper!! So much so, that I actually 'missed' it when I went home for a fortnight recently!

3. I'm about to become Santa Claus! Don't believe it, do you? Recently a chocolate company asked me if I would work in its logistics function. Roughly translated and transliterated, that means I would be distributing chocolates for a living. Even more coarsely, bumpily and jaggedly (they are ALL synonyms of 'rough') translated and transliterated, that means Santa!

4. Roger Federer cried!!! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...waaaaaaaahaaahaaaaaa... and I tell you I didn't like it. Actually I've gotten sick of this pseudo-southpaw who says "el sol" for the sun, always sticking his foot out at the wrong time. And Fed-Ex just trips! I mean he is absolutely clueless!! I'll let you on to a secret...There are five stages to this 'always-losing-to-the-guy-you-hate-to-lose-to' syndrome. A) Shock B) Denial C) Distrust, where you argue and provide conclusive evidence that the 'foe' is doping, only to find out that they've changed the doping laws! Oops! D) Steely determination to get over it E) Getting on with it by doing other things in life. I'm at stage 5 as far as this Fed-Rafa tryst is concerned. Poor Fed still seems to be in stage 2. Take nothing away from Rafa though. Ok Fed, now let's move on to Roland 'Rafael' Garros...oops! Anyway, Vamos!!!

5. Edwin 'frozen butter fingers' van der Sar has gone over 20 hours without the 8 inch sphere crossing that white line behind his feet!!! Not that he's bad but surely he can't be better that the Great Dane can he?? But why do I care...Man Utd is still the greatest team in the world and Chelsea has become 'Hell-See'. The Scousers thought they had a shot at the title...they are red, but they aren't DEVILS you see! And what do I say of Arsenal; their arsenal has just fizzed out! Go United!!!

6. Barack H Obama, 'The Blessed One' has become the first 'black' President of the United States. That's what they're saying...I'm no fan of racism, and neither are 'they' purportedly..then why call him that??? Personally I feel he should be treated like any other prez before him...not the last three, they were too busy having affairs with Iraq, Monica, Afghanistan, Iraq (agonizingly) and almost Iran respectively in chronological order. Come to think of it, these were the three presidents that I was aware of from the time that I was born! I'm not in a position to comment on how 'they' treated their president before 1990 because either I wasn't born or I was too young to care about the nitty gritty of the treatment meted out to a typical US President! So, call him whatever you want but wait until he's done something, will ya?

7. ARR gets nominated for the Oscars neither for the greatest composition that he's ever done nor for the greatest film that I've watched! Its great to see ARR nominated and he deserves it but have the jury of the Oscars heard/heard of Delhi-6? Or RDB? Or Taal? Or Bombay? Dunno...speculation is rife :P

8. THE WORLD STILL HASN'T GOTTEN ITSELF OUT OF THIS RECESSION THINGY YETTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

9. Losstralia is down in the dumps Down Under!!! I hate to be a hater but this is a prospect that is worth drooling about! Symonds has gone a rung back in the evolutionary ladder and now he can't even utter the right words, Ponting's lost his marbles, Haddin cheats and wants to be apologized to, Clarke and Katich are kicking each other on the shins in the dressing room, whoaa...now that's one plateful of the most perfect chaos, ready to serve!!!

10. And all ye non believers beware! There ARE crocs in the Vihar Lake...So next time when you plan to go on a sunset sojourn on the rocky banks of the VL, watch out for the rocks...each one of them looks like a croc...or is it the other way around? Dunno...that's philosophy, and I'm not used to it. But DO take a cam!!!

Well, that's the way those 10 Cookies Crumbled !

There is God, and then...

There was a time when in order to just aspire to be in the Indian national cricket team, you either had to be from Bombay or you had to be Kapil Dev. It was during such a time that a young cub walked into the side from Bengal. Bengal? Why, Bengalis are supposed to dabble in arts, they are artistic people; Gurudev, Ashok Da, Kishore Da, all these are cases in point. But a cricketer from football-savvy Bengal? This was what people thought when one Sourav Ganguly walked into The Gabba the donning the Indian colours. Of course, he was promptly shown the way out once the series was over. Surely, a flash in the pan...

But then, the cub returned a 'white' tiger, and the roar was loud and clear. If debuting in Lords' is in itself, an achievement, then smashing a century in that very game is the stuff of dreams. Sourav was here to stay. Now, I haven't seen Graeme Pollock play (they say he was gifted with grace) and I have seen precious little footage of David Gower, but surely, there is no better sight in this beautiful game than a Sourav scorcher through extra cover! It's no wonder that even Walls spoke about how there was God on the offside, and then there was Sourav Ganguly!

They said he didn't know what 'leg-side' was, and though he had the gift of threading needles on the off side, he showed that he could deal adequately well with the on side as well. They said he looked ungainly in dealing with the short ball; and I am yet to see a person who claims not to be. Probably the great Viv Richards was a tad better at playing it. They said he was proud and arrogant; I would take a specific example of Andrew Flintoff, though there have been many others. Surely, this is most hypocritical from somebody who didn't have the comportment and 'Englishmmanly' conduct to dance half naked, twirling his shirt, after drawing (not even winning) a one day series in, if my memory doesn't deceive me, Chennai. That he got a fitting response from Sourav in the Home of Cricket, in his own backyard, is another thing. "You get back what you give" was what Sourav had opined of that incident. Well, he had more to get; from the point of being acclaimed as a national hero, he reached his nadir as Captain of England, with whitew'ashes'!

Which brings me to my next point of discussion about Sourav, captaincy. From the outset, there was one thing that I was sure about Dada's captaincy; he wasn't bringing any of his grace in batting into his captaincy. For Dada, captaincy meant playing hard and aggressive. Circumstances did little to frighten him. He looked the great Steve 'Iceman' Waugh in the eye and got the better of him and his team not once, but as if to reaffirm, twice. Pity that no other contemporary captain couldn't take the cue from him. Of course, many unbelievable performances helped him; Kolkata, Trent Bridge, Lords, Brisbane,Adelaide; but hey, is it a coincidence that many of such special performances have been concentrated during the period of Dada's captaincy? Small wonder that half the players in India's current squad owe their existence and subsistence to Dada! Not for nothing is he the most successful captain in Indian Cricketing history! So, every time somebody points a finger at him, I simply say "Beat that, dude"!

Still, he was always under scrutiny. Everybody (you know who) were waiting like vultures for a chance. And sure enough, they got their chance when he was unceremoniously dispatched from the squad. End of story? No, not yet, not if you claim to know Dada. Here was a chance to flaunt his never-say-die attitude and he wasn't letting go of it in a hurry. He was prepared to bend his back and work his way back.

"Mera naam Sourav Ganguly hai...bhule to nahi?"

And then came the Phoenix-ness. One more characteristic that 'they' said he didn't have,ending up in him coming out trumps. An interesting tidbit...from the time he has made his comeback into the Indian test team, he has been India's best and most consistent batsman with an average of over 50! I hope the point is taken now without argument. So, after fielding a volley of questions on VRS (it appears that the Laws of Conservation do not apply to the Indian media; they make up absolutely useless stuff out of thin air), when the great man, and I am sure any prudent person reading this would agree when I use this adjective for Dada, said "One more thing lads,...", people half knew what he was going to say. Again, perfect timing and a masterstroke! Midway in to his farewell series, it is no surprise that he is the prime contender for Player of the Series! That would certainly be the icing on a fantabulous cake, the greatest India has ever known, in many aspects.

So, on the offside, there is God, but then...

This Cookie won't Crumble so easily...

Loads of 'y's !

It is with all the randomness that I can muster beneath my scalp that I sit down (in my chair, rather) to write this...this...this thing (cannot think of anything better), thoughts swirling inside my head like the winds of the two great howling cyclones (or hurricanes for the benefit of my readers of the West (if I have one)), that I have physically been through. I just hope that these famished beasts of thoughts do not gobble up my already 'gazelle-ish' neurons. The simple fact that I am frequently putting sentences in parentheses and parentheses in parentheses should give you some idea of what I'm talking about.

Why, I never thought that I could be this fatalistic! For a bloke who says "making whatever I do as interesting as possible", such a defeatist attitude is a strict no-no. But lo! Behold the irony of the Maker! Here I am, hale and hearty, hard-boiled and sardonic at times, god-forsaken and pessimistic for a wee little bit of time. It is some wonder that all these antipodean qualities can co-exist 'harmonically' inside the body (head, in fact) of a homo sapien (no gender difference...see!). I still wonder how I can have so many 'enemies' coexisting within a sphere the size of a football and still it does not blast into smithereens because of the sheer pressure of what is inside! At which point it begins to dawn upon me that the brain that made the atomic bomb can withstand a blast a zillion times more powerful than the hydrogen bomb! And it also dawns upon me that there are a frillion (this is a new word, frillion > zillion) such blasts happening each and every time I do (or do not do) something. They are happening when the angel and the demon within me pop up on either side of me and tell us their contradictory opinions about what I should do. And each time the opinions collide, its a blast. But the best part is that it works! This brain thingy of mine (and yours too, thankfully) still works!

Then why? Why do we have such fantastic egotism? What makes us think that we are superior? Why can we not co-exist peacefully? Why do all the situations we get ourselves into are necessarily catch 22? Why does each and every one of us, in spite of having the same 3 pound appendage at the top, seem to behave in a helluva lot of different ways to each other? I agree that I am no good at answering these questions and I also concede that all the 'acts' that I have posed so 'question'ably, I have done them myself. I confess that I am no Mother Teresa to do whatever and more than whatever I preach, you will think I am an attention seeker who asks 'erudite' questions to show off, and I am not trying to change the world single handedly. Why, I am a person who hasn't asked even a single question when in class or when needed to, and here I am, in a sudden 'question'able burst, asking some crackpot old questions for which there may be no answers at all! I don't know. I do not wish to know. Those were meant to be rhetoric. To whom? To me, to you, and to each and every person on God's Green Earth. What if we all started asking these questions to ourselves? How would the world be then?

Would the Cookie Crumble any differently?

What is the world coming to ?

Hello World againnn!

Did any of you realize how fast the clocks are ticking? Remember that fateful day when the most powerful nation in the world was very rudely awoken from its deep slumber by a bunch of lunato sapiens who desperately wanted to break their earthly bondage for no reason other than probably extra cramming for the Day of Judgment? And in doing so, they forced 3000 other humans to do the same. More than 7 years have passed since the day that scarred the face of modern history but why does it still seem like yesterday? Why do those live pictures of CNN never seem to die in my mind?

This just goes to show that the world we live in is so inscrutably full of madness that it is impossible to identify what is rot from what is not. Recently I was watching a very interesting documentary about a little known effect called global dimming (follow the link to know more...but only after reading this post :P), which is actually cooling the earth. How is it caused? Primarily due to particulate emissions which are part and parcel of all greenhouse emissions. Right at this moment you will say "Hey wait a minute...Are you saying that pollution is actually good for the earth?!?!!". Well there are always two sides to a coin. We can either try and completely eliminate all GHG and particulate emissions and let this blue planet remain blue. Or we can go on 'proportionally' polluting the earth by emitting GHG and particulates in equivalent amounts so that global warming is 'offset' by global dimming (if we are confident enough that we can mutate into a new species that can live off a GHG-particulate mixture instead of Oxygen). The human mind thinks of infinite possibilities. Newsflash! We have just set off a time bomb and we happen to live on it! Small wonder then, that the world is really going zany!

And to think that all this research took a substantial shape on and because of that fateful day that I was alluding to earlier is part of the inextricable web of occurrences that certainly eludes the imagination of any living being. Whew, this is a world of double entendrés, contradictions and where the best player in the world somehow never gets the better of the second best! Really now, what is the world coming to?

I guess that is the way the Cookie Crumbles !

Too good to be true !!!

I have been quite used to treating the phrase 'Dream come true' with quite a lot of skepticism. Nah...this stuff is always for fairy tales...I used to say. But two thousand and eight years, eight months and sixteen days after Christ was supposedly born, my cynicism about the aforementioned phrase has been put to rest.

It was the annual convocation at our college. The usual affair, you say. But when I counter you by saying that present in the function was none other than the Missile Man of India, arguably the worthiest President of India, the great Visionary, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, you have no choice but to stand and stare, which was exactly what I did as a matter of fact. Here was a man who had given Wings of Fire and Ignited the Minds of millions of Indians, no more than a cricket pitch's length away from me. Truly too good to be true!

One look at him and you could sense his aura; even though he is 76 "orbits" old, he has a concoction of enthusiasm and energy that suffuses through the air like the deadliest of viruses. And then comes his speech like one of his 'Agni's, with a perfect trajectory. He unfolds his Vision for a 'Developed India', as he puts it, which is pretty lofty for the average human being, which you and I are. Simply speaking, it is simply incredible to have a vision like that. And just when I start having another bout of skepticism, this time, about the practicality of his Vision, the great man brings forth his implementation policy, the Road Map, as some would call it. He identifies five core areas for development viz., Agro Business, Infrastructure, IT and Health Services, Railways and Ship Building. As though by magic (or logic for him), he links the economic development of India to the Creative Leadership that we all need to be displaying once we pass out of our institute. It would be absolutely scandalous to let him down. And the Prestige of the magical oration is an oath that he makes us take, saying that we would always think of how much we can contribute to whatever task we do, never compromising with our ethics.

Later, when the great man was asked whether India's political leaders have the mettle to carry out his Vision, he simply laughed. Very suggestive, isn't it?

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles !

Of Heavens, Headbutts and Heavenly Paradoxes!!!

The Heavens have opened. It's raining the proverbial 'cats and dogs'. It's as though Poseidon had evaporated along with the sea and, in his famed fury, punched holes in the firmament above with his legendary trident, his minions hosing down thin streams of the purest form of Di-hydrogen Oxide through tufts of blackened cotton in the cerulean sky.

Impressive, one might say. Well, everything ought to fall in the right place at the right time; be it a festival, or a piece of jigsaw, or, you guessed it...the rain. Now, the world is a Divine Paradox. So there are ought to be places where instead of raining cats and dogs, thin wispy clouds do not think of sending down even the usual, normal drops of rain. It all boils down to 'survival of the fittest' in either of such extreme conditions. Enter Mr Darwin. "All species are in a state of continuous conflict with each other" he says. Hullo! That is really interesting! Does that mean that all our wonderful relationships are actually 'conflict'? Food for thought.

If you are really following the bread crumbs, you would realize that the world around you is a part of a great practical joke created by Him. One example. Imagine...the greatest tyrant of all time, the sternest autocrat ever, Adolf Hitler, was a vegan and was endowed with probably a greater oratory ability than any man in mankind's one million years on this blue planet! And now compare him to a scion of peace, truth and nonviolence, the Mahatma, who secretly ate meat in his childhood and felt as if his legs were made of marshmallow (courtesy JKR) every other time he was on stage! Paradoxical? You bet! Yes, probably it is also not advisable to try and bring out the wrong side of a person who is essentially a genius, a 'good' genius. The results would be catastrophic, like the atomic bomb and the Zidane headbutt.

Marco Materazzi would know!

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles !