Gabon

When I cleared immigration in the airport in 10 flat minutes I thought it was sheer luck. When the taxi took me through a modern highway, I thought it was probably the only good road in the country. When I checked into the plush hotel room, with a gorgeous view of the beach, I thought it was an anomaly. I kept waiting for my conformation biases to be validated. I was convinced I would see squalor and disorder and abject poverty and all the other sterotypes that you associate with Africa. I had probably even unconsciously prepared myself to be non-chalant about it and all. Libreville turned out to be a surprise. The city is far from crowded; it's population is probably a little over Jayanagar's. The roads are wide and well-maintained and the traffic discipline is way better than Bangalore's. Despite some very african traits, like a president who has been getting "elected" term after term for the last 40 years, several things about this city are very european, like the cost of living, and the custom of saying "bon jour" to everyone you make eye-contact with and sitting around in cafes in the evening. It was not even very unsafe, by the second evening I had stopped wearing the secret money pouch. Of course, having not left the borders of the capital, I can't claim insights into the country. Besides, I was there for just four days, and I spent most of that time inside a switch room (which for some reason was cold enough to be a cryogenics laboratory). But every evening I went on guided tours with this man, Van Damme (thanks to S for the nickname. I feel stupid about not coming up with it myself, though).


Not knowing French was a huge handicap. Even with Van Damme, who has a decent grasp of written english, it was a 4 day long dumb charades. Sign language is inadequate: On friday, we went to the gabonese equivalent of a dhaba with Van Damme's friends, and most jokes were lost in translation. I was the only one with a grim face while the others were flipping over something apparently funny. Sign language can be embarassing. You don't even want to know how one of the guys explained to me that a particular local fruit was good for the libido. But I most rued not knowing french during one of the guided tours in the evening, when Van Damme pointed at a building and said "moss kay". Realising I hadn't understood, he took his hands off the wheel, bent over and said "Allah akbar", while still driving at 60kmph on a not-so-straight road.

My Gabon travelogue would be incomplete without a mention of this fascinating chair in the switch room.


Photos here

Adventure ahead

The quality of my life at any given point can be judged by the amount of time I spend in front of the TV. And in what most certainly qualifies as a healthy sign, I haven't switched on my TV in the last few days. The highlight of my weekend has to be the cricket match that some of us desis played in the city park here in antwerp, watched by a lot of bewildered eyes. I was playing after more than a year and I can get pretty emotional about these things. The other major activity was to prepare for my first trip to Africa. I know it's the 21st century and I won't get to ask “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” on the banks of lake Tanganyika, but there is still a certain allure to Africa. There's also a tingling sensation in my tummy that comes from not knowing anything about Gabon except that it is ranked higher than India in the Fifa rankings (which is not saying much, because that's true about every country in the world except maybe the Vatican). There's also the matter of language. My french is pretty much restricted to "je ne parles pe la francais" , that I learnt recently and of course, "Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir" (who said you can't learn anything from Christina Aguilera?). Till I'm back, au revoir.

No boneless kababs this weekend

Random notes from my trip to Italy. Photos here.
Friday 14 Apr: Charleroi airport
Cheap Airlines are a boon to mankind. They help you save a lot of money, which you can then spend on more useful things; like on taxis that you are forced to hire to reach the godforsaken airports from which these cheap flights take off. I don't want to invite lawsuits from airline companies, so I won't name them here, but if you are booking on an airline that has the letters r,y,a,n,a,i,r in its name, then make sure you have the means to reach the airport too.

Do not travel with newly weds. If you must, then rehearse how to pretend to be oblivious to giggles and sweet nothings whispered in your vicinity.

Pisa




Florence


Stood 2 hours in the queue to see Michelangelo's David. Every second was worth it. The statue's majesty, size and the attention to detail; everything about it is simply breath taking. Although when the breath returned I was wondering why these mega males have such modest and unflattering...ahem... It wasn't even all that cold in Israel.


Rome
The crowd at the easter mass confirmed that the pope is the leading superstar of the world.


Fontana di Trevi is a nice little fountain very famous with the tourists.The legend here is that if you throw a coin into the pond you are bound to return to rome. The coin I threw 3 years ago seemed to have worked! You can also wish for something while throwing coins. I emptied all the change I had.



Venice


Quote of the day came rather early in the morning while we had hardly stepped out of the station. "What's the big deal about this place? I'm not impressed"
I guess Venice has that effect. If you are not fascinated by it's history, not amazed by its quirkiness or are not curious about a way of life that's unlike any other, then all you notice is the dirty corroded underbelly exposed during the low-tide and the poorly maintained buildings lining the canals. But you must agree that you haven't seen anything like it anywhere else.

Fighting the inertia

Ever since I got back from the coziest vacation of my life my mind has been a collection of a different thoughts all in brownian movement. It's the repeat performance of the oh-so-familiar standoff between a zillion voices. I waited long enough for order to be restored before I could get back to blogging, but it only got worse. What started off as a little reflection on where my life is headed ended up completely scrambling my sphagetti leaving me pissed off at the following things
- at myself, for taking such a SHORT vacation.
- at all the uncertainties that face me in my personal life, and mostly at myself for the whiner that they have turned me into.
- at NGO volunteers who volunteered just so they can say "I am a volunteer at an NGO". Worse still: volunteers who joined up to increase their chances of getting an admit to business schools.
- at myself, for not being able to figure out at 27, what I want to do with my life. And alternatively, I also feel pissed off about letting myself be pressured into finding a purpose in life.

Small hurrah
I had to come to europe to finally possess my first Satyajit Ray.

Crash

Watched Crash yesterday. Despite being set in a contrived coccoon where everyone is racist and/or is affected by racism, its a truly great film. Still in my humble opinion - rated highly by a demography that includes most people who answer to the name 'Deppe' - the academy got it wrong. Brokeback Mountain is superior. Forget who won the prize, has this been a good year for movies or what? Munich, Brokeback, Syriana, Crash....and I'm yet to watch Capote and Good Night and Good Luck.

Is it the smell of blood after banging my nose against the wall? Or is it the excitement of going to thavarumane thats blanking everything else? Or as traaks famously is believed to have quoted I've "officially run out of things to say". Break time. Good night and good luck.

Belgi Beer Roll

Some More Noise

The blogathon has been an eye-opener; actually its been ruder than that, a kick in the groin if you will. Although I suffered no myopia, the extent of sexual abuse that this has revealed has been shocking to me. People have raised questions each more disturbing than the previous, some have offered solutions each more unsatisfactory than the other. If nothing, an issue is more out in the open than it had been. Lots of people have been dragged out of oblivion and have been made to acknowledge a problem. That's a useful first step.

They brought back unpleasant memories. I remember P's anecdotes, about the guys in bus, about the guy who trailed her all the way home, about the lunatic at her swimming pool, and how she had to grow up so much faster than she needed to. I can never forget L's face after a guy had just flashed his equipment at her, while we were all having chaat at a crowded place. The guy had dared to do that to a girl who was with atleast half a dozen guys, a couple of whom could box a bull down, but she chose to feign non-chalance instead of creating a scene. However, the memory that gives me the greatest shivers are of H's troubled countenance when she told me about her cousin who had taken advantage of her when she was barely out of her childhood. What was scary about it was that the sonuvabitch had a girlfriend that he was going to marry very soon. My blood curdles when I recall how he bragged to us about how much he loved her. He now has a girl child of his own and I still get tempted to break his marriage by telling his wife about his exploits (yes plural!).

I now realise how much more shit girls have to deal with while growing up. But boys have stories to tell too, although the sissy-complex will make sure most guys will never reaveal theirs'. I can remember someone reached for V's(who was nearly 20 then) groin a couple of times in the bus and he shouted "Manushya na neenu !" (Are you human?) which made the scared pervert scoot off the bus. Once in middle school, after our evening sanskrit class, B and I were walking through cubbon park to our bus stop when a middle aged man on a kinetic stopped us, gave us a piece of paper and asked "Where's this address?". Before either of us looked at the paper, we spotted that the guy's fly was open and he had a hard-on. In the next few seconds that are still a little blur in my memory we must have run a super human distance, but I can still vividly remember it took a few days for both of us to be normal again. Cubbon park was a congregation of weirdos. There was another exhibitionist who would show up every now and then, whistle to attract our attention and then masturbate. We usually were in a group and we could laugh about it, but whenever I had to go there alone I couldn't help feel very edgy. But even at that age it was so much easier to be a guy. We employed the services of two of our school footballers (who had chest hair by the time they were 15) and they sought out the guy and, believe it or not, stoned him. Forget the barbarism of our justice, it was a great cathartic release that ensured we carried no scar. Besides that was the only way we could deal with it; in a soceity filled with people who are either prudes or perverts, there are not too many people you can talk to. I studied in one of the few schools which had formal sex-education but it came when most of us were ready for grandchildren. We had derived enough knowledge through porn by then, and the average kids' impressions on sexuality were irreversibly linked with surreptitiousness and dirtiness, as a direct result of which I recall getting sucked into the culture of sniggering when 'Menstrual Cycle' was mentioned in class. That kind of misguided self-education coupled with lack of opportunities to decently express sexuality explains the convoluted ideas of the indian male. The dhak-dhak videos are chartbusters (pun not intended) while The Bandit Queen gets mauled by the censor board , and you hear seetis during the scenes of the nude women in the concentration camp in Schindler's List.

A couple of years ago, with a minimal agenda, I travelled alone to Rajasthan to live out the romance of backpacking. When my sis heard about my plan she sighed that she would never be able to do anything like that and she wished she was a guy too. My first impulse was to tell her that she can do the same when she is old enough, but I snapped out of that illusion in a tick and we just shared a cynical smile. Let alone backpacking in her own country, she cannot even think about jogging in the neighbourhood park, late-nights in dhabas or 2AM meals at Parry's and so many other things that defined my college days. I won't hesitate before admitting that the odds are stacked against women in this soceity. I wish I didn't have to get all worked up when I couldn't pick up my sister from her tuition or feel the terrible unease when S has to take an auto through a godforsaken place. I wish this was a safer place for the people I love.

The noise

You know how they tell you that our land is 'saare jahaan se accha'?
And they tell you about the decadence of western civilisation, the loose morals and all?

Read this.
Just now, if any freakin' guy tries to tell me that my culture is superior, the nearest shovable thing goes up you know what. I feel that familiar mixture of helplessness and rage and shame and sense of dirtiness.

Shady, thanks for the link. Here's my share of the noise.

Skate

No, I don't skate on my butt! And the photo is as bad as it is because its hard to stabilise your camera when you are laughing as hard as Buana was when he shot this. Since I'm still a tyro and it had been over a month since I last set the ice on fire, I wasn't exactly a symbol of elegance during the first ten minutes. Despite George's puns on 'stand up comedy' and my performance being unanimously voted by the Buana family as the funniest show since the muppets, I had a great time.














The unintentional comedy continued at dinner when I was trying to make conversation, in flemish, with Buana's 9-yr old kid Ayla. Despite the laughs, I am extremely proud of myself for the way my flemish has improved. In fact Buana acknowledges that my colleagues shift to French when they have to bitch about me. There's a rich compliment hidden there!

Later over nightcap, the conversation turned to 'dreams'. It was striking how common the arriving-in-office-without-your-pants dream is. But George raised a very disturbing question when he asked me 'But you cycle to office; how come you don't realise it before?'. I've been afraid to sleep ever since.

I want ban on thermal underwear

Now that my tickets are booked and my trip back home is sniffing distance away, it feels not so unhealthy to become homesick. I realise how much I miss my folks, friends, filter coffee, masala dosas, pani puri and all. Ah hell, I never thought I'd say this, even uppittu! Besides, I need a break from
° the animal feed that I cook and pretend is food.
° the crummy furniture; especially the one chair that now sits in the farthest corner of the living room because it still reeks of Rajat Wagle's* hair oil.
° the godawful smell in our air-tight corridor during dinner time; mixture of aromas from one north indian, a vietnamese, an east european and two south indian kitchens.
° the tamilian neighbour who even now starts looking for the coin she never dropped when I enter her peripheral vision.
° sleep walking in the cold to catch the 6:40 train.
° monthly sunshine quotas of 60 hours.
° Sawa's squealing laughter in the train that makes you wish there was no humour in the world.
° the laundromat socialising.
° watching movies alone because my potential companions would rather save that money and watch seven and a half movies in India.

There! that felt good. Now I can't wait to go home and whine about the pollution and the mosquitoes and the crowds and the dirt. Its exactly this kind of pessimism that'll kill me in 2036.

* Name changed to prevent the kind of sticky situation I once found myself in, when another protagonist stumbled upon this page while ego-surfing. Sooner or later everyone does google his/her own name.

953031640 seconds to go...

According to this I die on May 13 2036. Satisfying to know I'll never have to put money into retirement plans. Don't bug me again dad.

Here's a selection of Bart Simpson's( darn, he'll still be 9 in 2036) chalkboard gags.

Cursive writing does not mean what I think it does
Grammar is not a time of waste.
A trained ape could not teach gym.
I cannot hire a substitute student.
I will not sleep through my education.
I will not fake my way through life
"Bart Bucks" are not legal tender
Funny noises are not funny
This punishment is not boring and pointless
Mud is not one of the 4 food groups
Adding "just kidding" doesn't make it okay to insult the Principal
The Good Humor man can only be pushed so far

I did not learn everything I need to know in kindergarten
I am not my long-lost twin
The truth is not out there
There was no Roman god named "Fartacus"
A trained ape could not teach gym
I will only provide a urine sample when asked
Sandwiches should not contain sand
A booger is not a bookmark
Teacher was not dumped -- it was mutual

I WILL NOT CUT CORNERS
" " " " " "
" " " " " "

Underwear should be worn on the inside
I do not have diplomatic immunity
There are plenty of businesses like show business
I do not have power of attorney over first graders
I am not a lean mean spitting machine
I was not the inspiration for "Kramer"

Paris

The first stop was the monument that's representative of the city itself. You'd think that something that's so overexposed would leave you knowing exactly what to expect, but the Eiffel Tower still takes your breath away. And the view from the top is something else!

I made all the predictable stops; Arc De Triomphe, La Defense, Champs Elysees and several McDonalds. Talking about predictability, staying at youth hostels always ends up being fun. After a day when you think you don't have a drop of energy left, its amazing how you can spend the late night drinking with people whose names you can't pronounce. It was well past two when we finally hit the sack.When I woke up, my dorm-mates had turned a little unfriendly. They accused me of snoring! I told them I was just practising the French 'R', but it's an untrusting world out there. Despite that little sore point, for all the budget travellers to Paris, Deppe recommends the Aloha hostel.

I spent almost the entire Sunday at the Louvre. Sure enough, I paid a visit to the most famous resident, Mona Lisa, and call me a philistine but my first impression was of disappointment ('Its so small'). If it wasn't for all that I've read about the painting, like the divine proportions, and the painting being an androgynous self-portrait, and if it wasn't for the tens of people jostling to get a closer look, or that it was the only item behind bullet proof glass, I'm sure I would have walked past it without a second look. I think I was subconsciously expecting the real painting to evoke the kind of jaw-dropping that the Sistine chapel, for instance, inspires. But despite her enigmatic smile and eyes that follow and all, all I could think was that the lady needs to enrol for aerobics. However I can now confirm what Dylan said "Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, you can tell from the way she smiles". That apart, I must say with a little help from the audio guide, the Louvre is mindblowingly engrossing.

More pictures.

God verdomme!

Right about now, my social life is about as happening as Mordechai Vanunu's. Being single on Feb 14th just rubs it in. How I long to be in Bangalore, celebrating Valentine's day the traditional Indian way; by burning greeting cards and terrorising wayward college kids. Man! Am I just being paranoid and delusional or has everything been falling apart over the last couple of weeks? I'm not just talking about all those embassies going up in smoke. For one, there's my job! Almost every day I forget to take my brain along to work and I do just fine. Its depressing. If I wasn't such a greedy pig I'd give away my salary in charity. What's scarier is that I did not suffer the weekend-is-over blues on Sunday evening. It is an all encompassing ennui. As a direct consequence I find myself suffering from a huge bout of blogger's block. So if you see this post end abruptly...

Stealth

Did you know that there is actually an award for the worst performances in Hollywod called the Razzies (motto- "Cremating Cinematic Crap"), which are handed out the day before the Oscars? Almost every Madonna movie wins one of these, Tom Cruise is an eternal favourite and Stallone is a confirmed hall-of-shamer with 8 wins.
However there are a couple of things wrong with the Razzies:
° They are not serious enough.
° The actors, bloody killjoys that they are, never come to collect them.

How do you, in fair justice, punish something as hideous as the movie ‘Stealth’? What the hell was Jamie Foxx thinking when he signed up for it? Did he lose a bet? Did they kidnap his mom and hold her at ransom? After Collateral and Jay, THIS???

Just like they appreciate an actor's performance by giving him/her an oscar, they should also symbolically rap them on the knuckle by taking away one for every two bad movies they make. Not unlike the negative marking scheme in NTSE. Even if that means that Adam Sandler(or Vin Diesel for that matter) would need a miracle, a brain-transplant and several births to break even.

the "save the earth" tag

Do everything mentioned here..
...and
* Avoid using polythene bags, humvees and nuclear weapons of all kinds. Trust me on the plastic bags. Its damn easy to refuse them.
* Turn veggie. 7 pounds of grain are needed to make a pound of beef! Stick to poultry if you need meat while you sip on Old Monk rum.
* Kill as many chinese medicine men as possible. The points you accumulate can be encashed for virgins in heaven. (That was a sad bait, but I've heard people still fall for that). Rule applies for Jap whalers too.
* You don't have to turn Amish or Hasidim, but there are some simple restraints that can help too. Turn down the room heater for instance. Most of the times sweaters do the job just as well.
* Make less childrens I say!

I'm yet to do the math on Toilet Paper vs Water. Results later.

the 'my music' tag

I terminate the tag chain right here woooohahahhaha.

I got tagged by - Jax.
Total volume of music on my computer: About 6 GB
Title & Artist that I last bought : X&Y - Coldplay.
Song I am playing right now : "Time Stands still" by Rush

Five+ Songs that I like/have been hooked onto
Janis Joplin - "Down on Me" (The woman's a genius.)
Porcupine Tree - "Drown With Me"
Cranberries - "Linger"
David Gray - "Babylon"
Van Halen - "Could This Be Magic".
Eric Clapton - "Let It Rain".
Morphine - "Scratch"
INXS - "Suicide Blonde"

TODO: title comes here

Just as the winter and it's short days were bringing in a mind-numbing monotony into my life, Gunds gave me an idea that has brightened up things a little; Swimming! I've always loved it and the only reason I don't do it more often in Bangalore is that I never managed to do a single length at the Sankey tank pool without killing a couple of kids. (At the risk of sounding like the typical irritating NRI) It's so bloody crowded! In stark contrast, the neighbourhood pool here is so much bigger and has so few people using it. The most notable thing is the unwritten lane-usage rules. The first lane is strictly for socialising housewives, happily exchanging gossip as they duck-paddle from end to end, while the eighth is for the pros who glide like porpoises. I made the fourth all my own.

Apart from inspiring me to start swimming again, Gunds also passed me some knowledge that has vastly improved the quality of my life; the recipes for Dal Tadka and Rajma Masala. If you are sneering at me or thinking that this qualifies me for the first lane of the swimming pool, I say 'to hell with you and the gender stereotypes'.

Now that I have firmly established my credentials as a guy free of all gender bias, allow me to betray you by talking about the australian open this time. Boy! Is the gender gap closing fast or what?

What can I say about the women’s champion except that she reminds me of a young Mrs. Doubtfire without her make-up and fake jobs. Don't we all expect a little feminine grace in the ladies' game?

Federer dude, you are *this* close to being my all time favourite tennis player. And I'm sure when you retire from the game you will make Sampras's records look pedestrian, but DO YOU REALLY HAVE TO CRY AFTER EVERY GRAND SLAM YOU WIN?

Brussels Auto Show

These pics are from the Brussels auto show. They were all there....
...from the beautiful ones that didn't even need the hot babes to stand around them and smile like retards to attract the crowds....














...to the plain vulgar! (I wish I could ride it once and then destroy it)













There was also a pretty nice exhibition of cars that appear in the Tintin comic series.

Deppe recommends

Song of the Month
At my former workplace, at exactly noon every single day, they switched on the music in the cafeteria to indicate that lunch was ready to be served. And on every single day during the 3 and a half long years I worked there they played the same tape over and over again: Kenny G. The sound of the sax got so strongly associated with thoughts of food, that if Pavlov hadn't discovered conditioned reflexes, I surely would have. But unlike the famous dog, I never salivated; the thought of the bad food just prompted some disconcerting peristalsis. I came to hate the sax. The instrument did redeem itself at the hands of the uncle who performs live at Java City every weekend. But a few weeks ago I heard Morphine and completely forgave the saxophone.Comprising of a drummer, a guy who plays two saxophones simultaneously and a vocalist with a powerful voice who plays a guitar with just two strings in it, they produce some simple but very distinctive sounds. Deppe especially recommends the song 'Scratch'.

Book of the month
Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. As the narrative effortlessly swings back and forth between a quaint fantasy world and a captivating latin american reality, you are lulled into a listening mode where you don't even notice realism being sacrificed. Six generations are chronicled in a little over 500 pages (Joyce wouldn't be able to explain an orgasm in that many !) so the book has a very racy pulse to it. The only piss-off is that all the characters are either called 'Arcadio' or 'Aureliano'. All of Aureliano's kids - 17 out of marriage and a couple legits- are all called Aurelianos. Its understandable if a psycho like Michael Jackson calls his kids Michaels I, II and III ( thats a true fact!), but in general I never understood the philosophy behind the father and son having the exact same name. Definitely made history confusing- I never could be sure if it was Louis the 14th or the 40th that was guillotined, and which of the King Georges was loony. Extremely irritating!

Movie of the Month
Jarhead is about the first of the gulf wars and about the frustrating inaction that the ground troops experienced; the first shots they fired were at the sky to celebrate victory. Evidently inspired by Full Metal Jacket, this movie has its moments too. Considering that his first movie was an all-time great (American Beauty) and his second(Road to perdition) was pretty nice too, this is relatively disappointing, but my verdict is still that Sam Mendes is yet to make a bad movie.

Krikket

Krishnamachari Srikkanth; remember the dashing opening batsman in the 80s, who retired from cricket to turn into a professional clown.
He's doing pretty well for himself. He is reportedly paid millions to appear in the DD shows. His primary function is to make Kapil Dev and Mohinder Amarnath look like first-class intellectuals in contrast.(When that ploy failed they hired Mandira Bedi and a dysfunctional wardrobe for additional distraction)

Now Kris is diversifying. Here he is stating the obvious in his blog in his inimitable style. Hats off to his knack for the mot juste and his usage of just the right adjective to bring out the subtle differences in meaning; notice the usage of "ordinary", "very ordinary" and "very very ordinary".

Whats next for Kris? A column in hindi? That should be fun!

I.S

Buana : "Charlie, what the hell happened there?"
Charles: "What? Where?"
Buana: "Come'on, you know it! You were hitting on I.S."
Charles: (with a sheepish grin) "So were you"
Buana: "But you are just back from your honeymoon. Up to a year after my wedding, I wouldn't have noticed if Helen of Troy walked past me naked"
Charles: "In my case I've been living with my girlfriend for 6 years. The only thing that changed after the wedding was that we can now interchange our cars and the insurance will still be valid"
D: (tongue in cheek) "You better be careful though! You have a lawyer-wife"
Charles: (points to the parapet on which they are sitting) "I tell you its the wailing wall; It brings out the worst in me. By the way, she seemed to be interested in you D. She went overboard to accomodate you in the conversation. Did you notice she answered all the dutch questions in English?"
D: "Now don't shift the spotlight. The topic is still Charles' shallowness. You seemed rather interested in the African girls too at lunch today."
Bauna: "Charlie has no chance with the African girls. The Wildebeest has them in his sights. But Isabel..."
Charles: "Come off it guys. Didn't you see all the other guys that were congregating around her? Face it fellas, women control us. Forget all that shit about penis-envy and them being being the weaker sex" (winks)
D: "I always knew it. Sigmund de FRAUD"

From a dog-eared page

It’s hard to point out my first memory of Kaushik, but I remember as kids in middle school, we were in a gang of inseparable buddies. We played a lot of hockey in our garden and while buDDha, dead-racket and the others would jump over the compound and run home as soon as they spotted my dad, Kaushik would stay and talk to him.

By the time we were in high school, though, we had chosen different friend circles. I fit in somewhere midway between the bullies and the nerds in the hierarchy. I had my own bunnies- Peshi (short for Patient) for instance, I had a patented process to darken one eye of his photo-sensitive glasses by keeping it in the sun while covering the other, so that he looked completely silly during the first period after lunch. But for the most part I was a semi-nerd who managed decent grades. Kaushik on the other hand had graduated into a porn-peddling, cigarette-smoking alpha male who could look an angry PT master in the eye. Yet in defiance of the rules of the peck order we still hung out a lot together, especially outside school hours, although I had to pretend that his old nick name ‘cow-shit’ never existed. We had a weird sort of equation. If I fouled him in a football match, he would make sure I fell atleast twice in that game and then would not talk to me for a couple of days, but things always returned to normal.

He just about scraped through high school, but in PU he underwent a metamorphosis that has us friends still discussing it with disbelief. While in school he had parasited on my help just before each of the exams, here he started outscoring me. He started fitting into my world better. I still remember that Charit, Kaushik and I won a maths quiz in PU, and with the 60Rs we won, we watched Timecop from the balcony and ate what was my first ever Hot Chocolate Fudge. That was a far cry from school, where he would have killed himself before being spotted anywhere close to the quiz club. The three of us took great pleasure in aggravating our tuition teacher who hated us simply because we were from St.Joseph’s. Yet, the one really common thing between us was our craze for cycling.

In the long break after CET and before our engineering classes started, we went on long cycling trips. I remember one particular 100 km trip that had me and the rest of the gang swearing we'd never touch our cycles again. Yet after the fatigue wore off, we were left with some strange sense of accomplishment that we both identified with; like we had just proved something really important to someone really consequential, and we were already planning the next one.

In engineering he seemed to regress to the bad kid that he was in school. He came down from Mysore once every month or so, and the conversations we had were all about his macho lifestyle dominated by his two favourite topics, booze and his bike. By the end of the fourth year we had drifted apart.

I have no doubt in my mind that he was stone drunk when he crashed his Yezdi into a pillar that July night. The accident killed him instantly.

He would have turned 27 today.

Astrology

I saw this ad for an sms horoscope service that tells you what you can expect for the day, for a modest price of 70 cents. Three years ago I would have spewed venom at the kind of people who would spend 37 Rs for a shitty generalisation! But recently I have grown a tolerance towards astrology for the following reasons...
1. A knowledge of the zodiac signs is important (almost as important as reading the Da Vinci code) to be socially accepted in youth circles of 21st century urban India. In fact, my ignorance in that respect, I think, is an important factor in my embarassingly low success rate with the oppoite sex.
2. Star Signs, someone once told me, are a good way to remember peoples' birthdays.
3. They are also important conversation and ice-breaking tools. This was my first conversation with P..
P: Hi. When's your birthday?
Me: September 8th
P: Oh you are a virgo? I HATE virgos!!
Me: (the blank look that usually accompanies moments when crisp retorts desert you)
4. Most importantly I believe astrology is a great art! No, I don't believe that the stars actually influence our lives, but I have great respect for people who can cut the world's population into 12 equal parts and compose drivel that makes each of the 6 billion people go 'Its SO true'. It's not easy! My mom and her twin were born just 2 minutes apart (btw, its their birthday today. happy 50th, ladies!) and I can't think of ONE common thing between them except that they are both flat-footed. On the other hand, Linda Goodman can write hundreds of pages accurately describing you (and the 499,999,999 other people that you share your zodiac sign with) simply based on the month you were born. That's rhetoric genius! They just seem to instictively know exactly what you want to hear. Notice how even the 'criticism' is designed to tug at your vanity, "Your perfectionist instincts can annoy people" or "You can hurt people with your brutal frankness". See that's smart! Show me a person who doesn't think he/she is frank and I'll show you a man who thinks he is NOT a good driver! And then there are things that seem like criticisms but are actually not-so-thinly-veiled compliments, like "You are an underachiever". Brilliant! Even Larry Page I'm sure believes he can achieve more. Remember even Oskar Schindler was dissatisifed that he saved only a thousand lives.
In the end, maybe the 70 cents is money well spent after all. Or maybe not. Ah hell! I can't decide. Indecisiveness - that's so typical Virgo!

When the levee breaks...

...by Led Zeppelin has to be the song that I've been in love with for the longest period of time. And I can't think of another cover that sounded SO MUCH better than the original.

Here's some interesting trivia about the song from a Wikipedia page that explains why this song sounds so different from anything else.

"The famous drum performance was actually recorded by placing the drumkit and drummer at the bottom of a stairwell at Headley Grange, and recording it using a microphone three stories above, giving the distinctive resonant but slightly muffled sound. "

"Jimmy Page recorded the harmonica part using the backward echo technique, putting the echo ahead of the sound when mixing, creating a unique effect."

BengaLooru

A lot has been written about what's really behind this renaming craze and I really have nothing new to add. Nevertheless, it gives me an excuse to do my bit of whining.

I admit I could be seeing it through hazy eyes, but Bangalore, as I remember was still a lazy quaint old town where it rained a lot but never seemed to bother us as much as it does now, and you could buy a kid a bicycle without halving his chances of reaching adulthood and traffic jams were things that happened on Mysore road. There were still trees on either side of most roads. I remember that when I was a kid and my folks had to go out, there was always some house in the street that I could WALK into. Everybody spoke Kannada, although even back then less than half of the bangaloreans had Kannada as their mother tongue. The anglo-indian teachers in my school spoke chaste, if a little accented, Kannada. Even in my engineering class, save a couple of girls who claimed that they didn't understand Kannada, this is was our unofficial language.

Fast forward a few years and the picture is breathtakingly different. I haven’t made eye contact with my neighbours let alone smile or talk to them. Seven years separate my sister and me, and all she speaks in her class is a weird form of English with Hindi constructs thrown in liberally. "Vaise, as I was saying ki the movie is jhakaas...". Even the clerk at coffee day, who has Gowribidanur written all over his face, won't condescend to speak his own tongue.

So you have a Bangalore that is polarized into two groups. On the one hand you have the localites who can’t get over the nostalgia constipation, and in fairness are probably getting a little too xenophobic. We feel such a threat to our identity that we have to resort to bullying (like having the boards on the buses only in kannada or proposing a name that’s hard for the foreign tongue to pronounce) to get noticed. The less assertive folks like my parents have disowned this city and are looking forward to settling down in a place like Mysore. On the other hand you have the new arrivals who can’t seem to garner more respect for this city than they would for a brothel. “Let me be done with what I came here for and get out fast” seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Not that I suffer from any parochial angst, but just as a small display of their willingness to integrate, I would like to see a few more people going beyond the standard vocabulary that includes not more than 10 words (and that’s counting 'talk maadi' and 'drive maadi' as two separate verbs. I've even heard one dodo say 'do maadi').

And residing over the chaotic divisions is a sloth, the Chief Thief who was born without a neck and a brain, and is now puppeteered by another a**hole who looks exactly like a raagi mudde. Between them, they’ll have us believe that greater than all the problems we face here, is the crusade that they are trying to gear up support for. Bangalore or BengaLooru? Who the f*** cares!

2006

Happy new year to all the readers. I mean to both of you ;-)


Must say my new year's eve was pretty eventful. I planned to 'warm up' for the evening with what has become an obsession to me these days, ice-skating. The plan went tragically wrong when I fell into a little puddle at the edge of the rink and got my already inadequate winter clothing wet. I was trying the dangerous and difficult maneouver, stopping! Spent the next couple of hours next to a metal basket of hot coal while watching amateur bands play some rock music. Just before midnight I went to the banks of the river Schelde to witness the famous fireworks. While waiting for the fireworks to begin, I spent a dangerously pensive half hour resisting the urge to retrospect on a confusing past year. Instead I distracted myself with thoughts on issues that really mattered in the cosmic scheme of things (like will my shivering stop? Will I make it home alive?). Funnily amidst the sea of humanity (tens of thousands of people had gathered there) and in the middle of the spectacular fireworks that had even the most pathetically drunk folks in the crowd completely captivated, I had my first ever attack of home-sickness. In the few minutes that it lasted, I suddenly wanted to be in bangalore, even if it meant to stay at home and watch the stupid new year specials on Zee TV with the folks. A conclusive proof of the home-sickness was that I accosted a bunch of desis that I saw at the place and made conversation.Watched some figure-skating displays before getting back home. The journey was slowed down by the crowds that poured out of the pubs and eagerly wished everybody a 'gelukkig nieuw jaar' ( atleast the ones that didn't collapse on the pavements). And in what is turning out to be a creepy ritual; I spent my first few minutes at home almost devotionally attached to my room heater till my blood thawed. I desperately need to do some shopping!

some pictures.

Looking back - 1

One of my resolutions for 2005 was to learn a new language. German is not exactly the sweetest tongue around. And lets face it, the people associated with the language haven't been the best accumulators of good press! But still, having mastered a full sentence in German - "umsteigen Züge linien sieben und dreißig..." that I picked from the tram announcer in Vienna- it was my natural choice.

My first impression from the class was the realisation that I had finally reached a stage in life when my teachers are going to be younger than me. And it took a couple of weeks to not get startled by the harshness of the language. Gesundheit sounded like I was being reprimanded for sneezing. And try saying 'Feuerschutztür' without sounding rude and without getting some spittle out. But later, it turned out to be a fantastic four months, although in the end we went only as far as to be able to order a salami sandwich with cheese in it (and even that little knowledge is getting displaced by the flemish that I'm trying to learn here). Learning the language turned out to be a great pretext to satisfy my need to have a few non-engineer friends; this bunch at the class was a great mix, a doctor, a jeweller, students, an artist, a pub-keeper-turned-salesman etc. Despite the forbiddingly complicated grammar, learning the language itself had its kick too. I picked up a fetish to form big words: Lieblingstischtennisspielerinnen (favourite female table tennis player) is one word! And Deutsch has some wonderfully expressive words; Weltschmerz, Zeitgeist, Wanderlust and my favourite of all, Schadenfreude (who else but the Germans could come up with both the word and the idea!;-) ). My best memories were all from outside class though; classic rock in Vishal's den, Kunal's psychological warfare while playing Pictionary over beer and then the rain-trek at coorg and later Pictonary over kichdi at Ankura's, the Bangalorean vs Ausländer duels, watching Satya lose her mind and laugh hysterically after a glass of wine and the farewell Sangrias.

Christmas in Amsterdam

Dames en Heren,welkom in Amsterdam. It don't matter whether you are a nerdy artsy-fartsy soul looking to unravel the works of the impressionist masters or just a loose cannon intent on debauchery or anyone in between. There's something here for everyone. Some pictures.

Counsellors

You get the best advice from psychos, most often for the price of a rasagulla.

This week, psychos of another kind contributed too on a theme that had bothered me; the following are from the 'Pool Guy' episode from Seinfeld

"This world here, this is George's sanctuary. If Susan comes into contact with this world, his worlds collide!"
- Kramer

"You have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world then George Costanza as you know him ceases to exist. You see, right now I have Relationship George. But there is also Independent George. That's the George you know, the George you grew up with... Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George."
"I love that George."
"Me too, and he's dying. If Relationship George walks through this door, he will kill Independent George. A George divided against itself cannot stand!"
- George and Jerry

Post aphees post

(Soliloquy in paranthesis)
"Oh we had a tough time in Mumbai"
"yeah?"
"We went to the central post office to send a postcard to the family and that place didn't have postcards! Strange, no?"
"naah not to me. That's the first thing we are taught at school. [In kindergarten-school-teacher-falsetto] Children, don't expect postcards in the post office"
frown!
"(you could laugh for courtesy)"
"And they don't even sell envelopes!"
"hmm"
"And we finally found some envelopes at a Tabak shop. If a 4ftx4ft shop can stock envelopes then surely the post office can too!"
"haha hmm"
"Atleast they sell stamps in the post office, but guess what?"
"(judging by the gravity on your face your modesty got outraged by a burly postal worker!) hmmm?"
"You can't just lick the back of the stamps to paste them. You have to use glue"
"hmmm (yawn)"
"And then I had to spread the glue with my finger and I made a mess of the envelope and my hands! It was crazy"
"hmmm"
"I mean there are two hundred people working there and not one of them bothered to help us"
"Hey who do you think is greater, Eddie Merckx or Lance Armstrong?"
"Oh don't believe the Americans; they'll tell you anything!!!"
"(phew)"