they said… "Hypocrites", I say…
Well how can one be happy when his butt is stinging and he cannot sit anywhere, with loads of yolk running over his hair (I have heard of egg in shampoo, but this is not to my liking) and cold water running along your back…
Yes… my birthday was on the 27th of this month… well actually it should have been 26th, but due to our highly efficient data recording services, my birthday was decided by the government of India as the 27th. (But my governing planets and lucky numbers and gemstones are those of 26th and that is another sob story.) Has that changed the world’s perception about me… I am not a great soul for whom the stars shone down on the birth night… nor was I born with some number tattooed on my head… I was not a Siamese twin… I was not one of the bi-quadruplets of genetic multiples… I was not born during a tsunami or a flood or under any major natural disaster and survived it… nor was I born under some great time of the economic boom and prosperity… I was a simple normal usual healthy child. So what is the point of celebrating my birthday or rather what is wrong with not celebrating my birthday?
I have outgrown my fascination for cutting cakes and having parties ever since I was 5 and learnt that I could say no without getting punished. What exactly is the point of paying some 200 bucks for a pineapple cake that was just eaten in those days and today just smeared around… cannot people just go about and buy a slice of cake whenever they wanted it? They would just spend a fraction of the money they spent for that worthless present… Or littering the house with all that confetti and burst balloons… that is something I felt sorry for the person who usually cleaned up – usually my mom… and since it was my mom, I was obliged to indulge in the hard work too…
What is so great about remembering birthdays… it only represents ominous hypocrisy to me… it reminds you that you are one year older and one step closer to the end of your life… it reminds you of those kiddish joys that you enjoyed doing which you have to now stop doing because you have “mentally matured”… you are supposed to shoulder some responsibility, something that people would never trust you with when you ask to be trusted… it brings an empty hollow wish from some people who never even acknowledge your presence on most days… it puts your best friends at a discomfort for they have to behave differently during those few minutes in which you gain the importance – a glaring difference from being taken for granted to being treated special… it puts you at a major discomfort when asked for a treat and you think of the shock your dad is going to have when he sees your credit card bill… so what is good about birthdays…
Let alone my birthday… what is wrong with forgetting other’s birthdays… every year I forget some birthdays, and some I do remember… it is not that I cannot recall my mom’s date of birth… it is just that on that particular day I forget to wish her… does that mean that I love my mom less… or does it mean that all the love I show for her is a lie all because I forgot to wish her on the birthday? I have forgotten the birthdays of some of my closest friends… I have lots of friends, who are really great friends, but forgot my birthday… now are they my enemies? And those friends who kicked me after that treat – well with friends like these who needs enemies?
Should anyone remember my birthday? I ask why? I am not a great freedom fighter nor have I done some great deed during some big disaster… I don’t want that kind of fame either and most of the birthdays that are remembered are for exaggerated deeds – October2, September5… no one remembers small accomplishments (I don’t think we celebrate Narayanmurthy’s or Azim Premji’s or Lakshmi Mittal’s birthdays on a national scale).
So how do I like my birthday being celebrated? During my engineering college I was thankful that I was born on this day as it usually fell during the vacations… there was no mercy shown… and the more popular you were the greater was the “attention” "showered" on you… somehow after managing to escape the wham-bam logic in engineering I landed up in a great big company that claimed that it loved its employees… what they actually had done was gotten the receptionist’s mail id configured to some cheap birthday reminder service and allocated a budget for some pineapple cake… so every day there would be some pineapple cake for the cafeteria guys to clean up and the rest of the year that employee would be treated like horse shit (not cow shit as that is sometimes considered useful)… after all this ways of celebrated birthdays, I just want the anonymity of 364 days to remain on this particular day too (as it is too much to ask for the same attention for all 365 - too much pineapple cake)…
Last year nature was kind to me, though I am sorry for all those it has been unkind to… People were so preoccupied that they were able to forget poor lucky me… But during this year it was not to be… nature forgot her deadline and even though there was something to keep them occupied, my friends remembered it and they said better late than never… though there were some good things that happened to stop it like power cuts and a delayed return from a movie, it was still not forgotten… my birthday "bash" happened at 2am on the 28th… 2 days after I was actually born, and after 26 hours of delayed honor… I was suspended by some arms and then there was this funny feeling of levitation after a few whams… it went on like this – a hazy looking leg shooting up and WHAM… lost count after that floating feeling and finally when I was let off, I was feeling as if I had been stealing in the arab countries and been whipped and flogged in public… luckily due to the early morning time, all the eggs were locked up…
It was not over… I was asked to cut a cake – a thick chocolaty one – but that was not to be eaten, at least by me… I was smeared head to foot with chocolate… I have heard of sexy relaxing chocolate baths that were in vogue today… but in no way was this one sexy or fashionable…
Thanks guys for breaking me into the tradition… and thanks for the birthday that I will probably remember for time to come…
PS. Sorry SRK for plagiarizing the title… the least I could do to repay a debt…
free speech for the dumb
This is not a post on the freedom of speech in India… but a feeling expressed by “dumb” as in “those who don’t speak out/up” people like me… those who found a way to express their thoughts and feelings through another medium… those peace-loving citizens who found a way of raising social issues without kindling a revolt… one of those bloody bloggers…
A couple of days after the Mumbai blasts I had put up something and wanted some close friends to read it (yes, it was a mutual agreement – u read my blog and I will read yours). But then I got some complaints that it is not accessible… I thought it was a problem as usual with our network that had a infinite number of problem points and asked them to keep trying silently cursing the poor committee in-charge of it. But even after about 24hrs when nobody claimed responsibility (a “we donno” mail which was usually sent by the committee was missing too…) it started worrying me… I started sending out test cases to my friends across the globe… result I found was that it was blocked only in India and only this domain… a little bit of research and some confirmed rumors helped me understand the reality – the DoT of India had exorcised its rights… to block the domains… and in turn the freedom of speech and expression…
Me and a few of my scratch-each-others-backs friends were thoroughly disappointed – we had just begun our writing careers… we wanted to bring in more itchy-scratchy friends… we had begun a new initiative at SPAMming and had many plans for the blogs in the future… all would go unnoticed as our friends in India (a little arm twisting made them our best friends and regular readers) would not be able to read it… Of course the DoT didn’t realize that we could still post but only the viewing was blocked… that brings us to the next paragraph…
Now this word dumb can be used in another context as well… the dictionary says it also means lacking intellectual acuity… now is that the word I should use for the IT law enforcers in the country ? A country which has suddenly shot into the limelight because of the numerous IT companies that have sprung up… a country that prides itself that a major chunk of its GDP comes from IT exports… a country that prides itself on its intellectual capital based on which it has built its IT outsourcing concept… a country that boasts of the IT infrastructure setup by the many service providers… a country whose IT law enforcers lack the acuity to discern the perpetrators of the IT crime and the innocent… a country whose IT law enforcers lack the common sense on how to punish the cyber criminals…
A few days back in Tamilnadu (and a few other states too probably) a huge quantity of pirated stuff in the form of CDs were seized and an elephant was made to walk over the pile… I fail to understand the elephant part… is it to prove that lord Ganesha in the form of the elephant disapproves piracy and we should take it as a will of god to buy the original stuff ? what do we do for Christians? nail all the CDs on a cross? And about Muslims? I seriously can’t think of any punishment there… or maybe I am wrong about the religious bent to it… maybe it was because the then chief minister could not herself walk over the pile and she sent a “representative” instead… but the big Q – was piracy stopped? It has returned in quite a short while…
I read a news report (can’t exactly remember the source), but it goes something like this… there is some guy who had some objectionable material probably porn, (I don’t think anybody would be stupid enough to have defense secrets on his comp for so long as the police to arrive… well come on guys, as soon as he gets the blueprints probably they are gone onsite already and his swiss account is already credited unless he is on a monthly payroll)… coming back to the case, the police when they sniffed out this guy, they immediately launched an offensive and seized his monitors (and left his cpu and hard disks)… man that really crippled the “criminal”… well that reminds me of a surd joke, but let us not get into the details, I have more to write…
Or how about this recent case of baazee when the CEO was arrested for allegedly selling porno material in the form of the school mms clip… the allegation was not to save that poor girl’s dignity or anything altruistic or moral… it was about baazee selling porno stuff… and how is the CEO liable to be arrested? He could probably take corrective action, but arresting him? How does this serve any purpose? Talk about understanding business models and laws… the mms clip is after all an mms clip… it will continue on its circulation via the most undetectable medium – the mms way… how does arresting the CEO help in curbing pornography circulation in India?
Well coming to the principal issue that triggered this outburst – why block blogspot domain? There were some theories put forth by the scratchy club when we were discussing what to do next… some of us even considered migrating the entire set of posts to some other blog sites… that set us thinking… all the other sites were working? Only blogspot domain was not opening up! Was it to promote the Indian blog sites? Like the Indian government slaps restrictions on MNCs from doing business in India so that it can force people to buy the products from the Indian industries. Well the Indian blogs were as comparable to blogspot as were a broken down old car and a brand new Mercedes… the user interface is plain damn shitty…
Now there could be another reason – the terrorists were using these blogs as a free medium to pass information in the form of code… well come on man… which terrorist organization has a blog? Or why should a terrorist go through all the rigmaroles of writing blogs in code? Anybody could do anything in India – it just won’t get noticed… man any terrorist could carry a shipment of arms through our railways or roadways or seaways… come on guys we have too many people that 1 or 2 extra, normally dressed terrorists would never get noticed anyways… they would just blend in with their bag of bombs with the shopping crowd…
Or was it that these blogs were raising some sort of upheaval to overthrow the government by organizing a coup – inspired with blog posts… wow that sounds like a new plot for a rang-de-basanti types movie… straight from the heart… can’t wait to see one… hey come on man, people don’t get aroused (I mean angry uprising) by the injustice meted out to them in every walk of life but would get inspired by the writings on some obscure blog?
Or was there was some objectionable content on the blogs… like a cartoon depicting something that was extremely funny about some religious icon… and are these cartoons only on these blogs… if so then there are two things to learn from this – 1) bloggers are damn creative and innovative and (2) they are not afraid to express their views. And does blocking these blogs avoid the spread of such “malicious” content? For all you know the stuff is already safely stored away in the infinite inboxes around the world (in fact the storage space they provide of the order of GBs even help people to store complete movies). And doesn’t blocking these stuff or trying to police the internet against the very principles that the entity called the internet stands for? It is an uncontrolled growth and a treasure trove of information… and it is that way because there is no restriction. I personally believe that if the internet is going to be shut down, you better be careful of the cascading effect it will have in shutting down b-schools too…
Well anyways, all that is just an excuse for sighting aliens… you know the elaborate stories spun by the US agencies that take care of people who sight alien spacecrafts or have an interaction with aliens… they give weird reasons to them saying that it was an experimental weather balloon, or a planet… the truth is probably what ET put up in the bottom of their front page a couple of days back… some 17 blogs were named heretical and blocked… now call it stupidity or callousness or autocracy the whole blogspot domain used by above 40,000 active regular users was blocked… and to think that these 17 people would not be able to cause any more harm – they would just open a new blog in another name… and they could still edit their posts remember… and in fact the worst blow for this government initiative was that a leading national daily published an article teaching people how to circumvent these bans…
Come to think of it, how many such bans actually work? Right from movies to drugs, whenever there is a restriction, people always find a way out. In fact it increases the demand for these restricted products and services… Curiosity killed the “good intentions” of the government…
PS. If anybody has a list of those 17 sites, please send them to me… I would love to read them.
A couple of days after the Mumbai blasts I had put up something and wanted some close friends to read it (yes, it was a mutual agreement – u read my blog and I will read yours). But then I got some complaints that it is not accessible… I thought it was a problem as usual with our network that had a infinite number of problem points and asked them to keep trying silently cursing the poor committee in-charge of it. But even after about 24hrs when nobody claimed responsibility (a “we donno” mail which was usually sent by the committee was missing too…) it started worrying me… I started sending out test cases to my friends across the globe… result I found was that it was blocked only in India and only this domain… a little bit of research and some confirmed rumors helped me understand the reality – the DoT of India had exorcised its rights… to block the domains… and in turn the freedom of speech and expression…
Me and a few of my scratch-each-others-backs friends were thoroughly disappointed – we had just begun our writing careers… we wanted to bring in more itchy-scratchy friends… we had begun a new initiative at SPAMming and had many plans for the blogs in the future… all would go unnoticed as our friends in India (a little arm twisting made them our best friends and regular readers) would not be able to read it… Of course the DoT didn’t realize that we could still post but only the viewing was blocked… that brings us to the next paragraph…
Now this word dumb can be used in another context as well… the dictionary says it also means lacking intellectual acuity… now is that the word I should use for the IT law enforcers in the country ? A country which has suddenly shot into the limelight because of the numerous IT companies that have sprung up… a country that prides itself that a major chunk of its GDP comes from IT exports… a country that prides itself on its intellectual capital based on which it has built its IT outsourcing concept… a country that boasts of the IT infrastructure setup by the many service providers… a country whose IT law enforcers lack the acuity to discern the perpetrators of the IT crime and the innocent… a country whose IT law enforcers lack the common sense on how to punish the cyber criminals…
A few days back in Tamilnadu (and a few other states too probably) a huge quantity of pirated stuff in the form of CDs were seized and an elephant was made to walk over the pile… I fail to understand the elephant part… is it to prove that lord Ganesha in the form of the elephant disapproves piracy and we should take it as a will of god to buy the original stuff ? what do we do for Christians? nail all the CDs on a cross? And about Muslims? I seriously can’t think of any punishment there… or maybe I am wrong about the religious bent to it… maybe it was because the then chief minister could not herself walk over the pile and she sent a “representative” instead… but the big Q – was piracy stopped? It has returned in quite a short while…
I read a news report (can’t exactly remember the source), but it goes something like this… there is some guy who had some objectionable material probably porn, (I don’t think anybody would be stupid enough to have defense secrets on his comp for so long as the police to arrive… well come on guys, as soon as he gets the blueprints probably they are gone onsite already and his swiss account is already credited unless he is on a monthly payroll)… coming back to the case, the police when they sniffed out this guy, they immediately launched an offensive and seized his monitors (and left his cpu and hard disks)… man that really crippled the “criminal”… well that reminds me of a surd joke, but let us not get into the details, I have more to write…
Or how about this recent case of baazee when the CEO was arrested for allegedly selling porno material in the form of the school mms clip… the allegation was not to save that poor girl’s dignity or anything altruistic or moral… it was about baazee selling porno stuff… and how is the CEO liable to be arrested? He could probably take corrective action, but arresting him? How does this serve any purpose? Talk about understanding business models and laws… the mms clip is after all an mms clip… it will continue on its circulation via the most undetectable medium – the mms way… how does arresting the CEO help in curbing pornography circulation in India?
Well coming to the principal issue that triggered this outburst – why block blogspot domain? There were some theories put forth by the scratchy club when we were discussing what to do next… some of us even considered migrating the entire set of posts to some other blog sites… that set us thinking… all the other sites were working? Only blogspot domain was not opening up! Was it to promote the Indian blog sites? Like the Indian government slaps restrictions on MNCs from doing business in India so that it can force people to buy the products from the Indian industries. Well the Indian blogs were as comparable to blogspot as were a broken down old car and a brand new Mercedes… the user interface is plain damn shitty…
Now there could be another reason – the terrorists were using these blogs as a free medium to pass information in the form of code… well come on man… which terrorist organization has a blog? Or why should a terrorist go through all the rigmaroles of writing blogs in code? Anybody could do anything in India – it just won’t get noticed… man any terrorist could carry a shipment of arms through our railways or roadways or seaways… come on guys we have too many people that 1 or 2 extra, normally dressed terrorists would never get noticed anyways… they would just blend in with their bag of bombs with the shopping crowd…
Or was it that these blogs were raising some sort of upheaval to overthrow the government by organizing a coup – inspired with blog posts… wow that sounds like a new plot for a rang-de-basanti types movie… straight from the heart… can’t wait to see one… hey come on man, people don’t get aroused (I mean angry uprising) by the injustice meted out to them in every walk of life but would get inspired by the writings on some obscure blog?
Or was there was some objectionable content on the blogs… like a cartoon depicting something that was extremely funny about some religious icon… and are these cartoons only on these blogs… if so then there are two things to learn from this – 1) bloggers are damn creative and innovative and (2) they are not afraid to express their views. And does blocking these blogs avoid the spread of such “malicious” content? For all you know the stuff is already safely stored away in the infinite inboxes around the world (in fact the storage space they provide of the order of GBs even help people to store complete movies). And doesn’t blocking these stuff or trying to police the internet against the very principles that the entity called the internet stands for? It is an uncontrolled growth and a treasure trove of information… and it is that way because there is no restriction. I personally believe that if the internet is going to be shut down, you better be careful of the cascading effect it will have in shutting down b-schools too…
Well anyways, all that is just an excuse for sighting aliens… you know the elaborate stories spun by the US agencies that take care of people who sight alien spacecrafts or have an interaction with aliens… they give weird reasons to them saying that it was an experimental weather balloon, or a planet… the truth is probably what ET put up in the bottom of their front page a couple of days back… some 17 blogs were named heretical and blocked… now call it stupidity or callousness or autocracy the whole blogspot domain used by above 40,000 active regular users was blocked… and to think that these 17 people would not be able to cause any more harm – they would just open a new blog in another name… and they could still edit their posts remember… and in fact the worst blow for this government initiative was that a leading national daily published an article teaching people how to circumvent these bans…
Come to think of it, how many such bans actually work? Right from movies to drugs, whenever there is a restriction, people always find a way out. In fact it increases the demand for these restricted products and services… Curiosity killed the “good intentions” of the government…
PS. If anybody has a list of those 17 sites, please send them to me… I would love to read them.
the learning curved
After reading a post of mine someone asked me whether I really believed in the concept of learning from other’s mistakes in a mba… well there cannot be a better person for the job… or maybe there are more like me out there. In fact I was following this principle even before an mba – that is probably the reason I did my engineering, don’t smoke, don’t have a girlfriend, am still a virgin and I am doing an mba.
In fact I learn only from others mistakes, I have begun to forget that there are some learnings from what they do right too…
This is maybe why I never take risks. I have read about people who have taken risks and done great and about people who have taken risks and have gotten screwed. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and keeps the others just for the sake of GK.
This is maybe why I never speak up… I have seen people voice their opinions against things that are against their principles and get respected for it and I have seen people voice their opinions against things that are against their principles and get ridiculed for it. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and keeps me reminded to keep my mouth shut even if my heart gets torn to shreds.
This is maybe the reason I don’t try to make new friends too easily… I have seen people start off by forcing themselves onto groups and people they know nothing about and get accepted as part of the gang and I have seen people start off by forcing themselves onto groups and people they know nothing about and get rejected and dejected. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and keeps me reminded to approach new people with caution and not to open up.
This is maybe the reason why I don’t have faith in the unknown angels… I have seen people put in too much expectation in divinity and fate and get rewarded and I have seen people put in too much expectation in divinity and fate and go bankrupt and lose everything. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and makes me paranoid about expected outcomes and gives me a pessimist tag.
This is maybe the reason I stick to conformity and not try something new… I have seen people doing something outrageous like humorous presentations or even proposing to the girl they love and being applauded and I have seen people doing something outrageous like humorous presentations or even proposing to the girl they love and getting the spirit beaten out of them. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and makes me a coward constantly afraid to step out of the boundaries defined.
I have learnt so much from other’s mistakes that I am beginning to believe that it was all a big mistake…
In fact I learn only from others mistakes, I have begun to forget that there are some learnings from what they do right too…
This is maybe why I never take risks. I have read about people who have taken risks and done great and about people who have taken risks and have gotten screwed. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and keeps the others just for the sake of GK.
This is maybe why I never speak up… I have seen people voice their opinions against things that are against their principles and get respected for it and I have seen people voice their opinions against things that are against their principles and get ridiculed for it. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and keeps me reminded to keep my mouth shut even if my heart gets torn to shreds.
This is maybe the reason I don’t try to make new friends too easily… I have seen people start off by forcing themselves onto groups and people they know nothing about and get accepted as part of the gang and I have seen people start off by forcing themselves onto groups and people they know nothing about and get rejected and dejected. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and keeps me reminded to approach new people with caution and not to open up.
This is maybe the reason why I don’t have faith in the unknown angels… I have seen people put in too much expectation in divinity and fate and get rewarded and I have seen people put in too much expectation in divinity and fate and go bankrupt and lose everything. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and makes me paranoid about expected outcomes and gives me a pessimist tag.
This is maybe the reason I stick to conformity and not try something new… I have seen people doing something outrageous like humorous presentations or even proposing to the girl they love and being applauded and I have seen people doing something outrageous like humorous presentations or even proposing to the girl they love and getting the spirit beaten out of them. My mind decides to retain the latter at the forefront and makes me a coward constantly afraid to step out of the boundaries defined.
I have learnt so much from other’s mistakes that I am beginning to believe that it was all a big mistake…
7 blasts of 11-7
Sitting far away from the blasts affected areas and victims, in the college mess with a hot cup of chai and couple of eggs with upma and chutney, I thought a lot about our great Indian culture. I know it is easy to comment from where I sit and I would be a good for nothing piece of junk when it came to actually delivering in these emergency situations. All I know is contributing some old clothes, some blood donation and shooing away beggars at railway stations and traffic signals. But this is my blog and I am the king here. I will just put down what I felt as I read through columns and columns of facts and feelings from one of the nation’s many war wounds.
When the local residents helped the victims, it showed the great solidarity and altruistic attitudes of our people.
It also shows how grossly inadequate and inefficient our rescue and emergency operations are.
When Mumbai is up and running within 24hours of the disaster, it showed how professional and how quick we are at recovering from our losses.
It also shows how indifferent and casual we are about the whole affair.
We showed how much of information we have when the LeT man arrested a few days back gave us news about the possibility of such an attack.
It also shows that even when we have the clues staring right into our eyes and telling you of your impending doom, we are callous enough to ignore it.
When our politicians empathize with us and condemn the terrorist attacks, it shows how caring for the people and the nation and how outspoken we are.
It also shows what a bunch of hypocrites we are.
When the local transports are crowded and people help each other in through the crowd, it shows how helpful and friendly we are.
It also shows that we don’t need twin towers for victims of that number when one local train will do and how seriously insufficient our support systems are.
When the media puts up all the bloody and ghastly images on its front page, it shows how the media cares about the criticality of information it gives its readers.
It also shows how they leverage on creating excitement and reading frenzy by printing the most happening horrifying news items and pictures so that it sells.
Reminiscing on our history and finding that India has never attacked another country even though we have been attacked and plundered and raped and wounded by a thousand miscreants, shows what a peace loving country we are.
It also shows, what a set of diffident spineless forgetful complacent weak worthless cowards we are.
When the local residents helped the victims, it showed the great solidarity and altruistic attitudes of our people.
It also shows how grossly inadequate and inefficient our rescue and emergency operations are.
When Mumbai is up and running within 24hours of the disaster, it showed how professional and how quick we are at recovering from our losses.
It also shows how indifferent and casual we are about the whole affair.
We showed how much of information we have when the LeT man arrested a few days back gave us news about the possibility of such an attack.
It also shows that even when we have the clues staring right into our eyes and telling you of your impending doom, we are callous enough to ignore it.
When our politicians empathize with us and condemn the terrorist attacks, it shows how caring for the people and the nation and how outspoken we are.
It also shows what a bunch of hypocrites we are.
When the local transports are crowded and people help each other in through the crowd, it shows how helpful and friendly we are.
It also shows that we don’t need twin towers for victims of that number when one local train will do and how seriously insufficient our support systems are.
When the media puts up all the bloody and ghastly images on its front page, it shows how the media cares about the criticality of information it gives its readers.
It also shows how they leverage on creating excitement and reading frenzy by printing the most happening horrifying news items and pictures so that it sells.
Reminiscing on our history and finding that India has never attacked another country even though we have been attacked and plundered and raped and wounded by a thousand miscreants, shows what a peace loving country we are.
It also shows, what a set of diffident spineless forgetful complacent weak worthless cowards we are.
Lurrrnings del Lohgad
Recently enticed by repeated mails containing explicit pictures of the pristine and undesecrated beauty of a place called lohgad we decided to take advantage of a god sent Sunday of cancelled classes to make the trek. It was an opportunity not to be missed, to quote a regular trekker. At that time I was skeptical, to be very euphemistic… actually I wanted nothing of it. I was used to the comforts of planned holidays and outings even if it meant a little bit more money. Why would anybody deliberately go through all the hardships consciously aware of his impending doom?
I was torn between the devil and the deep sea – actually I would say “sleep” and “a long awaited trek” or the pessimist in me says “deprived sleep (on a chance of a lifetime)” and “an unnecessarily uncomfortable dirty wet tiring journey”.
Well these were what I actually learnt from the outing.
1) If there is something interesting to look forward to, then sleep deprivation does not actually bother you.
Rudely pushed into the trek which began at 5am and the preparations for it started at 3am and considering the football match preceding it – well in other words I didn’t sleep that night. And I even considered dropping out of the expedition. But then after the journey began in the cool morning breeze, I lost all the sleepy feeling and actually felt energetic. Wish I could say the same for all those classes… profs and wannabe profs who are reading this may take some pointers.
2) When chilled to the bone, the feeling of indifference that sets in actually lets you enjoy more.
My rain jacket gave up on me. What else could it do if being clearly outsmarted by the heavy and continuous rains… after a few hours of soaking, it started transferring water through to my t-shirt. Sometime later my t-shirt passed it on to my innerwears and so on. So finally I was wet to my skin. Since the wind also wanted to show his fury, there was continuous buffeting of the rain by the wind around us and whenever this happened, a shiver would run down my spine. But on reaching the peak, it was just chaos unleashed. There was a fog made up of the wind and the water. So thick it was that it was just… just… umm uh… er ah thick. With the chilling winds lashing at us, we were feeling cold in the bones. But the indifferent walk on the top and the opportunity to see the topmost source of the waterfall is a feeling that just cannot be described.
3) Even the most difficult of journeys can be a great one if you have friends along.
We traveled by the general coaches of the Indian railways. I have always had an aversion to traveling by the trains as I have always considered them stinking and dirty. I am yet to be proved wrong. But the fact that you got friends along gave me an entirely new area to concentrate on. At least, even if no other topic was being discussed, I could crib about the trains (reminds me of the homing journey experience during my engineering days). Another thing I hate is wet clothes. Now both were combined into one combo-offer, but I just didn’t notice.
4) Simple things in life make the moment.
The occasional views from the train and the trek path, the lush greenery around, a walk in the clouds, posing for photographs, silly poses caught on candid camera, the occasional mock fights, PJs, good jokes, slapstick humor, biscuits, hot chai, the long forgotten lowly but extremely tasty bread-jam, running downhill, the pain in the thighs, the pain in the joints, the pain in the soles, the limp, the sympathy from friends…
There were other very obvious things that I had unlearnt, which I learnt again like indiscriminately eating food that appears tasty can lead to bad stomach problems, wearing shoes on treks is actually safer, polythene covers keep clothes dry and if you want dry clothes it is better not to keep them soaked in water, rain is mainly comprised of water, and so on.
In summary it was a ruggedly refreshing experience much different from the artificially planned ones. Thanks a lot zombie, tripathy, ani, sush, tanu, shacha for making hell enjoyable.
photos from the trek are here
I was torn between the devil and the deep sea – actually I would say “sleep” and “a long awaited trek” or the pessimist in me says “deprived sleep (on a chance of a lifetime)” and “an unnecessarily uncomfortable dirty wet tiring journey”.
Well these were what I actually learnt from the outing.
1) If there is something interesting to look forward to, then sleep deprivation does not actually bother you.
Rudely pushed into the trek which began at 5am and the preparations for it started at 3am and considering the football match preceding it – well in other words I didn’t sleep that night. And I even considered dropping out of the expedition. But then after the journey began in the cool morning breeze, I lost all the sleepy feeling and actually felt energetic. Wish I could say the same for all those classes… profs and wannabe profs who are reading this may take some pointers.
2) When chilled to the bone, the feeling of indifference that sets in actually lets you enjoy more.
My rain jacket gave up on me. What else could it do if being clearly outsmarted by the heavy and continuous rains… after a few hours of soaking, it started transferring water through to my t-shirt. Sometime later my t-shirt passed it on to my innerwears and so on. So finally I was wet to my skin. Since the wind also wanted to show his fury, there was continuous buffeting of the rain by the wind around us and whenever this happened, a shiver would run down my spine. But on reaching the peak, it was just chaos unleashed. There was a fog made up of the wind and the water. So thick it was that it was just… just… umm uh… er ah thick. With the chilling winds lashing at us, we were feeling cold in the bones. But the indifferent walk on the top and the opportunity to see the topmost source of the waterfall is a feeling that just cannot be described.
3) Even the most difficult of journeys can be a great one if you have friends along.
We traveled by the general coaches of the Indian railways. I have always had an aversion to traveling by the trains as I have always considered them stinking and dirty. I am yet to be proved wrong. But the fact that you got friends along gave me an entirely new area to concentrate on. At least, even if no other topic was being discussed, I could crib about the trains (reminds me of the homing journey experience during my engineering days). Another thing I hate is wet clothes. Now both were combined into one combo-offer, but I just didn’t notice.
4) Simple things in life make the moment.
The occasional views from the train and the trek path, the lush greenery around, a walk in the clouds, posing for photographs, silly poses caught on candid camera, the occasional mock fights, PJs, good jokes, slapstick humor, biscuits, hot chai, the long forgotten lowly but extremely tasty bread-jam, running downhill, the pain in the thighs, the pain in the joints, the pain in the soles, the limp, the sympathy from friends…
There were other very obvious things that I had unlearnt, which I learnt again like indiscriminately eating food that appears tasty can lead to bad stomach problems, wearing shoes on treks is actually safer, polythene covers keep clothes dry and if you want dry clothes it is better not to keep them soaked in water, rain is mainly comprised of water, and so on.
In summary it was a ruggedly refreshing experience much different from the artificially planned ones. Thanks a lot zombie, tripathy, ani, sush, tanu, shacha for making hell enjoyable.
photos from the trek are here
Perils of Pokerfaced Pleasantry
Joke Type 1: The Slapstick Comedy
Situation 1:
This guy with a small toothbrush moustache makes a lot of contortions on his face and wears a tattered costume and falls down flat on his butt.
Response:
Ha ha ha ha !!!
Situation 2:
This guy runs around a big guy, keeps falling and getting beaten.
Response:
ROTFL*… Ha ha ha ha !!!
Situation 3:
Situation 1 and 2 continue for about half an hour with just changes in the background.
Response:
ROTFSCAL*… Ha ha ha ha !!!
Joke Type 2: The community based jokes
Situation 1:
This sardarji/tamilian…
Response:
Ha ha ha…
Situation 2:
This sardarji/tamilian naa what he did you know…
Response:
Ha ha ha… ho ho ho
Situation 2:
Arre baba, listen to the joke naa… This sardarji/tamilian, naa what he did you know blah blah blah blah
Response:
ROTFL… Ha ha ha… ho ho ho… Hee hee hee…
Joke Type 3: PJs
Situation 1:
Q: What is big red and goes ding ding ?
A: A fire engine
Response:
:)
Situation 2:
Q: What is big red and goes ding ding ?
A: An apple. Big and ding ding were given to confuse you.
Response:
:)
Situation 3:
Q: What is big red and goes ding ding ?
A: A book. The data was given to confuse you.
Reaction:
:-|
Joke Type 4:
Situation 1: dry punchline jokes
A great story --> a great build up --> appropriate voice modulations --> one great punchline
Response:
So…
Situation 2:
A great story --> a great build up --> appropriate voice modulations --> one great punchline higlighted
Response:
Ok, so is the joke over already ?
Situation 3:
A great story --> a great build up --> appropriate voice modulations --> one great punchline explained
Response:
Is that what everyone calls a PJ ?
Now I am thoroughly frustrated… what happened to the world of witty and dry humor ? I just love those great punchline jokes… slapstick comedy used to interest me once but I remember getting annoyed with it when I was around 10yrs old… well tom and jerry still amuses me sometimes but then the head banging with saucepans only invoke a smile (very very rarely am I ROTFL).
And what is this with the surd and tam jokes doing the rounds… in fact you can put anyone there – gujju, mallu, northie, southie, Gandhi, little Johnny, George Bush, lawyers, doctors, engineers, software guys… just anybody and you could form a series of jokes around them. It is as if only these people can do all those comical blunders that they do… in fact once I had a fight with my friend over whose "ticketless traveller" joke was better – the one involving lawyers or the tamilians, though essentially the plot and the words were the same.
The PJs are very person specific… they appear funny only to the person who tells them and the person who is actually in the mood to listen… usually a couple of jokes evoke a pleasant smile, but if you overdo it, the listeners may actually get aggressive and change their smileys. But then they have their audiences too and there are far too many books written about them.
(Now the author would like to put in some research theories of his own. He dares you to disprove any of them.)
Slapstick comedy seems to be the joy of people who are overworked. No need to think, an on the spot humor, instinctive. Kids enjoy them because they don’t have the mental maturity to go in for long story based jokes. Those adults who engage themselves in watching slapstick comedy are usually in a state of mind where they don’t want to think to laugh. Which is the spontaneity aspect of this brand of humor.
The ethnicity jokes just generate a trigger based on the person. People just think the joke is funny because the image they have created upon the character. Even though there are some people who say that branding people into the jokes is not good and we are actually degrading them. I would disagree as long as everything is done in good humor. In fact it is usually the other way round of seeing things, as in someone really intelligent doing something stupid as in the joke would appear rather funny, like the Einstein/Newton jokes. See what I mean, these jokes are virtually substitutable and there is no necessity for any community to take offense.
And PJs… why would anyone in their right frame of mind like PJs… like the one that my friend always does – he adds a "pun intended" at the end to tell us that we got to appreciate the “joke”. As if we didn’t know his intentions; what are friends for (also with friends like us he does not need enemies). But the truth on PJs is that it is very situational… people relate to something at the spur of the moment some remark or comment countering a profs statement or some weird play of words that the joker thinks to be funny.
Anyways now it is time for me to crib… why is it that not many tend to appreciate wit in the jokes that are dry and straight faced ? Is it because the straight face does not provide the cue to listeners as to when the joke is over. Isn’t that the whole idea of straight faced humor… Or is it because they require that little bit of intelligence and concentration to appreciate these jokes?
The other day I was reading through Sidin’s posts and was laughing my head off. My roomie was bugged with my happiness and asked me to read out the joke despite my warnings… so I went on
“There was this football game between the polish and the english. Both teams walked out to the pitch. The english were soon warming up while the polish coach went around reminding his players to use no hands and that biting and head butting was not to be done, as far as possible.
Coin tossed. Whistle. And the game is afoot. However soon the english complain of rough play and walk off the pitch. The game continues. Twenty minutes later the Polish score a goal and win the match. “
Response: A blank expectant stare with a pitiful gaze (that was evoking no sympathy from me). I was planning to land him a new punchline – one from my fist to his nose… but being a roomie and him being bigger and stronger and persistent I had to give in to his requests and repeat it again this time highlighting the punch line:
“There was this football game between the polish and the english. Both teams walked out to the pitch. The english were soon warming up while the polish coach went around reminding his players to use no hands and that biting and head butting was not to be done, as far as possible.
Coin tossed. Whistle. And the game is afoot. However soon the english complain of rough play and walk off the pitch. The game continues. Twenty minutes later the Polish score a goal and win the match.”
He still didn’t get it. And I am not explaining it again.
PS. For those who didn’t get the title, it was my attempt at straight faced humor.
*Glossary:
ROTFL => Rolling On The Floor Laughing
ROTFSCAL => Rolling On The Floor Stomach Clutched And Laughing
Situation 1:
This guy with a small toothbrush moustache makes a lot of contortions on his face and wears a tattered costume and falls down flat on his butt.
Response:
Ha ha ha ha !!!
Situation 2:
This guy runs around a big guy, keeps falling and getting beaten.
Response:
ROTFL*… Ha ha ha ha !!!
Situation 3:
Situation 1 and 2 continue for about half an hour with just changes in the background.
Response:
ROTFSCAL*… Ha ha ha ha !!!
Joke Type 2: The community based jokes
Situation 1:
This sardarji/tamilian…
Response:
Ha ha ha…
Situation 2:
This sardarji/tamilian naa what he did you know…
Response:
Ha ha ha… ho ho ho
Situation 2:
Arre baba, listen to the joke naa… This sardarji/tamilian, naa what he did you know blah blah blah blah
Response:
ROTFL… Ha ha ha… ho ho ho… Hee hee hee…
Joke Type 3: PJs
Situation 1:
Q: What is big red and goes ding ding ?
A: A fire engine
Response:
:)
Situation 2:
Q: What is big red and goes ding ding ?
A: An apple. Big and ding ding were given to confuse you.
Response:
:)
Situation 3:
Q: What is big red and goes ding ding ?
A: A book. The data was given to confuse you.
Reaction:
:-|
Joke Type 4:
Situation 1: dry punchline jokes
A great story --> a great build up --> appropriate voice modulations --> one great punchline
Response:
So…
Situation 2:
A great story --> a great build up --> appropriate voice modulations --> one great punchline higlighted
Response:
Ok, so is the joke over already ?
Situation 3:
A great story --> a great build up --> appropriate voice modulations --> one great punchline explained
Response:
Is that what everyone calls a PJ ?
Now I am thoroughly frustrated… what happened to the world of witty and dry humor ? I just love those great punchline jokes… slapstick comedy used to interest me once but I remember getting annoyed with it when I was around 10yrs old… well tom and jerry still amuses me sometimes but then the head banging with saucepans only invoke a smile (very very rarely am I ROTFL).
And what is this with the surd and tam jokes doing the rounds… in fact you can put anyone there – gujju, mallu, northie, southie, Gandhi, little Johnny, George Bush, lawyers, doctors, engineers, software guys… just anybody and you could form a series of jokes around them. It is as if only these people can do all those comical blunders that they do… in fact once I had a fight with my friend over whose "ticketless traveller" joke was better – the one involving lawyers or the tamilians, though essentially the plot and the words were the same.
The PJs are very person specific… they appear funny only to the person who tells them and the person who is actually in the mood to listen… usually a couple of jokes evoke a pleasant smile, but if you overdo it, the listeners may actually get aggressive and change their smileys. But then they have their audiences too and there are far too many books written about them.
(Now the author would like to put in some research theories of his own. He dares you to disprove any of them.)
Slapstick comedy seems to be the joy of people who are overworked. No need to think, an on the spot humor, instinctive. Kids enjoy them because they don’t have the mental maturity to go in for long story based jokes. Those adults who engage themselves in watching slapstick comedy are usually in a state of mind where they don’t want to think to laugh. Which is the spontaneity aspect of this brand of humor.
The ethnicity jokes just generate a trigger based on the person. People just think the joke is funny because the image they have created upon the character. Even though there are some people who say that branding people into the jokes is not good and we are actually degrading them. I would disagree as long as everything is done in good humor. In fact it is usually the other way round of seeing things, as in someone really intelligent doing something stupid as in the joke would appear rather funny, like the Einstein/Newton jokes. See what I mean, these jokes are virtually substitutable and there is no necessity for any community to take offense.
And PJs… why would anyone in their right frame of mind like PJs… like the one that my friend always does – he adds a "pun intended" at the end to tell us that we got to appreciate the “joke”. As if we didn’t know his intentions; what are friends for (also with friends like us he does not need enemies). But the truth on PJs is that it is very situational… people relate to something at the spur of the moment some remark or comment countering a profs statement or some weird play of words that the joker thinks to be funny.
Anyways now it is time for me to crib… why is it that not many tend to appreciate wit in the jokes that are dry and straight faced ? Is it because the straight face does not provide the cue to listeners as to when the joke is over. Isn’t that the whole idea of straight faced humor… Or is it because they require that little bit of intelligence and concentration to appreciate these jokes?
The other day I was reading through Sidin’s posts and was laughing my head off. My roomie was bugged with my happiness and asked me to read out the joke despite my warnings… so I went on
“There was this football game between the polish and the english. Both teams walked out to the pitch. The english were soon warming up while the polish coach went around reminding his players to use no hands and that biting and head butting was not to be done, as far as possible.
Coin tossed. Whistle. And the game is afoot. However soon the english complain of rough play and walk off the pitch. The game continues. Twenty minutes later the Polish score a goal and win the match. “
Response: A blank expectant stare with a pitiful gaze (that was evoking no sympathy from me). I was planning to land him a new punchline – one from my fist to his nose… but being a roomie and him being bigger and stronger and persistent I had to give in to his requests and repeat it again this time highlighting the punch line:
“There was this football game between the polish and the english. Both teams walked out to the pitch. The english were soon warming up while the polish coach went around reminding his players to use no hands and that biting and head butting was not to be done, as far as possible.
Coin tossed. Whistle. And the game is afoot. However soon the english complain of rough play and walk off the pitch. The game continues. Twenty minutes later the Polish score a goal and win the match.”
He still didn’t get it. And I am not explaining it again.
PS. For those who didn’t get the title, it was my attempt at straight faced humor.
*Glossary:
ROTFL => Rolling On The Floor Laughing
ROTFSCAL => Rolling On The Floor Stomach Clutched And Laughing
Krrash !!!
The moment we entered the hall about 10mins late there was an ominous feeling… a sort of eerie emptiness that you can actually feel inside (and also see outside)… u get a feeling that you are probably in the wrong movie… maybe you should have stayed back and watched that re-run you have watched about a million times on the same channel already… or probably have read that book you have been fighting to finish… or maybe it is time to look at your dismal grades… or maybe just rolled under the cozy blanket and caught up on that much needed sleep… so many things that could have been done and you were here with about 8 others like you – 4 of them coaxed into it by you and 4 others who succumbed to peer pressure of simple majority…
Well ok, now there was no going back… we are here we are here… so let us as well enjoy the movie while we are here getting our money’s worth… there are some fringe benefits of watching movies in Mumbai cinemas especially those that charge a premium even for those late night ones… once we saw a well known actress (I am not mentioning her name here to protect privacy – mine that is)… well we “casually” kept bumping into her (well not literally you know, our paths just crossed… that was a just a figure of speech I used… no need to get jealous already) until her bodyguard or dad (can’t say which and we could not do any post situational analysis as we were not looking at him, well who would with better options… wow that is some language skills 4 words starting with “w”… oops sorry for digressing, will save it for some other post, maybe titled W… wotsays?)… I think I will remind you that we were at the bodyguard – and he gave us a sort of stare and we decided to move into the hall and keep an eye on her in the darkness… she had this great makeup which showed up well in the dim light too…
But this time there was no such distractions... Hey now where was I… thought I was talking about some movie… yeah let me start with the title… Krrish – hey why the rr? Is it for the sake of numerology or for the number of hrithik “r”oshans on the screen… well can’t say but I have not come across the emphasis on the creaking sound for Krishna… Krishna – now isn’t it simple to spell ? and say too ?
As for the cast, Rekha seems younger than preity and probably she was expecting a meatier role… maybe opposite the younger hrithik… but since the role was awarded to piggy chops, she seemed overcome with professional jealousy. There is absolutely no life in her dialogues, or maybe it is because she is actually playing hrithik’s overly overprotective old "grand"mother… man I have never seen anyone get so shocked when the principal wanted to take an IQ test of the child hrithik… she acts as if the principal wanted to take a dna test (well actually that would have been interesting as papa hrithik is away for nearly 2yrs in Singapore with wife in India when baby hrithik is born… and in the end jaadoo is thanked… very fishy…) well she plays the typical young grandmom and watched over her grandchild through her thick glasses… (well actually above the glasses, and I still can’t figure out why she wore it, she looked very old).
Now piggy chops also affectionately called priyanka chopra, is the babe who sizzles as the woman in red, yellow, blue, black, mini skirts, mini tops but no swimsuits… (don’t remember seeing her in a saree as in aitraaz, but still ok wardrobe). Man what a babe, and what a dumb babe… I remembered the joke where adam asks god why was eve so beautiful and dumb… anyways some new thing I learnt was that glass walls can be occasionally opaque, especially when you are talking ill about someone and they are standing right in front of you, but the other side of the glass – u simply cannot see them ! (try it if you dare to prove me wrong then we can both sue the roshans).
Now coming to the asli hero. One serious doubt – is hrithik planning to enter politics? If we calculate his entry into politics would be in about 20 years time and the kids who watch his movies about jaadoo and superspiderbatneomorpheusphantomandwhatnotshakti-man would be grown up to think that their superhero hrithik would save India as the prime minister from all the bad people in the world and also outside it. My deduction is that hrithik would follow on the footsteps of one such role model in the US and is trying to get a man-machine interfacing movie sanctioned from papa… quite costly, but then we should look at the long term holistic picture… (maybe rekha can be requested to play the harassed gun toting mom who is considered insane as she sees people from other planets and time…)
Now if you guys would excuse me, I would dedicate this paragraph also to hrithik bashing as rekha stole the limelight from the previous paragraph… well hrithik seems to be catering to his kiddy fans so much that he is turning out to be a kid himself… his expressions, actions and dance steps seem to have that fluidity of a skinny kid who is trying to dance… now I am not saying that he is a bad dancer and I certainly did like his dance steps in his adult only movies like KNPH and lakshya… but in these movies when he speaks and jumps around waving his arms especially with that stupid expression on his face… that is too much self degradation when he is not even getting the money (remember papa makes the movies and the money comes from the family corpus… )
Naseeruddin Shah’s moment of truth has arrived in this movie and probably he would be honoured at the Oscars or at least our local film festivals organized by that paanwala every year for being the best villain role performed… sad to say except for one line which made me smile, the rest of his show was stupidity… (wot people do for money and friendship sakes…)
Overall, the film seemed to have catered to its intended target segment… well piggy chops was never seen in a bikini or even a swimsuit was she? or did I miss it in those 5 minute powernaps during the songs (well if I did miss it, parents can just probably keep quiet about it or take their kids out for pop corn)… to me it felt like it should be certified “below 10” – that is can be viewed by people under the age of 10yrs (some exceptions can be made on the basis of mental maturity shown by them)… but since the kids cannot be brought in without their parents, I am sorry the parents would have to grin and relive their old days of reading indrajal comics…
I don’t know why I sat through the whole movie… but on second thoughts, maybe I will have to endure such movies pretty soon…
PS. Do not let guys from the IT sector watch it. They will find too many faults with the execution.
PPS. Maybe Pamela Anderson can audition for hrithik’s grandmom in the next movie… just give her a chance guys, she uses make-up too…
confessions of a deviant mind
To save my head from hitting the table
I cup my hands to support my chin
and wedge my knees under the table
wearing my trouser fabric thin.
His voice is droning in my ears
affecting me like a sleeping draught
I am not to be blamed later if
my above posture resembles a deep thought.
My almost closed eyes form a thin veil
and the blur that is the prof says out aloud
“this is a final reminder for those in cyberspace,
kindly close your laptops in 5 minutes around.”
Despite being so close to the wall
he uses the laser to point onto the board
either he won’t further dirty his chalk dusted hand
or he wants a hole through the stone bored.
I feel a sharp jab in my rib
it is the attendance register being passed
I put in my compressed squiggle
before it got onto the front row tossed.
Now that I am wide awake
I decide to look at the others
why am I not very surprised to find
that no one actually bothers.
This guy whispers to the girl beside him
I smile when they both laugh inside
but I am woe betide when my glance fell
upon the closed laptop at my side.
I dream about writing my blog
I dream about writing a book
If I wrote my chapters as posts, I worry
if it would be called a blook.
The girl in front of me is vigorously taking notes
with the absence of any internal cacophony
but I am not able to fathom how in the world
she is able to understand his illegible calligraphy.
My fingers yearn for their lost lover
and the entrapped lover seems bored
the separation I am talking here about is
between my fingers and the keyboard.
The girl takes a break from the pen and
pulls the rubber band from her tied up hair
I realized she is human too when
when she pulled at them in despair.
Some people are still half awake
But really most are abject
But blessed are those sleeping with their specs on
due the tube’s light they reflect.
There is a sudden chill in the class when
the asked question makes the silence deafening
slowly with zero response from the batch
the prof has his hour of reckoning.
The prof says “my submission to you
so be it even if you got to use poke-a-yoke
to teach you how does a CEO think
and by the way that was a joke”.
The class is stone faced even now,
but realize that from their side the prof expects
some sort of active reaction
and certainly they cannot be now tongue tied.
So out pops a hand to break the embarrassment
in a desperate attempt at class participation
the mouth asks a vague question with words
from the visible slide, a universal solution.
My head swivels towards the clock
only to spring back in exasperation
as had happened a million times before
the hands were not even moving in slow motion.
Later seeing the murderous stares from the class
the coco realizes that time has flown by
decides to raise the alarm and pull the plug.
I could have kissed the coco, only it was a guy.
________________________________________________
What can one do when the prof in the class is a dictator and makes u shut your laptop and listen to his droning lullaby… well this post was written during that terrible 70minutes today and is dedicated to all those 70 minutes that have been endured by me and my batch… I am sorry but you got no choice but to grin and bear my new found talent and also praise the post in your comments. And frankly speaking, if a dolt like me could bring this out in 1 hour, think of what creative people can do in this inspiring lecture…
Somewhere I read that the average attention span for an average human being is around 20 minutes… that is after 20 minutes, say in a lecture, your mind starts wandering off thinking of things that are more interesting to it than the balding old prof standing in front of the white board… Now I got a valid research backing to say that I was never at fault…
(After reading this poem I don’t think I have to separately crib about the lecture.)
I cup my hands to support my chin
and wedge my knees under the table
wearing my trouser fabric thin.
His voice is droning in my ears
affecting me like a sleeping draught
I am not to be blamed later if
my above posture resembles a deep thought.
My almost closed eyes form a thin veil
and the blur that is the prof says out aloud
“this is a final reminder for those in cyberspace,
kindly close your laptops in 5 minutes around.”
Despite being so close to the wall
he uses the laser to point onto the board
either he won’t further dirty his chalk dusted hand
or he wants a hole through the stone bored.
I feel a sharp jab in my rib
it is the attendance register being passed
I put in my compressed squiggle
before it got onto the front row tossed.
Now that I am wide awake
I decide to look at the others
why am I not very surprised to find
that no one actually bothers.
This guy whispers to the girl beside him
I smile when they both laugh inside
but I am woe betide when my glance fell
upon the closed laptop at my side.
I dream about writing my blog
I dream about writing a book
If I wrote my chapters as posts, I worry
if it would be called a blook.
The girl in front of me is vigorously taking notes
with the absence of any internal cacophony
but I am not able to fathom how in the world
she is able to understand his illegible calligraphy.
My fingers yearn for their lost lover
and the entrapped lover seems bored
the separation I am talking here about is
between my fingers and the keyboard.
The girl takes a break from the pen and
pulls the rubber band from her tied up hair
I realized she is human too when
when she pulled at them in despair.
Some people are still half awake
But really most are abject
But blessed are those sleeping with their specs on
due the tube’s light they reflect.
There is a sudden chill in the class when
the asked question makes the silence deafening
slowly with zero response from the batch
the prof has his hour of reckoning.
The prof says “my submission to you
so be it even if you got to use poke-a-yoke
to teach you how does a CEO think
and by the way that was a joke”.
The class is stone faced even now,
but realize that from their side the prof expects
some sort of active reaction
and certainly they cannot be now tongue tied.
So out pops a hand to break the embarrassment
in a desperate attempt at class participation
the mouth asks a vague question with words
from the visible slide, a universal solution.
My head swivels towards the clock
only to spring back in exasperation
as had happened a million times before
the hands were not even moving in slow motion.
Later seeing the murderous stares from the class
the coco realizes that time has flown by
decides to raise the alarm and pull the plug.
I could have kissed the coco, only it was a guy.
________________________________________________
What can one do when the prof in the class is a dictator and makes u shut your laptop and listen to his droning lullaby… well this post was written during that terrible 70minutes today and is dedicated to all those 70 minutes that have been endured by me and my batch… I am sorry but you got no choice but to grin and bear my new found talent and also praise the post in your comments. And frankly speaking, if a dolt like me could bring this out in 1 hour, think of what creative people can do in this inspiring lecture…
Somewhere I read that the average attention span for an average human being is around 20 minutes… that is after 20 minutes, say in a lecture, your mind starts wandering off thinking of things that are more interesting to it than the balding old prof standing in front of the white board… Now I got a valid research backing to say that I was never at fault…
(After reading this poem I don’t think I have to separately crib about the lecture.)
The chewing gum under the table…
I have the habit of sitting comfortably… that is I don’t mind stretching, slouching, compressing, leg crossing, putting the leg up on the adjacent seat and adjusting my posture into one of the innumerous positions I can shift into in the middle of a class… that is just my daily bit of exercise for my tired muscles… an average person has about 21 sleep positions… I would have about a 100 at least while sitting…
Now one of my favorite postures is to tuck in my legs under the table such that it is firmly positioned between the table top and the floor… sometimes I even cross one leg on top of the other to gain the necessary height from the floor and also for some comfort… now this serves as a sort of fulcrum for the chair on which I sit is a typical software engineer wheel chair – you know the one with the barest minimum of plastic so that your butt is just supported and your back pains but they provide the flexibility of sliding away from the desk when you are least expecting it… but I still enjoy it – as such events provide me with my much needed exercise and some distractions to my otherwise engrossed batchmates…
Now coming back to the issue at hand or should I say on my knee… on this particular day, I was wearing my favourite formal black trouser impeccably and smartly dressed for the presentations… and I tuck my legs under the table to get a more comfortable position to view the great visual effects that we MBAs are so good at making… that is when I found that my favorite trouser seemed to have another great property – it had the highest coefficient of friction with respect to the under-surface of the table-top (???)… (a small explanation for my non-engineering friends – the higher the friction coefficient the better the grip… it is something like saying higher the NPV, better the project; neither of us understands each other)… I wowed at my trouser’s ability to understand its master’s needs and it became more favoriter…
It would have been drunken bliss at this realization had it not been for the break that our prof declared… I got up to get myself a cuppa-coffee and I found that my trouser was behaving very naughty… it remained stuck to the table… I bent down and pulled it out carefully to find a huge off-white lumpy sticky ugly dirty yucky patch on it… immediately I realized without putting it into my mouth that it was the by-product of the sleep deprived’s desperate attempt to keep awake – a chewed chewing gum…
Now I am totally intolerant to such initiatives (or rather the lack of it)… and I do thank god for making legal guns so expensive… well on this particular day I could not lay my finger on the person who did this… then I would have laid my whole hand then maybe a foot before actually stuffing the piece of shit, that was stuck on my trouser, back into his mouth…
After doing something that is the most obvious thing to do about it, I came back with an embarassingly large wet patch on the right side of my trouser and sat down in class in a new place (this time I was careful to check under the table). But I could not concentrate partially due to the anger that my favorite trouser were affected but mainly because of the irritatingly cold wet piece of cloth sticking to my thigh… that is when my mind wandered off into getting material for this post to crib about…
Now what had this guy who had chewed the gum done wrong… if you think nothing is wrong, you can stop right here and appreciate my agony and my English language skills and I won’t waste any more of your time… but for those who think that he is guilty, I dedicate this post to you…
How many of us take the trouble to find a trash can, to put in the chewing gum covered in its original wrapper? Instead we are so pressed for time that we just take it out and stick it wherever we can find a surface it would stick to… now it is not your genius or divinity that makes the gum you chewed stick to the table… but it seriously creates problems for people like me who have only one favorite trouser or a pair of favorite footwear…
How often do we actually encounter such instances… at the railway and movie ticket counters where everyone wants to be the first to be serviced, while the harassed ticket issuer after some vain attempts to bring some order just walks out for a tea break despite all the shouts from his customers…
or when there are 2 people washing their face bent over close to the water pipe, the third person gargles and spits the water from at least 2 feet away from the hard surface that it splatters the two guys (who will need more than water to wash their face now)…
or in your deepest of deep concerns to save electricity, this guy switches off all the lights and cause the occasionally blind people (those who cannot see in the dark) to bump into the innumerous objects that have been strewn across the floor… or worse still you leave someone in the dark when he is in a precarious position (I would not add more to this experience, as I don’t want everyone to know what actually happened. You are free to imagine the worst, I won’t give it in writing.)
or when everyone is moving in an orderly fashion at some queue for example say lunch buffet, this fellow either barges in the middle of buffet table upsetting a couple of dishes onto your shirts or walks along in the opposite direction filling up his plate in the reverse… or the worst, he carried a full plate precariously balanced against your back while your shirt is soaking up the liquids from it…
or when it is already 15 minutes past the class end time and that everyone is hungrily waiting for the lunch (not that the food is something great to look forward to), there is suddenly a desperate class participation question that would get the prof carried away and continue the lecture for another half an hour as he has to come back to the topic he has digressed away from thanks to this insightful question…
or when there is a huge wind blowing and the doors are banging, why not use the door stopper… especially when somebody enters a quiet lecture hall, to bang shut the door… or to pull a door open when it says push, or vice-versa… or to push open a two-way door without caring about giving the person on the other side, though foolish enough to stand so close, a bloody nose…
I think you get the point… I don’t want to join the category I am talking about…
Is it is a sin to think about the repercussions of your action before actually doing it? Would it take us so much time to assess the situation and act a bit more empathetically and not stupidly ? One of my profs in school used to repeatedly say in a sarcastic way to a couple of dumb people in class – before you say something, think about it for a 100 times and then don’t say it… he could say that and get away with it because then he was a powerful grown up man and those listening to him were just kids… today, I would like to say this to every damn bugger who irritates me in these and many other ways… “think a 100 times before you do something, then don’t do it…“
Or dear god, please give me a gun and a license to kill…
Now one of my favorite postures is to tuck in my legs under the table such that it is firmly positioned between the table top and the floor… sometimes I even cross one leg on top of the other to gain the necessary height from the floor and also for some comfort… now this serves as a sort of fulcrum for the chair on which I sit is a typical software engineer wheel chair – you know the one with the barest minimum of plastic so that your butt is just supported and your back pains but they provide the flexibility of sliding away from the desk when you are least expecting it… but I still enjoy it – as such events provide me with my much needed exercise and some distractions to my otherwise engrossed batchmates…
Now coming back to the issue at hand or should I say on my knee… on this particular day, I was wearing my favourite formal black trouser impeccably and smartly dressed for the presentations… and I tuck my legs under the table to get a more comfortable position to view the great visual effects that we MBAs are so good at making… that is when I found that my favorite trouser seemed to have another great property – it had the highest coefficient of friction with respect to the under-surface of the table-top (???)… (a small explanation for my non-engineering friends – the higher the friction coefficient the better the grip… it is something like saying higher the NPV, better the project; neither of us understands each other)… I wowed at my trouser’s ability to understand its master’s needs and it became more favoriter…
It would have been drunken bliss at this realization had it not been for the break that our prof declared… I got up to get myself a cuppa-coffee and I found that my trouser was behaving very naughty… it remained stuck to the table… I bent down and pulled it out carefully to find a huge off-white lumpy sticky ugly dirty yucky patch on it… immediately I realized without putting it into my mouth that it was the by-product of the sleep deprived’s desperate attempt to keep awake – a chewed chewing gum…
Now I am totally intolerant to such initiatives (or rather the lack of it)… and I do thank god for making legal guns so expensive… well on this particular day I could not lay my finger on the person who did this… then I would have laid my whole hand then maybe a foot before actually stuffing the piece of shit, that was stuck on my trouser, back into his mouth…
After doing something that is the most obvious thing to do about it, I came back with an embarassingly large wet patch on the right side of my trouser and sat down in class in a new place (this time I was careful to check under the table). But I could not concentrate partially due to the anger that my favorite trouser were affected but mainly because of the irritatingly cold wet piece of cloth sticking to my thigh… that is when my mind wandered off into getting material for this post to crib about…
Now what had this guy who had chewed the gum done wrong… if you think nothing is wrong, you can stop right here and appreciate my agony and my English language skills and I won’t waste any more of your time… but for those who think that he is guilty, I dedicate this post to you…
How many of us take the trouble to find a trash can, to put in the chewing gum covered in its original wrapper? Instead we are so pressed for time that we just take it out and stick it wherever we can find a surface it would stick to… now it is not your genius or divinity that makes the gum you chewed stick to the table… but it seriously creates problems for people like me who have only one favorite trouser or a pair of favorite footwear…
How often do we actually encounter such instances… at the railway and movie ticket counters where everyone wants to be the first to be serviced, while the harassed ticket issuer after some vain attempts to bring some order just walks out for a tea break despite all the shouts from his customers…
or when there are 2 people washing their face bent over close to the water pipe, the third person gargles and spits the water from at least 2 feet away from the hard surface that it splatters the two guys (who will need more than water to wash their face now)…
or in your deepest of deep concerns to save electricity, this guy switches off all the lights and cause the occasionally blind people (those who cannot see in the dark) to bump into the innumerous objects that have been strewn across the floor… or worse still you leave someone in the dark when he is in a precarious position (I would not add more to this experience, as I don’t want everyone to know what actually happened. You are free to imagine the worst, I won’t give it in writing.)
or when everyone is moving in an orderly fashion at some queue for example say lunch buffet, this fellow either barges in the middle of buffet table upsetting a couple of dishes onto your shirts or walks along in the opposite direction filling up his plate in the reverse… or the worst, he carried a full plate precariously balanced against your back while your shirt is soaking up the liquids from it…
or when it is already 15 minutes past the class end time and that everyone is hungrily waiting for the lunch (not that the food is something great to look forward to), there is suddenly a desperate class participation question that would get the prof carried away and continue the lecture for another half an hour as he has to come back to the topic he has digressed away from thanks to this insightful question…
or when there is a huge wind blowing and the doors are banging, why not use the door stopper… especially when somebody enters a quiet lecture hall, to bang shut the door… or to pull a door open when it says push, or vice-versa… or to push open a two-way door without caring about giving the person on the other side, though foolish enough to stand so close, a bloody nose…
I think you get the point… I don’t want to join the category I am talking about…
Is it is a sin to think about the repercussions of your action before actually doing it? Would it take us so much time to assess the situation and act a bit more empathetically and not stupidly ? One of my profs in school used to repeatedly say in a sarcastic way to a couple of dumb people in class – before you say something, think about it for a 100 times and then don’t say it… he could say that and get away with it because then he was a powerful grown up man and those listening to him were just kids… today, I would like to say this to every damn bugger who irritates me in these and many other ways… “think a 100 times before you do something, then don’t do it…“
Or dear god, please give me a gun and a license to kill…
the monk and the marketing
(for those who don't know me yet, i call myself "the monk.... ". i won't discuss the rationale for this now... maybe later)
I had always assumed that I was born for marketing… I thought that marketing was plainly based on creativity and since I considered myself to be damn creative… I could sketch a little during my school days and had won a couple of prizes in competitions too… I had also participated in a couple of elocution contests and debates and won some prizes there too… I had also had a nickname of “scrap engineer” as I used to make a lot of new things from things that were normally considered scrap… some poster contests too where portrayal of ideas mattered were also added to my portfolio… I could write poetry too when I was in my second standard (some of the characteristics are still visible occasionally)…
So I thought I was damn creative and that I could manage stuff like marketing easily… or could I ?
But there was a small twist in the tale… I was brought up in a conventional middle class family that said risk taking was taboo… I joined an engineering college while a couple of my creative friends had the audacity to take up non-conventional subjects in media, communication and design… engineering college went off in a breeze and I could not showcase my creativity… mainly because I did not find time for it from the innumerous hours I spent playing carrom, watching TV and sleeping…
And of course the sheep mentality was followed in joining an IT company where I was put into the drabbest of technology with the barest minimum of colors (I still can’t think of any more than 4 colors that were used and one of them was black…). After 2 years I thought enough is enough else I will become color blind to the other millions of colors in the world…
I decided to try my hand at an MBA… mainly because I thought a b-school would house crazily creative people who are not afraid of experimenting… I thought that rules would be disregarded and creativity and practicality would rule…
I decided to do a specialization in IM because I thought I would leverage on my work-ex – a decision I thought would hamper my creativity, but then I had to somehow get into the b-school (in fact this was a decision that I consider pretty smart now)… I wanted to go into marketing – creativity was calling me… you are killing a creative genius by restricting me into a conventional mould… marketing should give me a breather (or so I thought)… my aim – after the first year take a shift into marketing specialization…
But then, my first year with marketing was not a happy relationship… after hours with the green colored marketing bible written from the sayings of the great god of marketing I could not absorb anything of marketing concepts… the 10 commandments from the bible were stringently followed and any deviations like me were deemed a heretic… and instead of burning me at the stake they branded me one – giving away alphabets that one was not very proud of…
I was beaten and broken – I was speechless during the lectures where I found creativity flowing in the form of thoughts and ideas from my peers… I failed to understand why a bike was a bike was a bike, or why a mundane purchase could only be a toothbrush (nowadays they cost a premium you know), or why the competition was always between coke and pepsi and not between a tata and a volvo…
Every prof would say don’t bombard your customer with jargons that only MBAs know the meaning of… In marketing this was an exception – you knew jargons you survived… I could never remember the number and the corresponding alphabets – for example the 4As, 6Bs, 7Cs, 3Ds, 12Es, 13Fs, 4Ps and so on… there was a number for every letter of the alphabet and it was many to one mapping function between the set of all letters and the set of all natural numbers… if at all I could remember the names then it would be difficult to remember the context – you know actually the 4As and 4Ps are the same but the context is now different because the consumer’s attitude has changed… really ?
After a year long futile crusade to find my lost creativity in marketing class, I fervently thank god at every single opportunity for knocking some common sense into me at the time of filling the form – for allowing me to leverage upon my core competency and the learning curve achieved over the 3 years of my stint at a global MNC…
But the fight is not over yet… looks like I have tortured the marketing faculty beyond the limits for making them read and also evaluate my answer papers… ideally they should feel like hanging themselves, but considering the welfare of the greater number of students, they will have to hold on…
I have been d-graded… I still have to fight one last battle… I am not sure where victory will shower her blessings, but I am fighting for a cause – my honor… back to the green bible…
I had always assumed that I was born for marketing… I thought that marketing was plainly based on creativity and since I considered myself to be damn creative… I could sketch a little during my school days and had won a couple of prizes in competitions too… I had also participated in a couple of elocution contests and debates and won some prizes there too… I had also had a nickname of “scrap engineer” as I used to make a lot of new things from things that were normally considered scrap… some poster contests too where portrayal of ideas mattered were also added to my portfolio… I could write poetry too when I was in my second standard (some of the characteristics are still visible occasionally)…
So I thought I was damn creative and that I could manage stuff like marketing easily… or could I ?
But there was a small twist in the tale… I was brought up in a conventional middle class family that said risk taking was taboo… I joined an engineering college while a couple of my creative friends had the audacity to take up non-conventional subjects in media, communication and design… engineering college went off in a breeze and I could not showcase my creativity… mainly because I did not find time for it from the innumerous hours I spent playing carrom, watching TV and sleeping…
And of course the sheep mentality was followed in joining an IT company where I was put into the drabbest of technology with the barest minimum of colors (I still can’t think of any more than 4 colors that were used and one of them was black…). After 2 years I thought enough is enough else I will become color blind to the other millions of colors in the world…
I decided to try my hand at an MBA… mainly because I thought a b-school would house crazily creative people who are not afraid of experimenting… I thought that rules would be disregarded and creativity and practicality would rule…
I decided to do a specialization in IM because I thought I would leverage on my work-ex – a decision I thought would hamper my creativity, but then I had to somehow get into the b-school (in fact this was a decision that I consider pretty smart now)… I wanted to go into marketing – creativity was calling me… you are killing a creative genius by restricting me into a conventional mould… marketing should give me a breather (or so I thought)… my aim – after the first year take a shift into marketing specialization…
But then, my first year with marketing was not a happy relationship… after hours with the green colored marketing bible written from the sayings of the great god of marketing I could not absorb anything of marketing concepts… the 10 commandments from the bible were stringently followed and any deviations like me were deemed a heretic… and instead of burning me at the stake they branded me one – giving away alphabets that one was not very proud of…
I was beaten and broken – I was speechless during the lectures where I found creativity flowing in the form of thoughts and ideas from my peers… I failed to understand why a bike was a bike was a bike, or why a mundane purchase could only be a toothbrush (nowadays they cost a premium you know), or why the competition was always between coke and pepsi and not between a tata and a volvo…
Every prof would say don’t bombard your customer with jargons that only MBAs know the meaning of… In marketing this was an exception – you knew jargons you survived… I could never remember the number and the corresponding alphabets – for example the 4As, 6Bs, 7Cs, 3Ds, 12Es, 13Fs, 4Ps and so on… there was a number for every letter of the alphabet and it was many to one mapping function between the set of all letters and the set of all natural numbers… if at all I could remember the names then it would be difficult to remember the context – you know actually the 4As and 4Ps are the same but the context is now different because the consumer’s attitude has changed… really ?
After a year long futile crusade to find my lost creativity in marketing class, I fervently thank god at every single opportunity for knocking some common sense into me at the time of filling the form – for allowing me to leverage upon my core competency and the learning curve achieved over the 3 years of my stint at a global MNC…
But the fight is not over yet… looks like I have tortured the marketing faculty beyond the limits for making them read and also evaluate my answer papers… ideally they should feel like hanging themselves, but considering the welfare of the greater number of students, they will have to hold on…
I have been d-graded… I still have to fight one last battle… I am not sure where victory will shower her blessings, but I am fighting for a cause – my honor… back to the green bible…
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