Drugs, Alcohol and Religion

As I write this I feel the last strains of scotch and weed ebbing out of my body. I have been and am suspect to a plethora of addictions, not all fluid in nature. Yet nothing rouses epiphany as does alcohol and weed. Reflecting back, I guess it was the first conscious decision that severed our links from a parochial culture. By succumbing to the poison with a troubled conscience most of us took that leap, we made sure that we had a semblance of control about our life. While it has been argued that abstinence is much more difficult than addiction, I believe the conscious embrace of non-conformance also argues for more steel than society gives due credit for. As for the pure visceral pleasure of it, I suppose few things would come close to give it a run for their money.

The images that alcohol evokes of the last five years is indelible. We just seem to shed off the veneer and seem human and fallible not berated for it. While alcohol brings the best out of our social nature, could there be anything that plunges you to unfathomable morass that is your subconscious than weed. The primal pleasure that engulfs every single pore of your body on being able to discern individual notes of The Doors or Pink Floyd is an experience stranger to weed-virgins.

It is a singular thing that religion is oft mentioned in the same breath as drugs and alcohol. Maybe it is the same exhilaration that people seek in something intangible and yet powerful enough to lift their spirits from the daily hum-drum that life is. As for me I am a Hindu, in the true sense of the word.

A Season of Faith's Imperfection

Seasons as we know it baffle me. Something that has permanency etched all over it, yet remaining so transitional. They are primal in nature, our earliest memories remain attached to them, but their innate fleetingness doesn't leave much of an impression other a half-remembered post-card from the past. A sense of deja-vu is probably the most one can glean from the passage of seasons. Me, I believe the seasons leave their best imprints on our moods. My moods decide my seasons. They can range from delirious sunny ones, to overcast with doubt and indecision, to the tipsy and trippy akin to the first showers, to the keening acuteness of cold reason and the far in between balmy spring ones.

And this has been a season of faith's imperfection. For a cynic like me, having faith has always been a crown of thorns. The longing to step out of the darkness, from the miasma of doubt and dispassion is as strong in me as it is with me everybody. And for once I thought I belonged. For once I felt understood and as normal as I could wish it to be. I was happy. It was something I had been seeking and found serendipity. Yet all good things come to an end, often in a manner that make you doubt if they ever existed. It passed by leaving in its wake a cauldron full of unsaid thoughts, boiling resentment and a barely concealed anger and hatred. Blind faith had turned me blind. The light had dazzled my eyes. And it is time to slink back to my dark shell once more.

The Scales of Imbalance

Often I am suspect to spells of crystal-clear thought and moments of incredulous wisdom. Sadly most of these occur under the influence of alcohol. A remarkable person I know, deciphered some lines of sense amongst a mindless babble. And I believe, being the best judge of myself, that those four lines of sense encompass my whole being and vindicate that maybe astrology has some truth to it.

I am not trust, neither am I doubt. I am the indecisiveness in between. I am Justice.

February 2011

I had intended to start this on February first. Yet as I am an ardent follower of the philosophy of procrastination, it inadvertently got delayed one day. But its better late than never.

So, February, yet another February, the shortest month of the calendar, the month of purification according to Romans and in modern connotations, the month of Cupid where you get your wallets fleeced, as these days even love comes attached with a price tag.

What are my goals for the month.
1. Stick to this list, which I have never done.
2. Stick to office hours. No more arriving late and leaving at inhuman times in the night.
3. Get back to my old reading frenzy days.
4. Write more often.
5. Prove to my relatives that I am not as anti-social as they deem me to be.
6. Start sketching after a ten year long hiatus.

Enough for two months. I think so.

Inspiration

From the days of prancing around in half-pants to the days of self consciously attiring yourself for your first job interview, one question transcends that vast gap of time. Who has been an inspiration for you? From hackneyed answers like Sachin Tendulkar to the flabbergastingly dumb answers like Mother Teresa(relive Priyanka Chopra-Miss World title), we have seen them all. The spectrum of the answers are also mind numbing. From fathers and mothers to celebrities to business tycoons to sportsmen, actors, models, we seem to have spared none. The bloody self-help writers have made a killing out of the phenomenon of people needing an inspiration.

And yet, no body seems to have answered the fundamental question. Why the hell do we need an inspiration. If every jackass who had Sachin Tendulkar as his inspiration, achieved even an iota of their idol, a Murali Vijay wouldn't have had a chance to flop three times in a row. And as for having your father and mother as an inspiration, I think its a terrible lack of imagination. And instead of trying to ape a Ratan Tata, its better to divert one's efforts to actually try one's hand at entrepreneurship. And I wont even start on actors and models.

I beg to differ. Its hard enough to live upto one's own expectation. And then you have your parents, relatives and peers. I don't subscribe to the foolhardiness to add to that wretched list. I am just about happy being myself.

New Home, Old faces

Rewind one and half years, and the last place I wanted to be in, was Bangalore. A lot of well-intentioned relatives with abnormally long noses, a city that held no surprises, and the impossibly obnoxious yuppie crowd. The only thing I could see in the positive was the impossibly temperate and soporific climate.

Now as I look back on it, Bangalore or as it has been rechristened Bengaluru is not that bad a place. I am at my antisocial best, paying a visit to my Grandpa's only when I miss the home made food. The constant penury makes sporadic visits to the pubs weigh heavy on one's wallet and a protective shield of friends makes female intrusion a probabilistic impossibility.

The abject mess that surrounds us, the dump of unwashed clothes, shoes strewn across half the hall, the stinking bags of rubbish that had to be thrown out a couple of days before should put off the majority of the population that deserve to be termed homo sapiens, yet curiously enough it is a throwback from the much reminisced past. The oft disastrous attempts at cooking, the compulsory drinks on weekends, friends dropping in all the time and the reliving of hostel life have made it an unlikely haven.

Five Snaps and a Four Year Tale

We live in the past, nonetheless we vehemently protest the same. Yet there is always a fluttering of the heart, a breathless anticipation and waves of mirth rollicking inside us, when we peruse through the past. A simple device, yet the camera unleashes the real person inside us and strips one of the veneer shrouding our drab and dreary lives. Well without further ado, I present the five snaps that evoke uncounted memories and a wish to relive the moments.

1. Awesomeness descends on Koilighughur.

The journey took a shade over five hours, deep into the Maoist ridden forests of Western Orissa. The unsettling and unspoken apprehensions turned into squeals of joy,at the discovery of a pristine waterfall snuggled in the midst of a verdant and virgin forest. Four hours later, in the freezing waters, the seven people in my branch, who made the drudgery of going to class everyday a bit less tiring. Guys, the best picnic ever.

2. Gung-ho at Goa.

It took me just about a minute to decide to leave for Goa, three hours before the train would leave for Mumbai. Bankrupt, ticket-less and without making my parents any more knowledgeable, I departed for Goa to experience the best weekend of my life. Four days, crates and crates of beer, uncounted cigarettes and a healthy dose of weed later, we discovered a simple motto for life. Let the circumstances go fuck themselves, just enjoy what is on hand. Aptly summarized by our Goa tag "fir bhi chalo".

3. E_Clan-We live to game.

I will always take pride that one of the greatest gaming clans ever at NIT Rourkela was christened by by name, albeit as a joke. But E_Clan was not just another gaming clan, it was a way of life where you needed to belong rather than prove your gaming prowess. We never won a tournament, yet we left an indelible impression on the gaming legacy of NIT Rourkela. AOE will never be the same after us. I just have one regret. We could never get the fourteen of us on a single snap.

4. B-Top-Perfection has another synonym.

Was there a more complete wing. I know C-Mid will be after my blood when they see this. But then, when was there competition among friends. The artistry of Amit, the financial genius of Kp, the understated brilliance of Debi, the 200+ IQ of Chirag, the stolid Bhuyan, the hacker-monster-leecher-gamer Zhenga, the simply himself Nuka, the King of good times Gyana, the Mr. Organiser Nk, the pre-evolutionary Pran, the impish Susi and the gentle giant Abhinab. We showed the rest how to have a weekend, didnt we guys.

5. EE-2010.

Period.

On the Wrong Scent

In the yesteryears, there were poachers and there were hounds that sniffed them out. These were the days before technology put paid to the romance associated with tramps and their vagaries. These were the days of Huck Finn and the various unnamed vagabonds. And these were the days when brain triumphed over smell. The tramps used an innocuous yet ingenuous way to ward the hounds off their scent, using smoked herrings to cover their tracks. And hence arrived the term " A Red Herring".

And I loved the concept. I always have found the concept of playing to the part and putting people on the wrong scent perversely pleasurable. And hence the name A Red Herring.

On Pornography in General

[This topic has been written in a moment of epiphany by the author as he struggles with porn-starved existence for the past fortnight. It’s always the ubiquitous stuff; we miss and need the most.]

A man is the sum of his experiences. A woman must also be, but I am deliberately being sexist as the topic might be slightly misogynist. Well there is one experience which I am curious of the role it has to play in the building up of character and psyche of every man. It has a ubiquitous presence in most of our lives but I wish to delve a bit deeper and strip some of the outer layers which have been socially and morally conditioned and get into the visceral raw selves. I am talking about pornography.

As puberty strikes in and suddenly your eyes are not the same anymore, one begins to be a bit more enterprising and inquisitive about our physical and mental needs. I wish I could accurately pin-point the day when I was acutely aware that girls had developed breasts and then go back in time and experience the joy that nubile discovery. I think that was the most decisive moment of our life-The discovery of one’s sexuality. Now you can be all sacrosanct and high-brow now, but the truth remains that almost half of the adult conversations we have had have dealt with girls, sex and porn.

The role of pornography in our lives is undeniably made even more indispensable with the sexually repressed society that we live in. This is a society where we have grown up with the image of sex as two flowers touching each other, the lights going off or bees humming and the rest of that crap. For a long time I believed that if you tear of the arms of a woman’s blouse it is termed as rape. With this pedigree, the discovery of porn in my early teens was like serendipity, as I assume it must have been for the rest of you. People, who disagree, and I have the misfortune of knowing some please consult your doctors.

But the illicit pleasure of watching porn in its various titillating forms brings a warm glow to my heart. Who can forget those days of criminally high priced internet parlors, the drooling over desibaba, worldsex and hundreds of other sites? Things that seem onerous and obsolete now, like sex stories or browsing for porn used to be like drops of nectar in those halcyon days. Our travails continued in the same fashion till we entered engineering. Till then porn or BP was associated with sneakiness, a forbidden private pleasure with generous dollops of adolescent shame and guilt.

With engineering or better still with the advent of LAN came the new age of porn. Because the primitive days of LAN-less Hall-3 if you guys can remember used to thrive on miniscule mobile videos, stashes of cheap, bawdy sex magazines and a host of filthy porn on some scattered PCs. Then came LAN and changed the playing rules. With the inhibition of discussing the role of porn and jacking off having disappeared due to shared living space, the definition of porn had been altered forever.

With Naughty America, Vivid Entertainment to the fore, we were suddenly exposed to a completely new world of entertainment. While some broadcasted their love of this new phenomenon by indiscriminately stocking their PCs with whatever they could find, there were also the diffident folk who resorted to hiding their stockpile in some remote corner of their PCs. But while the earlier elusiveness of porn had made its worth its weight in gold, with the passage in time, porn got mundane with people honing their tastes and specializing in stuff such as MMS clips, BDSM, Hentai, Inter-racial, 2X et al. The hunger for porn was best demonstrated after a spate of long holidays when a majority of the populace, including some of the porn kings had to empty their closets before donning their veneers for home.

While most of us have crossed the threshold into a more civilized way of life, and wouldn’t admit to our inglorious past selves, I certainly hope that we give pornography the due place it deserves in our hearts and more importantly our loins. Two Parthian shots before I make a disgraceful exit;

1. Does porn hold the same place in the hearts of committed folk as it does in the case of the single junta?

2. Is the stand of this post correct with regards to women-as in porn is extensively limited to the depraved males. If any free thinking female out there desists, you are more than welcome to express your opinion. (Private opinions would be given preference.)

A Week at the Anti-Christ's

I hate kids. I hate them emphatically. Not to sound cool or to make any kind of statement. I just hate them. I am ready to go to arms against the people who melt into raptures when they see kids. I don’t care if they are cute, are innocent or say stupid things in a cho chweet voice. I hate being pestered by their questions, I hate laughing at every mundane thing they do and I hate being told that the kids these days are smarter than us. Anyways let me come back to my topic and tell you about the Devil Reincarnate that I have been living with.

He is my youngest cousin, four years old and unfortunately I share my birthday with him. He is Satan’s emissary. Five minutes with him and you would prefer hell to earth. After my arrival at my uncle’s house, it took him minutes to realize that his latest victim was in his presence. A mere second later I had been pinned down by this pint sized person who was sitting on my neck and all the while I had to smile and remark how strong he was. Then I watched the travails of my aunt as she tried to follow him all over the house trying to force food into his mouth. She finally succeeded after two hours when he found out that the inside of the washing machine is a good substitute for the dining table.

He likes waking me up in the morning by jumping on me, blowing in my ears or pulling the pillow from under my head, whichever catches his fancy. By the time I sit down with the newspaper, and he has succeeded in making my aunt and granny run a marathon for his breakfast, he comes over to make my morning miserable. He takes a devious delight in shredding the sports column to shreds right when I am in raptures over Sachin or the Commonwealth Games. He scribbles nonsense over the Crossword and Sudoku just when I am stuck in a tricky position. Shooting darts at my face is his latest contravention.

He also has a special antipathy to any other channel other than Pogo or Nickelodeon. I swear I will have those two channels cut out when I have my own place. The imp can raise the dead with his screams and cries and he holds the whole family at ransom due to his impressive bawling capacity. When I had just made myself comfortable with my copy of I, Claudius, he promptly tore off the cover page causing me to stop reading there and then, which even my parents haven’t been able to in the last two decades. His favorite way of baiting me is to turn off the power when I am on my lappy, or pressing all the keys at once or spitting on the keyboard. When he is doing none of this he is hanging from my shoulder, or pulling my hair or pulling down my trousers. He can give Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame a run for his money any day, I swear.

And trust me I am trying. I spent three agonizing hours building a house from Lego bricks which he smashed into bits because he wanted another design. I have lost in mock alphabet and letter writing contests to him. I have got bitten and spit upon and been made a Bull’s eye for his shooting prowess. I just can’t wait till his school reopens on Monday and I will be rid of him for at least six hours a day. And now I must stop cause he has lost interest in the fire-truck I got him and is making faces at me, which I am sure does not bode good news.

The Illusion of Memories

Memory is a chimerical device. It takes a devious pleasure enticing and torturing the mind. I often think of memories as glimpses of the outside world seen from a speeding train. It leaves behind a plethora of half formed images, poignant in imagery but when reminisced, they seem as if from a spectral world of our self-conjured dreams. They are there but when you look closely, trying to dissect through their innards they vanish in a puff of smoke leaving behind an odor, that tantalizes you and at the same time forming a self-castigation for the futility of the entire effort. The more I start to peer behind those swirling clouds of confusing thoughts, the more pressed I become to question my own sanity. Every day forward erases the past by a bit. It’s as if all the laws of entropy have been vanquished by the forces ruling my mind and the perfect painting is peeling itself of those wonderful colors that once ensnared my mind, leaving behind a sketch that is a travesty of my memories. The pellucid waters are now a mire of confusion bereaving in the loss of their tranquility. The quintessential sense of the balance that my mind used to possess has become hoary and does not allow me to relax in its erstwhile comforting bosom. Reality has become an illusion and vice-versa. Sometimes I feel like I am floating outside my own self gloating in the chaos that preside the reality. Bewitching images from an illegible past mingled with grandiose visions of the future seem incongruous with the stark austerity of the present. I seem to be standing at the cross-roads where time has stuck and I can browse through past, present and future with equanimity and yet wonder when I am going to wake up. It seems that my spirit has detached itself from the travails besetting my beleaguered body and is reveling in this new formless and timeless existence that is beyond the scope of its own comprehension.

A Tryst with Reality

Today we finally embarked on the task that I have been the most apprehensive of- interviews with the parents. The data that we had collected pointed to the fact that an overwhelming, if not a hundred percent majority of the parents were involved in professions that would barely provide for a hand to mouth existence. While the kids had taken to us with an ease that surprised us, I for one had misgivings about what would happen when we would step into their lives after school.
For privileged people like us, who have never had to worry about anything concerned with financial affairs, it was a sort of conundrum. Which questions to ask and how delicately could we put it through to them that we just wanted to know the environment surrounding the education of the child without sounding too nosy or obnoxious at the same time. But six hours after we met with the parents of Monalisa Nag of Class 6 of R.E.C Govt School, I have trouble shaking of the image of that small asbestos roofed house entrenched deeply in poverty and the parents who hope against hope to see their daughters making a place for themselves in society.
Popular culture and media have often fostered the general perception that somehow uneducated parents somehow do not care enough for their child’s education. Think again. The silent despair that we were faced with when we put forward the question to Monalisa’s mother, Devaki, a housemaid, almost abashed us. While she wants to be a part of her daughter’s education, it’s almost gut-wrenching to see the helpless inability to do so. The enthusiasm of the father, Chandrasekhar who earns only 3000-4000 per month as a driver at the thought of his daughter becoming computer literate is infectious. It is not the aspirations that they have of their children that separate them our parents. It is the impotency of poverty and illiteracy that prevents them from doing so.
It is not charity that they want. While economic emancipation for everyone is an utterly utopian idea, the least the Govt can do is spruce up the levels of education in the hundreds of thousands of primary schools. Just making schools and giving free mid-day meals is not enough. The education that they are getting should of the quality that it makes a change in their lives. The society that debates all these topics sitting in the comforts of their homes is even more at fault. Of which I have been an integral part of all my life. I write this with the hope that twenty years from now, if I perchance happen to read it again I would not be smothered by the guilt and shame that engulfs me now.

On Feb 14

I was well into my early teens when I first heard of the Saint and the eponymously named festival held on Feb 14. I was yet untouched by Cupid’s arrows which had struck down so many of my friends leaving them bleeding their hearts out on the altar of love. I don’t know if love was in the air but change was certainly in the air. 

Girls became a sub-species under Homo Sapiens. Precious pocket money was spent on Archie’s cards rather than on Centerfresh cards. People who couldn’t string two sensible words together were waxing love lyrics. The Rose, a flower which I have always felt is a bit overhyped, assumed much more important connotations. Love-lorn expressions ruled the day instead of heated discussions on last evening’s WWE matches. People with the heart of a chicken were vowing to slit their wrists and seal their love in blood. The whole day was fraught with nervous tension, shaky legs, brittle laughter, some elated hearts and many broken ones. And as for me, I was nonplussed and amazed at the inanity surrounding the whole charade. It was something out of a Coen Brothers’ movie: funny but macabre at the same time.

The years have rolled on and the only things that has changed is the size of the dent made in your pocket. Globalization and the Commercialization of the arrows’ of Cupid have ensured that a mere card of the past isnt sufficient enough. V-Day is something to be planned to perfection right from the message in the card down to the tint of the roses. 

Now, lacking my previous asperity and the insolent candour of an armchair critic, I think I have gained a sliver of knowledge into the Valentine psyche.The social hypocrisy that enmeshes us so tightly in its grasp has ensured that love is in the movies, in all forms of music, in literature, in the air we breathe. It surrounds us everywhere, except that we never feel an iota of it. True Love is like an urban myth. Countless have heard of it, barely anyone has experienced it.

So if one day out of the other mundane 365 days is reserved entirely for the celebration of love, I don’t think its asking for too much. Never mind that next Valentine, you will be whispering sweet nothings into the ear of someone other than the special person of this year. Never mind that you are among the millions of souls whose love is unrequited this year. Never mind that this year you have no one special to celebrate it with. 

Cupid’s arrow will strike true some Valentine or the other. Then you wont belong to the class of people mentioned above. Then you will realize love need not a reason nor occasion to celebrate, neither doth it need to wait for Valentine’s Day to manifest itself.

A Paean to Friendship

As another epoch in my life draws to a close in a matter of months, I feel in my heart an unfamiliar tug of emotions and a rush of bittersweet memories. The rites of passage from an institution isn't a novel experience for me, they have been the bookmarks in a largely sordid and insipid book. Also I am not inclined towards the hysterics and melodrama that ensues at the time of bidding farewell to an institution.

Being endowed with a deeply cynical outlook towards life and all that comes with it, I have rarely paused to ponder about such stuff. Such thoughts are generally relegated to the locked attic in my brain which I rarely pay a visit, and if so its a perfunctory one, whose sole purpose is to reaffirm my own humanity.

I have always maintained the belief that in the journey of life there is never a co passenger for life. People accompany us in our journey to some milestone and then depart for their own destinations with their own preordained companions. Hence I have never been overtly sentimental about friendships and relations. People come and go. Some leave indelible impressions, etching their presence permanently, others are like the morning dew, beautiful while it lasts and leaving just a whiff of their fragrance in our lives.

But my nihilist stand has been shaken in these four years of glorious existence. As I took a break from the mad rat-race, I realized that only a gift of the gab and a self deprecating humor had made me an affable companion. That inadvertently I was seeking solitude in the midst of company. That I had not visited my locked attic in a long time.

Four years have passed since then. I no longer recall the milestones that had marked my participation in the race. I no longer despair much at my silly failures and nor do I rejoice alone in my not-so-big achievements. I no longer lock my attic.

I have realized the magnanimosity of my friends of yore, who have conveniently looked beyond my shortcomings of nature. I have realized that some people can accompany you in your journey of life, only if you don't push them away because of your fatalistic nature. I have realized that you can gain new insight into and be pleasantly surprised by the friends you have known since you were three feet tall.

As for my present life, I have made a lot of discoveries. I now know I can share rooms with the most slovenly person I have known. I also know now that its possible for a group of people to share everything except their tooth-brushes and underwear. That Communism maybe wasn't that a bad idea, equitable distribution of money leads to everyone having an equal share of the beers on the table. That it is possible for guys to think about their friends while sharing some food. That it is possible to take care of a whole wing when everyone else is broke. That it is possible to miss a friend whose sole purpose in the company is to eat every other person's brain with his wisecracks. That it is possible that a person can share designer stuff among his more uncouth friends who don't value the finer tastes of life. And that someone can a take a fall for you.

And some friendships cannot be defined. They bring a glow into your whole being that makes the whole existence beatified. Their absence makes you fret with anxiety and their presence worth the wait. You feel the urge to invite them into that private attic of yours from where the both of you can peek into that thing intrinsic of you, your soul. I am a skeptic of the idea of soul mates, but maybe this is the thing closest to that.

On The Fair(err..) Sex

Disclaimer: This is not penned with a malicious intent neither does this to seek to defame any person, whether living or dead. Any resemblance to any person or persons is purely coincidental and is deeply regretted:P

Now as this is my blog and I have full rights to post anything, I risk being branded as a Male Chauvinist Prick by the aforementioned sex in order to express some of my observations.
Now that I cant claim to have a vast experience of the other sex, these observations are just a collective experience of myself, friends and also a reputed youth writer. I welcome suggestions and explanations from the other sex to help me better understand them and clarify some of my pre-conceived notions. Anyways let me begin without much further ado.
1. Have you ever noticed that when you need utmost quiet and need to sort out things with yourself that's the precise moment you get asked " Why are you so quiet?". And just when you have decided to unveil all your secrets to the person thats exactly when you are asked to shut up.
2. Have you also ever noticed that most of the sentences between you two start and end with so. The sentences generally start with her telling So.... and they generally end with you explaining ....So. Or they might end with her saying " I told you so.."
3. Can anyone explain me why the tear glands of men are nearly vestigial organs while they work with redoubled vigour in case of women? You see men always start off with a disadvantage in an argument or something like that. And yet women are the weaker sex. Personally I suggest counting sheep or seconds is a very good idea when you are in the middle of such a tear-fiesta.
4. Also while each and every tiny little fault that you have comes under extreme scrutiny, you dont have any right to question any habits of theirs. Hell breaks loose if you tell them that you dont like something that they have done.
5. And if you are late for a date or a phone call, the Lord may save you. A verbal assault is inevitable. But if they are late for some appointment dont expect a sorry or whatever. Infact get ready to hear it sound as if it was your fault. Coz some bloody fool invented some crappy system called chivalry some 1000 years ago.
6. And what about the urban myth that girls behave like long lost sisters when they meet, but bitch about each other in private?
7. Probably I should not venture into some of the more inexplicable and other-worldly behaviours of girls like drawling out words, baby talk, giving cheesy, stupid nicknames, the fluttering of eyes, the collective shrieks of joy or the use of five differently colored pens to embellish their copies and records.
8. Another disconcerting fact is that girls always bemoan and wail about a endangered species called " Suitable Boyfriend". Maybe they expect something of a knight in shining armour. Sorry to disappoint you girls, you only find stuffed knights in armour in museum's nowadays.
And to potential boyfriends one tip from the movie "Just Friends": Please dont let the relation glide into that Friend Zone. You see once the girl considers you as your friend, your dating possibilities are screwed. Harry and Sally only exist on the silver screen.
9. And yes women play God these days. The adage " Man proposes. God disposes" is history. Today's saying is " Men propose. Women dispose".
10. But no need to despair folks. Coz evolution is on our side. The class stud or the football jock might get to date the prettiest chick, but when its time for marriage women go for the fattest chicken. And in our fucked-up society her daddy helps her find one. As The Worm says " In the poker of life women are the biggest rake".
I also believe all these feminists shouting all that crap about equal rights and all dont believe in it themselvs. They are the one who campaign about being the weaker sex and enforce the idea that women deserve some special privilege for being themselves. The moment you treat them as equals you get looked down upon as a chauvinist.
Yet, after writing all this I wish I was wrong about everything I said. It kills me to admit that girls make this world a little more beautiful place to live in. At least 3 years of Engg. have taught me that.

My Bucket List

I recently watched the Bucket List, a beautiful movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman about two terminally ill patients who make a bucket list, that encompasses everything they wish to do before they kick the bucket.
Now I am not a morbid personality neither I am too fascinated or concerned about death. Nevertheless I got intrigued about the idea. Now making lists is one of the most hackneyed ideas of all times. I myself admit being obsessed with making lists. Half my life has been spent in making lists including to-do lists, New Year lists, things to achieve lists, I wont repeat this lists, crush lists et al. I even had a friend who had a list of all the women he had jacked off to. And the best part of it is that you make the list on a paper and not on your conscience.
Anyways I spent one afternoon ruminating on my Bucket List and this is what I came up with.
1. Streak during the Director’s address at Convocation 2010 and coincidentally the Golden Jubilee of the Institute.
Yeah that’s what the bastard deserves. A heavenly glimpse of my epic ass.
2. Get a Master’s degree in English Literature from Oxford(where else) :P
Well Engg life is so boring I guess everyone wishes he had a degree in some other field other than Engg.
3. Attend the Rio Carnival.
Samba, Bikini babes, the Sand and the Sea, Christ Redeemer. As sultry as a vacation can become.
4. Headbang at a Metallica concert.
This item on the list is going to be crossed off as soon as Metallica confirm a tour of India.
5. Write a book that preferably makes me rich and famous.
6. A date with Kate Winslet.
Yeah yeah. I am obsessed with her. But you see she is the most beautiful woman in the world.
7. A full body massage from Monica Bellucci.
And she happens to be the sexiest.
8. Go bungee jumping.
Have always wanted to experience free fall, that rush of blood into the head and heart stopping exhilaration.
9. Help save the sharks from extinction.
Jaws was a crap of a movie and more men die of stupidity than shark attacks.
10. A trip across the Great Australian Outback.
Crocs, Snakes, Ayers Rock, Aborigines and a hell of an adventure.
11. Getting marooned on a Coral Island for a week.
I think this will be on the list of anyone who has read the R.M Ballantyne classic.
12. Create a comic strip.
I have enough experience I think, 3 years have been spent doing cartoons in class.
13. Direct a movie.
With the plagiarized crap dished out by Bollywood every year, I am sure I can do a better job. If Karan Johar can make movies so can I.
14. Peek down at the Colorado river from atop the Grand Canyon.
15. Experience all the cuisines of the world.
Cant help it. I am an epicure and dying for good food after 3 years in this measly place.
16. Develop an athletic figure.
With half my life being bestowed with nicknames of varying rudeness due to the fact that I am plump(not intended as an euphemism), I want to experience hpw it feels to have a pack of abs.
17. Go on a backpacking trip across the Himalayas.
This is on the cards for next summer. Hope that no body chickens out at the last minute.
18. Learn to play the guitar.
It has been on this list since I heard Pink Floyd.
19. Have a personal library.
20. Spend a day at the Louvre.
21. Fall in love.
And that my friends, will be the biggest adventure of all
22. Convince Dad to quit his job and go freelance journalism.
23. Go on a world tour with my sweetheart.
No explanations.
24. Watch the world pass by.
The biggest leisure of all.
25. Witness a miracle.

Back in Black

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And this was the genesis of the age-old dichotomy between light and dark or white and black. As humankind has always been obsequious to the will of God it has always taken the stand of God. This dichotomy has been the cornerstone of all the philosophies and symbolisms of the world. White is pure, truth, peace, clean and humble. And black has been denigrated as evil, death, fear and anarchy.
My black has always been pure. It has its own existence and self, unpolluted by others, unlike white which has a second-hand existence living within others. It is independent, devoid of the impressions and stains left by others.
My black is sophisticated. It is stunning in an evening gown studded with glittering diamonds or stylish in a tuxedo for a black tie occasion. It is sexy and seductive accentuating the voluptuousness of the lady of my lonely nights. It is mysterious as the solitary nights lighted by just the twinkling stars.
It smacks of rebellion and youth. It defies convention in my black t-shirts portraying Che and a myriad rock bands. It shocks in the angry beats of my favorite black metal bands. It is the clothing adopted by the punk subculture. It is the symbol of protest against tyranny and dominion. It is success and intellect reminding the day of black robes and caps to be thrown in jubilation and trepidation of crossing the threshold of an old life and stepping into a new, unknown one.
It is as paradoxical as me. It is conventional and sober as the judges on lofty seats of justice. It is somber as the tolling of a bell, the hearse and the casket in which the put or remains until you have crumbled to dust and passed away from living memory.
It has been synonymous with this phase of my life. It has made the grays of my life a little more tolerable by offering a fair contrast. It has put my life in perspective making me composed in the days of the darkest gloom and prevented me from getting inebriated in the little flickers of success I have had. Black is the color of my life.

The Tale of my Spectacles

I remember the day I got my spectacles. Not that I needed them. The privilege of being a topper and the apathy of Stewart School teachers had long since made me immune to the fallouts of not listening in class. I will confess now. I got bespectacled coz my prevailing crush that time also started wearing glasses. Now don't ask me the logic behind all of it. Love, Infatuation in fact the entire genre is more stupid than blind.
Anyways within a few days of wearing the glasses, my crush was transferred to another girl who dint wear glasses.I also realised that I should have had a frame-less one done as it was the current rage. But thanks to two of my Neanderthal friends I was relieved of my spectacled woes when they found out that it was a shiny toy and could be substituted for a ball. Crashhh!!!
By the time I had the next pair I was discovering that I had to squeeze my eyes to slits to be able to see from the last bench(Now why I dint relocate to the first bench has been dealt with in my post We, The Backbenchers). By this time the power was somewhere in the range of -1.5. By this time people were beginning to identify me in Dumb-Charades when somebody aped that painful expression on my face when I wanted to see something at a distance. Anyways this pair also dint last long. I knelt over it as it was lying on my side while trying to reach for a book.
Another year passed. I entered engineering. Now I was even more loath to wear glasses as all my time in classes was spent napping. Besides all the money is diverted into more aesthetic pleasures such as smoking and drinking. Who is going to fork out a half a grand for a pair of glasses.
Now I had become used to people aping me and making fun of me. But what really hurt was the painful and accusing glances on the faces of my quiz partners when I couldn't ID Gene Kelly of "Singin in the Rain" fame. Matters really came to a head when after I uttered these memorable lines in Konark " Hey hey. Is that a gal in black shalwar over there. Plzz tell me if she is beautiful". This when every guy in the group was checking out that gal only. Really mortifying experience. Wont elaborate more.
So I had a third pair done. You may ask why I dint have a spare. No cash people and I couldn't offer that explanation to my parents as I was supposed to have not one but two spare pairs. But I had diverted the funds into more fruitful activities.
Anyhow the third pair also broke. I forget how, as it was getting too commonplace an event.
The next pair lasted a little more than 6 months. It survived the frenzied headbanging of the Opeth concert and trekking in Shillong but not a group hug. Someone became overtly sentimental and my glasses were knocked off.
I haven't had a pair made yet. And my power has surreptitiously grown to -2.25. Motivationally challenged, thats what I am. But the infuriatingly tiny print of my copy of The Fountainhead is making me go bonkers. So I have decided I will go in for my fifth pair today. Let us see how long this one lasts. And I think I have stumbled upon a truth. It is more from our carelessness than the natural deterioration of our eyes that keep the Optician's shop open.