Morning After

Last night, the roads were jammed with traffic; additional buses, cabs, autos, and most of all people on foot trudging home. I went out for a while, and the first thing that struck me was how quiet it was. No horns. No engine sounds. Nobody swearing on the roads. There was just an expectant silence, people standing or walking sombrely in groups.

The panic is... gone. I wasn't here in 1993, but I don't see this going out of control like then. It's calm, but it's a directed calm. People are waiting for a response from the administration.

The trains are running again; the Western line was back in action from late night (partially) to completely by the morning. Traffic looks normal; the Harbour side is ok, Central was slightly crowded around Sion hospital and Western looks all right as well; I guess a lot of people are choosing to stay at home. But there's still a very healthy number of people out, on the roads, in offices, at work.

There's a sense of connect. Every time I see someone I know or recognize, I get an SMS... it's one more thing we share. We Survived Bombay. Again.

Just like there's a different sense of any IMs or mails coming from out of Bombay; a sense of you-out-there, compared to the us-in-here feeling I get from Bombayites.

That's it for now, let's see how the day develops. I'm putting in a couple of links in case someone comes across them searching...

Mumbai / Bombay blasts - Some links

Helpline Numbers

Blood donation

Hospitals

List of the injured

List of the dead

The above links come from the Mumbai Help Wiki; I haven't been able to verify all of them, but it's being updated fairly regularly, and if you find something that's incorrect, go ahead and edit it. You'll be helping out a lot of people.

God bless Yahoo Messenger, man.

That's all I say.

When the phone lines went down, I managed to reach one friend who was online, told her what numbers to call, and rested easy. Conveyed a couple of other messages as well.

Makes you realize simultaneously how fragile - and how resilient - an environment we live in. We can get cut off so easily, and we can stay in touch in so many ways.

Talking of staying in touch, here's a list of Mumbai helplines. You can also post your SMS on Rediff by SMSing SOS to 7333.

One by one, people have started coming online, and everyone has the same question - where were you when 7/11 happened? And where are you now?

It's like 26/7 all over again, but there's a darker, more frightened undertone. They caught 40 kilos of RDX a while back. How much didn't they catch? How much is still out there?

Last year, people walked home through rains, through water, through dark flooded roads, but this is different. People are afraid.

The death toll has crossed a hundred now, and it's started raining. Things are not going to get better anytime soon. Rescue operations are getting stuck because of the rains; lights have gone off in a couple of places. And wherever there are camera crews, the visuals are... grisly. Body parts. Unidentifiable shapes that shockingly jump into recognition.

They've declared a state of high emergency; patrolling, extra police. The Central line is now up and running; Additional BEST buses on the Western side are being called up, while they check the trains. As long as people can get home, things should be okay.

And get home we will. Last year, we walked through neck deep water for six hours. Tonight, we're going to walk again. And we're going to get home.

Bombay blasts - update 1

There's been 7 now. Bandra and Matunga as well. All Western line, all first class. This has been a completely planned, targeted act.

20 have been declared dead, and over 50 injured... so far. The toll will really start going up once people start reaching the hospitals.

All the trains have been stopped. The Railways are saying they will not be starting the trains till everything's been declared safe; Platforms are being cleared of onlookers. Road traffic is still okay, but that's not going to last.

The helpline numbers have come up; 022 - 22005388, and you can SMS AT to 2424 to give your status on Aaj Tak. SMSs are beginning to come through now; most people have started seeing and reacting.

The mood is very tense now; people are stranded on stations, not knowing how they will go home (definitely not on the trains!) and anyway stations are also being cleared; roads will be too dangerous. Tempers are rising mostly because people are cut off since the phone networks are down; sense of disconnect.

And man, are people pissed with the administration.

Didn't expect to start the serious blog so fast.

There've been 5 bomb blasts in Bombay. Mahim, Khar, Jogeshwari, Borivli, and Bhayander. No death toll so far but serious injuries; the toll is going to be high later.

The Khar station roof has apparently been blown off, and the compartments have been ripped open; all the blasts were in first-class compartments. Maximum packed ones, at this time.

There's a kind of undercurrent of panic right now; as soon as the explosions happened, all the lines jammed with people trying to call to find out if people are ok. SMS's are going very slowly, there's no telling when it'll reach; a better option, if you want to get a message out, is to find anyone in some other city on messenger and ask them to deliver the message for you.

Not going home anytime soon; let's see what happens. watch this space. Next update in 30 minutes.

Looking at this blog, I see two things happening to it.

One, it's turning into a chicklit special from the amount of quizzes, tests, and other assorted pop psychology that seems to be infesting it like crabgrass. I don't want to create something like this; that's why blogthings exists!

Two, it's also filling up with a massive chunk of blogtech codes, snippets, widgets, links, and whatnot. I don't even know how useful some of these are; but somehow, I keep adding them.

Why?

I guess it's something to do with an affirmation of identity, of existence. It's not enough that I blog, therefore I am; there's also a need to tell the world about it. I want to scream my existence out into technorati tags, google crawlers, RSS feeds, social networks, directories, automated mailings of posts, egroups... and I proclaim the success of this effort with sitemeters, visitor counts, page statistics, pageranks, feed subscriptions, even what organism my blog is in the TTLB ecosystem.

It's definitely narcissistic, but I'm wondering is there something beyond.

Why this need to be noticed and tell the world that I exist, with x visitor counts to prove it? Are all blogger narcissists, or existentially insecure?

Or both?

Must be an awful experience... believing that you're the most important thing in the world and at the same time, not being able to believe that you actually do exist.

more hellish quizzes

This blog is turning into a complete encyclopaedia of quizzes, but I couldn't resist this one... I promise it's gonna be the last.

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	Very High
Wrath:	High
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	High
Pride:	High

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Your sin has been measured. You have committed many sins, but Gluttony is the mortal sin that has done you in.

Fascinating. Not only am I extremely gluttonous, but also wrathful, greedy, lustful, and proud of it.

...and here's how insane I am

A few weeks ago, I was told by The Net that I was going to Hell. Specifically, The City Of Dis, a special Hell For Heretics.
Slightly taken aback, I wondered why heresy was considered to be my favourite sin, rather than gluttony or lust. "Tell me," I asked, "Does this mean that nobody, and like nobody, agrees with what I have to say?"

The Net took a while to answer (it's pretty slow in some ways, especially in these type of direct one-to-one occult engagements) but answer it did.

And here's the answer.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	High
Schizoid:	Very High
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Moderate
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	High
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High
-- Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Information --

I am insane. And the above is how insane I am.
Are you insane?
Yeah, right.
But just in case, do you want to know what kind of insane you are? Huh? Huh?

It's kinda cool, that way. I'm not dependent, or have any bad feelings about being me. And I'm pretty much a confirmed loner, which is something I've known since I started going to school. All in all, I'm seeing myself as being exactly the kind of person who'll walk out of the smoking ruins of a smashed civilization after a Solanum outbreak with a chaingun, a necklace of zombie teeth and a huge when-can-we-do-this-again smile.

Hehehe.

There is a God of Gorgeous Butts

A few days ago, I had posted a comment on A's blog on the characteristics of The Great Indian Queue where I had bemoaned... ok, let me paste it in so you can see for yourself.

- there will never, ever be a young woman with a gorgeous butt in front of you. Ever. If you have a sex change and enter the miss universe contest, the person in front of you will still be someone who's done the same.

Within 24 hours of posting this, I was in a queue. The window was closed (gone for lunch) and immediately in front of me - right in front - was the best denim-clad butt I had had the previlige of seeing for the last month.
The timing of this is... frightening.

But it definitely makes a lot of sense for me to do what I'm about to do... I think I'm on a good thing.

The next biggest problem with India is that nobody comes to you in the street and for no reason hands you large amounts of cash.

Ok, God Of Give Ashish Pots Of Cash, do your stuff!

Return of the Living Dead

Under any other circumstance, I'd have found this freaky. Over the last ten days, my dead past has been crawling out of the woodwork in the form of orkut contacts. People I haven't met, spoken to, mailed, IM'd, thought about, fantasized about, or even had featuring in nightmares suddenly appear in their new avatars of networking pages, coming first in ones and twos and then by the dozen.

Coincidentally, the last ten days have also seen a massive surge in zombie movies. Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead... I finally aquired the Constantine divx and the new Omen, Underworld 2, and Final Destination III released in theatres... not to mention Hellboy tonight.

Diabolic Conspiracy or Divine Communique? The frequency of calls coming from the US for one highly work-intensive client also went sharply up, so I mapped the correlations between horror on TV versus horror on call.

It was .76.

Not funny. Not funny, man.

That is - I don't consider my clients in any way to be associated with the Downstairs, or possess any form of demonic powers or influence. They may have, but someone will need to actually banish one with holy incantations before I'll accept it.

But that's the beauty of networking sites - they network. Simple fact of life but comes across as pretty creepy when you see it in action - one person signs up, starts getting in touch, and suddeny long-lost friends and enemies turn up everywhere... and they're all mailing, messaging, scrapping, smsing. A cloud of cacophonous virtual pigeons around my head. And unlike real pigeons, I can't even catch and eat 'em.

Go to hell!

Except that this time round, I know exactly where that is.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!

You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell.

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Extreme
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Somehow I never really imagined heresy to be the biggest sin I'll be committing in my life. Lust, gluttony, avarice, gloom, treachery, even violence... but heresy? Or is the fact I can't recognize it proof of the fact?
Or is it just the Net's way of telling me I don't agree with anyone?

lassitude

All I want is everything

or at least, 49% of it. I want 49% of admissions into kindergarten, 49% of college seats, 49% of jobs in every sector, government and private, I want it all. But that's what I'm not ever going to have.As of today, a little under half of all jobs, educational oppotunites, choice of careers... is gone. I just need to fight for what's left.

Every morning, when the train comes in, there is enough space for around 100 people to sit, and a thousand to stand. Every morning, five thousand people actually occupy this space. Every morning, around fifty people abandon trying to get into the compartment becasue it's too crowded / difficult / dangerous. Every morning, three or four people fall off and get maimed or die.

Every morning, I am able to get a sitting place in the same compartment, under a fan, and go to to work reading or listening to music. I can do this because I taught myself how to use the timings, the spacing, how to swing around the bar while the train's still doing 20 kmph and use that angular velocity to curve into the seat I want before it's too late. I've taught myself to break bagstraps, knock off specs, and twist elbows while making it look completely accidental to get in. It's nothing personal. It's just the way the system works. I broke a guy's nose once, and nearly lost my fingertips another time. I do it because I need to.

Every morning, I know that two years from now, I will not be doing this anymore, because I will have moved beyond Bombay, I will have upgraded myself to the point where the daily commute like this is not needed.
It's nothing personal. It's just the way my career works. I start low, try out combinations, fight to get to a level and go beyond it. I don't care about the train. It has it's moments, good, bad, exhilarating, nightmarish. It also has its lifecycle. I'll use it for as long as I have to.

Every morning, I know that five years from now, fighting for 51%, or 25%, or 10%, or one job in a hundred, or less, will not be an issue. I will have moved on. Whether India adopts a reservation system or not; whether human beings fight like animals for basic necessities or not; it won't matter. I - or my family, my kids - won't be part of it. They'll have their own battles to fight, of course, but this is one that will have been already won.

I did ok. I might have done better if I'd gone to the engineering college here someone ten percentage points lower and with a different surname unfortunately got that last seat, but I did ok anyway. I guess it's how you look at life. You can cry over it and say you've been robbed of something that should have been yours by right, or you can accept that the only things that are yours by right are what you've worked for, fought for, and got. Nobody owes you anything. Not your ancestry, not your country, not your government. Only you owe yourself a life. You work for it, you get it, and you move on.

What happens to the train, the college, the government, the country... it doesn't matter. They don't owe you, you don't owe them.

It's nothing personal.

Update - May 26th

Another poster reads: "I am leaving for the US. I was disowned by my own country."

have a bad day

This is very clearly getting perverse now. Not only does the Person Upstairs not like me, but he seems to be deriving vicious enjoyment in making me suffer, the way I used spend hours of enjoyment with large ants, some string and a GoodNight.
Not only am I working my butt off the last 2 weeks and returning home at midnight each night every night, I finally get a heaven-sent opportunity to be home early. A meeting ends, barely a 20-min drive from home... at exactly the tipping point, where it makes as much sense returning to office as it does going home... and as usual, I froze.

Office? Home? Work? Sleep? Presentation? Blog? Client call? Kill Bill?

flip, flop, flip, and so on until 2 cigs and a chai later I took the plunge and went home, screw everything, will deal with it early tomorrow. Happily and relaxedly reached home and took out keys to open front door to discover said keys were not said keys, said keys were actually in office desk drawer.

There is nothing more frustrating than standing at that door, knowing that half an inch away is cold beer in the bridge, a soft mattress, DVDs, and best of all 4 hours of uninterrupted me-time. Half an inch, but it might as well be in Kathmandu.

Oh, well. Take the bike and go to some friend's place? Good idea, if helmet wasn't locked inside house and bike papers still incomplete.
Call roommate? Produce cell, find battery dead.
Grind teeth.

Recall number from memory and dial fromPCO. Get an old man. Of course, it helps that my roomie's name is also an impolite slang for 'old man' if pronounced that way. Get abused by said old man.

Take extra key from broker? Excellent. Broker gone to gaon. Even more excellent.
Grind teeth again.

Recall from memory with more concentration, get roomie. Tell him to get ass here.
Wander shop to shop begging for nokia charger. Sun went down hours back but temperature still sauna, only more humid. Take refuge in cybercafe. Realize I'm paying by the minute for a service that I get better, faster, and way way cheaper on the other side of that half inch thick door. No new mails. Nobody online. Pay credit card bill and stare aimlessly at screen. Force owner to charge phone and chainsmoke while chatting up people I've not spoken to in years for the next 2 hours.

Find I have booked myself to catch up with people I don't want to ever see again for 3 lunches, 5 dinners, a party and 12 drinks in 2 days. Not including what I already had planned. This is going to be an interesting weekend.

nobody likes me

Especially whatever god that may exist of technology... he's stopping short of casting e-thunderbolts upon my greying careworn head but that's about it. After the entire cable internet episode, which I would still consider the crowning glory, here's what else he's done -

• blocked the oil feed to my engine when I was about to take out one of the hottest girls I know
• gave me a job in the Internet industry and then had my IT department firewall me
• got my MP3 player stolen
• made all my interfaces produce perversely wrong reports, the kind that look oh-so-innocent until a question is asked, whereupon the entire structure of your conclusions collapses like a House of Usher and clients screech like the undead
• turned my cell to a screaming demon that I can no longer use; every call is additional stress
• made me IM-deaf&dumb by disallowing the Y!M network proxies
• when I bypass that with meebo, the net itself gets cut off

I seem to have seriously pissed him off at some point.

How do you appease a vengeful modern god? Can't be animal sacrifices or that would've worked by now. Should I sacrifice my roommate? Can't imagine why any god might find him appetizing, and I might lose some more brownie points. Maybe his Dell.

Who am I?

Came across one interesting little online test - it's a quick Myers-Briggs personality type test. Normally I dismiss most of these as conmplete crap, but this struck me for two reasons.
1. It matched with 2 others that were linked in as part of the same community discussion.
2. It matched with a full formal personality-assessment done four years ago by our MBA institute director, who also happens to have specialized in this field for several years.

(I was an INFJ, by the way)
Quietly forceful, original, and sensitive. Tend to stick to things until they are done. Extremely intuitive about people, and concerned for their feelings. Well-developed value systems which they strictly adhere to. Well-respected for their perserverence in doing the right thing. Likely to be individualistic, rather than leading or following.

Pretty interesting reading. Good timepass if you're into this kind of stuff... although this seemed to be painting me as this seriously intense background person, someone watching and evaluating, and if necessary, steamrolling over everyone else to get what he wants... and it doesn't help the other test describes the personality test as a 'Mastermind'. I keep remembering Police Academy VI and silhouttes of mysterious masked figures in fedoras and hearing maniacal laughter.
And I don't want to keep a large white furry cat.

Take the test here, if interested.

no more messenger either

Y! Messenger at office has stopped working, and I'm distraught. Never realized how important it had become... it's like losing a sensory organ. It's like going deaf, or something.
It's such a cut off feeling.

We communicate in so many ways. Mails. Phones. SMS. Blogs. Communities. Offliners. IMs.
Oh yes, face-to-face interactions. Almost forgot that one.

Don't you feel the way we stay in touch has gone through a complete paradigm shift? Five years ago, we would have groups like school friends, college friends, school friends, neighbours, family... now, it's all of the above. People that aren't online... you just don't stay in touch with them. Earlier, we used to write letters, call up people when visiting, catch up; now, everyone is either always-there or completely-gone.

no more sex

I don't remember where this discussion came from, but it turned into a fascinating one... We already have nuclear fission techniques (I'm talking biology, not physics - the entire take-a-cell-and-zap-it-till-it-splits thingy, the Roslin Technique) which they used to clone. If we can come up with something similar for fusion - where you can get 2 cells to mix their DNA - and use 23-chromosome cells only, then that's it. We will have made a new human being, made life. Not a clone, but a genuine new person. At the genetic level.

Cadaver Aspirin thinks you can't fuse anything except 2 egg cells - i.e. and XX+XX only. An XX+XY... there's more economical (and fun) ways of fusing those. XY+XY will still need a donor egg cell to continue beyond nuclear fusion.
Which means a world without men (and with continued evolution, not the genetic dead end of simple cloning) is possible but not one without women. We could of course use non-human egg donors but that's just too Omen (and he will be born of a jackal)

The cadaver finds that a ghastly idea, and I agree... besides, the tendency so far seems to have been towards an increase rather than a decrease. F'rinstance, there's already three sexes in Bombay needed to create and raise children - men, women, and bais. It's just not possible otherwise.

But on the serious note - cloning will very definitely be as common as GSM tech in the next fifteen years. You already got Lifecell with simple tissue-level regeneration; the next step will be a Michael Marshall Smith's Spares scenario.

Andre feels cloning is a doorway to immortality, but I disagree. Cloning is still all bout biology and genetics. Moving memory - and feelings, and conciousness, and identity - Soul Transference - is still a long way off. When the clone wakes up, will it be me? Or just someone a lot like me who wakes up with readymade memory but his own identity, who'll watch his memory donor still die a separate person?
I thought of having a second body grown (heck, I'm not that fussy, I'll take any that's available) and having my brain transferred when this one wore out, but the brain is also ultimately the same flesh; it'll degrade. Besides, the brain may not even be the answer. The Romans believed the soul resided in the liver. You can remove 90% of a mouse's brain matter and it will still remember the fastest way through the maze. The brain's just hardware, where do the memories actually exist? And I'm not even thinking about self-consciousness yet.
Man, this is fascinating. Can you even transfer souls? Gibson's ROM-construct characters - That's immortality, but immortality for the individual means death of the species. It's Catch-22.
and besides, sex is fun.

generic snarling

Seriously pissed off. For the 6th day in a row, I've had to sit in office until a time that makes going for a run the next morning an extremely unpleasant if not impossible experience. My cardiovascular system is degrading, the BMR spike I'd managed to get over the last 2 weeks has flattened out like my client's alphawave patterns, and the headaches are back.
Too much coming together. Rejection in 4 separate lives in the space of as many hours is not a pleasant feeling.

Don't know when I suddenly became an ops servicer. This is very definitely not what I saw myself doing, 15 months ago.
Waiting for June now. If that works out... let's see. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

And I guess what is pissing me of most is that something this trivial is succeeding in pissing me off. This is nothing. Why's it becoming so important?
I know what I need to be doing... it's just a question of time. Time to get back on track, shove everything back where it belongs... is that even possible? Can one make life a series of discrete, demarcated events, or is it one continuous intertwined mess that maliciously tangles itself up faster than my headphone cables?

I guess this is what rabies feels like. Loud, bright, dry, restless, and an overwhelming compulsion to bite.
mmmm... that would be nice...
bite till your jaws ache so so much you can't open em anymore and the freshblood smell, the metal taste the slickness the gristle wetripping off bone

Stop

I'm going to need professional help very soon like this

I'm caught between too smart for the simple happiness of tunnel vision and not smart enough to get beyond looking at the walls. I just hope it's a progression or I'm royally fucked for life.

resurrected roaches

There is a new companion in my life.

Two days ago, I stepped on a cockroach in my bathroom. She gave a flat kind of crack and yellow-green paste came out of the sides of her abdomen. After a few minutes, she started twitching feebly, so I left her and got on with my life.
The next day, in the morning, she was gone. I though nothing of it until I found her in the corner, on her back, legs curled up. She sensed me looking at her, and twitched her legs and waved her antennae. I ignored her again.
Tonight, she was still on her back... but, now on the other side of the room. When I switched on the light, there were some smaller 'roaches around her, and they scurried off. What did you think... they were giving her get-well-soon cards? The intestinal loops and solidifying paste she had been dragging around the last 48 hours were gone. They had been eating her alive, in the dark.

A cockroach lives 2 years, a human seventy. A human will die without water in three days. This is around 0.0117% of his life. By that logic, a cockroach should die in 2.06 hours without water. This one has been twitching happily for close to 72 hours now.

Great. The assorted ecology of my apartment can now be expanded to include an undead cockroach.

I shall call her Mallika.

scents and sensibility

it's incredible what a vivid - and emotionally powerful - trigger, a smell is.
Every time my roommate lights a cigarette, it's not that first sting just in your nose that goes up into your sinuses in a warm rush... it reminds me so much of being a child.
Summer evenings in a dark verandah in a series of huge, rambling colonial bungalows all over UP. Purple sky, stars just coming out. Breeze. Peace. Security. No worries.
These used to be the times when my dad would usually be back and be sitting outside with the evening chai... and usually this would be the first time in the day I'd smell it. This was before the job, before hostels, before college, before tutions, before even a bicycle-equipped friend circle. Most of the time between when I was old enough to walk and old enough to be allowed out of the house on my own - this was a defining smell, a scent that said my dad's home... later we'd sit and chat. And I'm always going to remember this smell with him, and my wanting to be like him.
I don't get this memory when I actually take the first drag, or even when I light up myself - that has a whole other set of associations. Teens. Adventure and guilt. Breaking rules. It happens only when someone else around me lights up - especially with a wood match.

I can quit smoking. I can't quit wanting to smoke. Right uptil when I actually do.

camo

I stood up today and as usual, someone tried to cut my head off.
What is it about being good at something that automatically makes people assume you're trying to be better and go after you with a chainsaw? Yaar, I'm being me. I'm not interested in being faster / smarter / stronger than you. I don't give a rat's ass about you. But somehow not being treated to rodent posteriors makes people all excitable and competitive.
These days, I tend to zone out at work... I don't know if it's the result of my vascular system finally getting back on line, or the awla snacks, or the weather, or incipient nervous breakdowns, or what; Life has become a videogame again, and I'm on a winning streak. Have started losing all sense of time... it's nice. Last I felt like this was during my 12th boards, when tunnel vision made life so much less complicated.
As long as I know where I'm going, that is.
2 days ago, I crossed a break point. I just stood back and thought, there really isn't much point struggling with this; I'm going to get jacked by something out of my list of 127 things to do before 9 PM, so might as well let it be #1. Since then, I've been surfing along the catastrophe curve and nothing's happening. Unless I stick my neck out, like today morning. Nah. It's more fun this way.

I

quitting

I'm on another health trip again. It's been close to 60 hours now, and I've slipped back only once.

Everything they say is true. The world is sharper. Louder. Brighter. Tastes better, smells... more, this being Bombay. But I have this undercurrent of restless manic jittery energy all the time... any more and it'll be twitchy.

I'm walking everywhere, and it doesn't matter how hot it gets. I arrive in office every morning dripping sweat. I arrive home every evening bathed in it. I'm sleeping earlier. The dreams haven't started yet, but it's a matter of time. In a couple of days my bodyclock will readjust and I can throw away the alarm clock.

Although I say this every time, this might actually be it. I've found something stronger. 12 years' conditioning for responding to feelings of satiety, stress, pleasure, relaxation, boredom, intoxication with a cigarette is being beat.

And sorry, I'm not saying what it is... you have to find your angels yourself.

The post-food periods are the worst, though. I actaully progress to twitchiness for a quarter-hour around then.

is an extramarital affair a sin?

One of you, dear readers, will have already read this... please excuse

virtue.
abstinence.
self-denial to oneself the pleasures of life, whether food, or mood-altering substances, or the pleasures of the flesh.

equatable?
how do you define virtue?
something you do for the good of all society around you, that develops into a set of societal norms. Cleanliness was a virtue because your fleas couldn't spread the Black Death. Fidelity is a virtue because you can't spread HIV.
But substance abuse? A virtue because you don't rob and murder to finance your habit? A slight stretch... so many other things that you can do the same to finance... but playing the stockmarket isn't a sin. Nor is choosing Gleddenfich over Mera No. 1.
Or having an affair. Whether you hurt others (or even just one person) is not a given. But do you by extension, by example, hurt society? Only according to the accepted norms... and how relevant are they? If you encourage by example everyone to sleep around, are you also indirectly leading to the demise of the human race via STD epidemics?

telelaughs

Telecaller: Sir aap postpaid use karte ho ya prepaid?
Me: Madam aap postpaid hain ya prepaid?
Telecaller: Sir aap jo chaho ge... agar aap chaho prepaid to hum prepaid bhi hain, aur agar postpaid chahte hain to postpaid bhi hain.
Me: hmmm...

wonder what she was selling...

Dalhi

So here I am in Dalhi. chaos reigns.

What am doing in Dalhi, you ask? You may well do so. And in the immortal words of Archana, if I find out, I will definitely let you know.
Friday night I was happily playing dumb charades with A___'s CEO and VP and my own GM.
Then I was 10 drinks down and changing a car tyre at 3 AM.
Then I was 16 drinks down and at the airport, but my body refuses to move. Does alcohol metamorphose into a muscular neurotoxin when it crosses 1,000 ml in the human body?
Then I was in the Starcom conference room, being trained in Starcom Processes (kinky!)
Then I was in Andheri, packing.

Night passed.

Then I was in Dalhi introducing Gaurav T to the Joy of Oracle. The thrills of the MAFs and the highs of the SOWs. The deep serenity of the SOLAR and the outright hilarity of the ARS. topped up with with the near-orgasmic levels of pleasure of the Global Flowchart.
Then I was roaming Centerstage in tow of my hosts in search of large bright paper flowers.
Then I was gorging on the best mutton curry I have had since I last visited my grandparents, nearly ten years ago.
Then I was back in Okhla with Oracle.

Now I blog. So whassup, doc?

bonguly

Calling all Bongs!

The best of Cricket, Politics, and Ganguly. Download and split your sides laughing now! And if you find this offensive, screw you!

The One... The Only... Bonguly

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

what's the weather like up there?

You Are Lightning

Beautiful yet dangerous. People will stop and watch you when you appear. Even though you're capable of random violence, you're best known for your power. Your dominant state: performing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Lightning

Obviously. What else were you expecting?

It's getting dark, and there's an electric feeling in the air. Something is readying itself, and you don't know where, or what, you can sense it coming.
A wind rises, a wall of hot, dry dust sweeping with it like a desert god's arm clearing his arena of the debris of the fun and games past.

A moment of silence.

Then ten gigawatts of raw energy leaps from heaven to earth, flickering through kilometers of air, foliage, and creatures between.
Air boils, flashes to plasma and slams outwards in terror.
The ground blackens, melts, sand fuses to glass before it understands what happened.
The wavefront rolls across the plain in a tsunamic crackle that fades to a deeper bass that you feel in your bones miles away.

And there's silence again, shocked, hushed.

The moment passes. And then the rain comes.

Cool.

Don't panic, people... I was just trying out some image-rich writing. The results were highly pretentious and wannabe; will be using imagery only when quietly slipped in the middle of other cynical sarcasm like an oyster in a shell. (Like so!)

rebirths

Compared 2 photos of my living room. One was taken before I moved out, and the second was taken around 2 weeks after I moved into my new place... and it's disturbing. Either I have an extraordinarily high tolerance for mess, or I'm schizoid.

Seriously.


In NSP, the percentage of visible floor was in single digits. There were newspapers, magazines, books, sand, CDs, officially banned plastic, stationery, footwear, beer cans, ash, clothes, bottles, cartons, the hookah, bills, and god knows what else everywhere. The other room was so messy it was unlivable, we just used it to dump the less usable mess. The kitchen sink had it's own ecosystem. The loo floor had newspapers permanently rotted onto the tiles. There were bags, boxes, and packets everywhere. The balcony door wouldn't open behind the weight of the junk piled up behind it. Must have sold off over 20 kilos of scrap when we moved.

And in AA - even one newspaper lying waving in the breeze causes spiritual torment. The floor has nothing except the mattresses. The books and CDs are arranged by size. The bottles are lined up in the kitchen and the packets are in a closed carton in a corner. Sheets are washed, floor swept. Everyday, rubbish is thrown out.

It's creepy.

I feel like an ex-concentration camp director, a Nazi now teaching elementary English to children in a village in Peru.
Life does more than just change; every move is a rebirth.
There are, of course, repeating patterns - once messy, always messy - but I guess the sheer effort that's being made to stay clean means that deep down, I'd rather not live in a sty.
Let's see... another month should tell.

Watch this space.

life is surreal

Moving really puts life into perspective, man. makes you really understand that all you believe, all you take for granted, is just so much loose change.

9 AM
when you begin with a terrified wakeup gasp when you realize that the movers will arrive in 2 hours and half your stuff - not the big things like fridges and TVs, but the little things like the stuff in the fridge and kitchen stuff (I never realized what the fuck I am doing with 3 bottles of oil, a bottle of acid, 2 large sauce bottles, a disinfectant, rice, atta, 2 packs of salt, lime cordial, orange juice, potatoes, onions, and a giant bag of coal. (Like I said, don't ask me what it's doing there, how it got there, or what possible thought went through my head while getting it)
All this will already destroy not only each other but any container we put it in.
Add 5 more bottles - Old Monk, Smirnoff, Absolut, Royal Stag, and RC. All with exactly a half-inch of liquor left. I have two choices.
I can either carry in those bottles clinking like a boozehound or I can finish them off and do the shift roaring drunk.
12 AM
Shift negotiated successfully. We celebrate with a peaceful relaxed lunch.
3 PM
slightly too relaxed, I guess. The 3rd beer was a mistake.
6 PM
woke up. let's see... I need to pay the broker, clear out the junk from the old place, call the contractor to repair the windows etc in the new place, get it swept out... and oh yeah, almost forgot, unpack my worldly possesions from 25 indistinguishable cardboard cartons.
7 PM
sold all rubbish in old home after losing one kabadi walla and locating second. Still amazing amounts of crap lying around.
8 PM
paid off broker after abortive trip to ATM and realizing I forgot my wallet (with ATM card) at home.
9 PM
rescheduled dabba. contractor to repair windows is missing in action. called him and he was drunk. tipping him for the shift was a mistake.
10 PM
cable installed. Yes! we have entertainment! This guy puts porn on the cable channel late night. I am happy.
10:30 PM
collecting deposit from old landlord (cheap terrified bastard)
CTB - "I have been giving houses on rent for twenty-seven years and I have never seen a disgusting mess like this in my life! You should have cleaned it before leaving! It was your duty! You should return things in the condition they are given to you!"
Me - "Duh. Uh-huh. Mm. Gimme the damn check!"
So the CTB gives me the deposit back in 3 separate checks, no Idea why.
11:30 PM
Realize there's no drinking water. tramp out again, search and find shop and buy bisleri. Also order in a chicken biryani. aaahhhh...
midnight
End of exhausting day... and my life is still wrapped in cardboard cartons.
1 AM
find clothes for next day
2 AM
find soap and toothbrush
2:05 AM
shower, brush, and go to sleep on pile of cardboard, thermocol, plastic, clothes, and what in the morning is discovered to be the DVD player.
Next day
Deluged with work. Just when I plan to relax, I discover my new landlord's dead. No reason given why or how.

So technically, we're illegal squatters and can be evicted at any time. Now I can truly sleep in peace...

Chicken attack

Yaar these days my favourite food has turned into a celebrity-monster along the lines of Salman Khan. yesterday they occupied 80% of page 1 and ALL of page 2. not to mention assorted guest appearances elsewhere... I'm waiting for the day when it hits page 3 as well. Chicken rocks the night with Kishen Mulchandani and friends.

It's paranoia. My neighbour would be horrified at the fact I am stuffing my face with poultry products daily but she continues to feed homicidal pigeons that then break and enter into my room. Life is not good when the first thing you see when you wake up is a beady-eyed ferociously gurgling creature shedding feathers and crap.

Long live tandoori chicken.

working...

Found an article from the new york times that described how an office worker had been sitting dead in his office for 5 days.
Apparently he had a coronary on monday, and sat in his chair till saturday when the cleaning staff asked him why he was working on the weekend. His boss said - "George was always the first guy in and the last one out, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself."
Moral of the story: don't work too hard. Nobody notices anyway.

This is now printed and occupies pride of place on my pinup board.

with this happy thought, let me carry on home...

I'm sick.

My nose is runny, my head hurts, I'm dripping thick yellow gunk out of my nose, anything I eat or drink tastes like ground glass, and I'm heading off to one of the state prettier resorts where I'm expected to be bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, sparkling and sharp for 3 days while listening to presentations and drinking ice-cold beverages like an entire school of fish. Let me crawl away somewhere and die quietly... please?

analysing my soul

You Are a Peacemaker Soul

You strive to please others and compromise anyway you can.War or conflict bothers you, and you would do anything to keep the peace. You are a good mediator and a true negotiator. Sometimes you do too much, trying so hard to make people happy. While you keep the peace, you tend to be secretly judgmental. You lose respect for people who don't like to both give and take. On the flip side, you've got a great sense of humor and wit. You're always diplomatic and able to give good advice. Souls you are most compatible with: Warrior Soul, Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Here's another one... the net can analyze my soul. Why do I want to have my soul analyzed? Dunno. It's not like I've been hearing funny noises from it's engine, or seeing fungus grow from it, or getting a funny smell (ok, the smell maybe, but that might just be the Park Avenue I was gifted last month)...

Have you ever had your soul analyzed? Here's your chance. And tell me why you did it.

redecorating my desktop hurts

...was looking at a couple of pics I'd taken on one of my around-mumbai treks last monsoon, and dislocated my paradigm.

A span of several thousand square kilometers of greenery, mist, cloud and mountain cannot coexist with a taskbar and desktop icons superimposed on it. It's... like drawing a moustache on a masterpiece. The screen laughs at you every time.

"That was where you were, and this is where you are."

I'm not too sure where I'm going with this, but I can't use anything except abstract art as a wallpaper anymore.

Every time it's an adventure

The more I have my hair cut, the world becomes a slightly darker place, and it's not just because of the gigatons of dift and dandruff released into the atmosphere each time; I'm talking about the way each experience becomes something between an Urban Legend and Twilight Zone.

Back in Goa, I had a leisurely sunday morning haircut where I got so chilled between recovering from the hangover, the winter sun, and the music, that it was halfway over before I realised the guy's wearing a pair of post-cataract protective sunglasses.
In Kandivli, it was a teenager who had a tearful argument with the manager all the while pleading with him not to fire him. Not very inspiring, especially when there's a razor at my ear and the wielder's voice is shaking like the Elphinstone bridge flyover. I like my ears. They stick out like the handles of a World Cup Trophy, and I want to keep them both.
Yesterday, I walk in and find everybody sitting facing random directions and watching a Vinod Khanna movie in the mirrors. And as soon as the sheet is tucked into the collar and the scissors are out, an attempted rape scene comes up. I can't turn my head, any attempted movement meets an enthusiastic twist back into the dead straight position while this guy is riveted on screen. Over the slightly irregular snip-snip I can hear bloodcurdling screams, smashing windows, chargedup shouting, a fight involving, going by sound alone, windows, lots of furniture, screaming women, and a chicken. Followed up by weeping elderly women and sirens.

And the results are awe-inspiring. Some bits stick out. Some bits are gone altogether. Vinod Khanna, Amrish Puri and the chicken have been duking it out on my scalp.

Wonder what the next one will be like...

the easy option... not that easy

Saw Rang de Basanti last weekend, and came out a little disturbed. Didn't anyone else find anything wrong with the idea of a bunch of guys so scared of the real world they had cocooned themselves in a fantasy, a North Campus Neverland?

Idealism versus realism. Do you choose to follow what you believe is Right, even though you know it could end up destroying you...

or,

and this is scary

do you take the second option - of getting out of your fantasy world, getting into Life the way it is and fighting your way through.

Guess which is tougher.

Somewhere the stories have twisted inside out. Death and self sacrifice actually comes across as the simpler option, though this is probably nothing remotely near what Rakesh Mehra originally thought.

Look around us.

If we knew this is what we were going to be getting into, would we have gone ahead?

cute stuffed toys of nightmares

along the side of the road, this guy was selling stuffed toy dogs... usual, head-on-spring, beads-for-eyes... and suddenly I was confronted with a row of dozens of hideously grinning canine heads bobbing around, staring at me with blank white glittery eyes.
It was like meeting a clown at 3 a.m. in a deserted street in the middle of the business district.

what'll happen to any child who is given one of these monstrosities? he'll be screaming at the sight of a pup for years.

talking to myself, future tense

One unashamedly gross site is deathclock. I love it. the bit with the seconds counting down has me laughing for long periods at a stretch every time I see it (which might explain my last performance appraisal) but today I was going the final mile. These guys tell you when you're going to be dead; I was telling myself that I was dead.
I'm supposed to leave the world a better place on Jan 7th, 2020... And that's when I'm also going to receive a mail from myself today, telling me I'm dead. Wonder how I'll react.
It's not good being dead, but being told that in a spirit of extreme mirth by a healthy 26-year-old who's completely out of reach must be extremely irritating.

I shall share my timepass. I'm going to mail everyone I know to receive mails the day they die.

God Bless Google. With Gmail, they triggered an inbox war... and made an email address the true permanent address.

don't say a word

There was a guy standing in front of me in the train some days back, usual close quarters, looked completely normal, standing quietly, and with this STENCH of cheap country liquor around him. like he'd bathed in it or something.
This is not one of those things you talk about... your social conditioning makes you look up and to the left, breathe shallowly, and say nothing.
and then it's too late because the crowd's in and you're going to be face to face for the next 45 minutes and now you can't step back, or move away, or turn, or even throw up on the bastard.

So you stand in resolute denial while something builds, and builds, and builds with every breath until you know that when the next intake stings your sinuses, you're going to just push him out without a word.

Is this how domestic murders happen?

the pause before the ring

complete radio silence clientside.
cliched, but calm before the storm is exactly how it is.

In the really good, peaceful, intimate, or just plain relaxed moments, I can feel my phone watching me, and it's sniggering.

i am joe's heart attack.

Will I ring in the next ten seconds? or will I stay silent and let you relax and enjoy life... for now?

night of the evil dead had nothing on ringtone of the calling boss.

they are among us

went running at 5 a.m on Juhu.
completely dark sky, but there's a line of triple halogen poles all down the beach, like a kind of pedestrian marine drive. and it was packed.
all really old people, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in brilliant orange light coming from landwards so it looked like a world of half-people, walkng terminator lines between orange and black ambling around... some slowly, wrapped up for the arctic (with monkey caps) and some briskly in shorts... all old.

kinda creepy. alien.

and sleepy dobermanns, labradors, spitzii, a pissed-looking great dane and lots and lots of small unidentifiable mobile furballs, all completely silent.

happy new year

slept peacefully through new years', and feel all the better for it.

*blink*

saw a human forearm lying outside the station this morning, near the tracks. it's one of those twitches in normality... everything else is as usual, sun shining, crowded compartment, announcements, trains... and this.
just.
there.
is this how surreality begins? or is there all the time and we just tune it out because it doesn't *fit*?

dumb women

talking of pretty women, why is there such a low correlation between looks and intel? why can you hardly ever have a conversation with a good-looking girl?

There was one adsales chick last week who was actually as painful to listen to as she was easy to look at. Or had she got so used in the last ten years to let her butt do all their talking, that nothing comes out of her head now?

future bleak.

Why bad things happen to good people

You know what I want to do? Some nice quiet low-income, low-time job in some place where you can drive to work in less than 20 minutes but your house can be actually big enough to live in.
And then I'll trek, write a bestseller every two or three years, have lots of dogs, and tell stories to my kids.
No car, just the bike.

The PSU guys had it right all along.


My director made a very profound statement last week. He said, "If I think someone is good, that I'll try and improve him. If there's no hope for someone, I'll just say, ye to chutiya hai, and find another answer."
The price of being good at what you do... expectations of being better. work, love life, everywhere.

too intense. need to lighten up.

Just Blah

Man this is a long rant. When I started it was supposed to be a one-pager, but it's a duracell. keeps going on and on and on and okay let's just nuke the freakin bunny

But I guess this is stuff I wanted to talk about and never got around to.
Urban angst.
Anomic social circles.
Can you actually never have conversations like this once you're out of college? Or is the real reason you never have conversations like this is because you bore the pants off people?

On second thoughts, don't answer that.

Reality Bribes

Saw Apharan yesterday.
Story of a boy who pays a 5 lakh bribe to get a job after much soul searching and promptly winds up being the scapegoat in a political storm, which turns him to a life of crime and father-figure conflicts...
But the real question I felt was - when does life ever give you such a clear choice? It's very easy to define that line when it's an amount like that, but what about every time you slip a pandu a fifty to keep driving after jumping a dysfunctional signal or parking in an unmarked but apparently no-parking zone? The world is amoral and will never put you in a situation where you can make a moral choice; it always puts the question in such a way that the right way is always the most difficult, slow and painful way, and the reward is never ever worth it.

Like this incident that happened to one of my friends - someone hacked his online account, transferred out 21K. tTe bank put it back when he complained, but it was wrong, correct? So when Star called him and asked to interview him, he would have been completely justified in telling what happened, right?

And here's the rub.

The bank in question is also his media client, which means a completely separate unconnected division of that same bank is also paying him his income. Should he risk going public and maybe losing the client?
Remember, his business is new. this bank is the ONLY client paying right now. or should he shut up?

I guess it's an easy thing from an outside view. Life - unfortunately - is never from the outside. it's always all there, all round, and you're in it.

Back to Nature

The road in front of my gate is dug up, which means all travel is now on foot and public transport.

Who says living in mumbai takes you away from nature? I do less clambering over rocks and dirt and through mud while menaced by assorted insects and the Indian Wild Dog while trekking.

San Andreas

One major success.
After two months of chasing, I finally got a working copy of GTA. I was convinced that I'd been screwed by now, but surprise, surprise! and because the poor guy was giving me other games in between to try out and I was returning them all saying I don't like 'em, of course after copying them for myself, I've ended up with 3 games for the price of one.

Right bastard, ain't I?

But it's actually pretty scary. This is a game - like all others - which actually makes someone standing behind you go ewww within ten seconds of your playing it, but this prides itself on it's realism - which means the border between fantasy and reality gets all the more blurred.
I got up and drove down to the local waterhole 10 mins away, and I found myself estimating traffic not by 'can I get through here' but more like 'can I bounce off the Honda, hop up on the pavement, cut past the traffic and earn a $20 bonus on every person I run down' and I tell you, it's scary finding thought like that in your head even if you know where they came from.
The unknown source ones are even worse.
hehehe

My roommate is an antithesis. The only games he plays is solitaire and pool and he plays those with such singleminded concentration you feel like putting ice cubes down his neck.

Cleaning up

Somehow, every sunday I end up throwing out several kilos of newspaper, cans, bottles, packets, and rotting food and leftovers, and by tuesday it's all back. I don't know where it comes from.
I tried not touching it for 2 weeks to see what would happen and my room turned into a nest. there were no corners anymore, just a dusty paper bowl from where a tv and a desk were poking out. too scary to try again. but damn comfortable while it lasted.

It's a lovely feeling knowing that
1. you don't have to bother about a dustbin or cleanliness of anything... if you don't want something, just drop it. paper, junk, ash, cans, butts, bottles, anything.
2. you never waste any time searching for anything. no point. if you by any stupidity put something not in it's place, you know it's gone.

It's like a lifestyle of the uber-rich. do they bother with where they drop stuff or pick up anything either?
It's like being an oil sheikh, or Paris Hilton.