is duniya mein 2 kism ke shabd hote hain...

There's two kinds of words. Outside words and Inside words. Outside words come out, Inside words stay in.
This blog is Outside words staying out, keeping Inside words in.

There are things I talk about, that I have no problems telling the world. There are things that will remain forever unsaid.
Things I should have said, but it's too late now. I could never talk when I got hurt, when I got pissed off... maybe I should have. Things might have been different.
But it's too late now.

Things might have been better... or worse. But there was a time to talk, and that time is gone. Talking now is just going to hurt, and nothing more.

And sometimes, hard as it may be, knowing how much it's going to hurt, you have to stay silent.

Sorry... something's wrong with me today. I need to stop now

Rock-bottom Rediff

The shortage of entertainment news finally reaches rock bottom.

Rediff's latest homepage story - asks viewers to decide which bikini Priyanka chopra should wear, complete with 3 demos using a superimposed page.

Really. I'm not kidding.

Guys, you left out the most important option. I believe that bikinis are anti Indian culture and reek of western decadence and moral putrefaction. I don't think she should wear a bikini.

Can we please have a morphed one of that, as well?

but it's the world that's mad, not me!

This post has been bubbling under for a long time...

I wonder sometimes if it's me who's schizo or everything else. Look at this city, for instance; there's been floods, rains, riots, and bombs. And then there's been the same commute, the heat and the traffic... the whole country is like that. Shake it up and it settles down again instantly. Roads are dug up, drains clog, lights go, traffic snarls, taps dry... and work happens, people carry on. Everything works, slightly twistedly, like a car bouncing between divider and wall, scattering sparks and pedestrians alike, but keeps on going.

The world around me is crowded, sweaty, dirty, infested, loud... and barely an hour's drive out, it's dead silence and emptiness. The people you do see will offer you tea, a place to sleep...

People will rip off the rubber coating around car windows for fun, and scratch a scar into the side with a key... and people will carry injured commuters to hospital in the only sheet they have.

I hate this city, this country, and I can't imagine life without it.

The years are amazing, but the actual minutes are hell. (Sorry, Douglas Adams)

And I don't think it's me that's nuts. It's India. Nothing works, but everything carries on.

Chaos that runs like a clockwork machine.

I wish I could understand how it can all be one complete functioning thing. Organism. Alive.

The GoI IS blocking blog sites!

Confirmed - my cable operator (7Star) is also serving up an ‘Operation timed out while attempting to connect to ___.blogspot.com’
This is one more in a list that includes Spectranet, MTNL, Reliance, Airtel and Sify.

Was ok in office, though; will check again tomorrow.

There's a 22-page list which has been sent from the DoT to MTNL, a list of sites to be blocked. What are they? Nobody knows (or wants to tell) because it's confidential.
That I understand. The HNLC became really popular only after it was blocked. They don't want to repeat that. But somewhere, someone has implemented this so hamfistedly, either in creating that list or the block instructions, or simply tried to take a shortcut to blocking, that has resulted in a violation of a constitutional fundamental right.
Did someone say, "I see a lot of X.blogspot.com sites with content that I don't like. Block them all!"
Or did someone else say, "This list has a lot of X.blogspot.com sites. Poora blogspot hi block kar, paanch minit ka kaam hai, phir chai maarte hain"

This is very, very worrying, whichever way you look at it; either as a deliberate act or as a careless mistake. The Government of India either does not understand or care about something called fundamental rights; we don’t have the right to equality, educational and cultural rights, and now we don’t have the right to freedom of speech and expression.

And what does the government say to that?
CERT-IN's Director, Dr Gulshan Rai, said he was unaware of the problem and would not be able to respond "off-hand". In a telephone interview, he told this reporter, "Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?"

See the story here.
See the entire event chain here.
Register your protest

Template Crash

Something weird happened to blogger, and I don't mean censorship. It was more like a kind of panic attack; my entire template apparently decided to take a long, long holiday and never came back.

I went through the gamut of blog crash emoting-

Confusion: Where is it? why can't I see my sidebar? Ctrl-F5, Ctrl-F5...

Denial: It can't be gone. It's here somewhere. I just have to find it. Please. It's here. I know. I can smell it.

Anguish: Auuuuuuuuggh

Manic Panic: if-i-save-my-blog-from-cache-ill-get-my-links-and-rebuild

Depression: Ahh, what's the point of it all anyway?

Pissed off: Why is God / Blogger / the net picking on me?

Rebirth: I will survive! I shall rebuild! Like a Phoenix, my Template shall arise anew from the ashes of... wherever it was

Zombie mode: code-check-lookup-refer-code-check-lookup-refer

Relief: It's back! And even better than before! Shiny! New! Polished to a mirror gleam! Engine purring! Complete with facial, tooth whitening and boob job!

Picking at scabs: Why isn't the desiblogs image showing... hmm...

I'm treating it with kid gloves now, though. That's an hour and a half of my life gone in just re-creation that I'm not getting back.

Don't you wish everything else that breaks is this easy to fix? That's why I love the net - everything is code. Get the code right, and you have everything. Exactly the way you want.

Drat. I was born to be a Matrix agent... born a century too early.

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.