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.