down the funnel

Is there any indicator that tells you when it's time to stop sticking to your principles, because they're wrong?

There've been times when I had been severely tempted - it's all too easy, and the kind of economy we have exploding around makes it not only easy to do, but also motivates - and your friends, your peers, people that you look up to, people you can't stand, and people that occupy zero mindspace - all create a set of conscious and subconscious standards. That's the motivator - that's what you try to live up to, because if you can't do even that, what use is all this anyway? And it is possible to do that, without compromising on what you believe in.
But recently, it's been getting harder and harder. The collateral damage is increasing, and I'm risking more than I want to lose in this. Maybe it is time to rethink the way I've looked at life - and let's face it, it's old-fashioned. Nobody does that kind of shit anymore. Maybe I'm obsolete. Maybe I'm doing the smart thing.

But one thing is true, though - options and decisions will come a lot easier once your back's to the wall.

Heppy burd day.

It's interesting to see how the number of non-human wishers has been steadily mounting over the years, and how they keep getting increasingly bizarre.

A brightly lit morning, as you nurse your hangover and wish you were dead, a perky young thing runs past in shorts and sweatband and chirps at you -
Spark people - "Don't count your years. Make your years count."

A group photo, sepia-toned, speaks out from the wall -
Batchmates.com - "We wish you a life time of success in finding great friends, peace, happiness & prosperity."

Vijay Mallaya, on the Indian Empress, in a tux flanked by assorted PYTs, raises his glass to me as champagne corks pop and streamers flutter -
King Club - "May you enjoy the good times not only today, but through all your days ahead."

Juhi Chawla, surrounded by backup dancers dressed as village belles, cops, animals, dakus, waitresses, and the mandatory line of firang tourists in shorts and bemused-but-vastly-amused expressions -
Seventymm - "Baar baar din ye aaye, tum jiyo hazaron saal, yeh humai hai arzoo. Happy birthday to you!"

Dark, quiet room, with a single table lamp shining on a empty tabletop in which a pair of scarred, heavy hands are visible.
Airtel. "The family wishes you a very happy birthday. We hope the year ahead is wonderful for you."
The next message said my payment was overdue.
What's next - a horse's head in my bed?

Tent with a crystal ball and a deranged, overexcited gypsy.
Bethea from tarot.com - "Birthdays should be a time of blossoming and it looks as if you have a wonderful year ahead."
She also warned me if I don't act now by buying her $18.95 detailed advice, I could miss this golden opportunity and forever ruin my life.

Open the door of my apartment, late at night after a bad day, and full family leaps out in matrimonial regalia accompanied by daughter and garland.
Shaadi.com simply yells - "Surprise!"

It keeps getting better. 11 months and my profile hasn't activated is the background to the image of the Cryptkeeper cackling with glee in a dark firelit, cobwebby cellar -
Times - "May your journey with us only grow longer, ahahahahahahaaaaa!!"

And as Oxy says - I'm just waiting for the next mail -
"I'm just an automated spammer program from Norway but I wish you had a bigger dick..."

Remember Yesterday

We've had our share of hard times, but that's the price we paid
And through it all, we kept the promise that we made

Through the sleepless nights, through every endless day
I'd wanna hear you say, I remember you.

A moment. Purple twilit sky, heavy with the promise of rain. Wind sweeping through the streets, the smell of sea. A single palm tree, lit orange in the sodiums, waving wildly. Free.
Traffic didn't matter anymore. The worries, the troubles - everything that had been preying on my mind like a dead weight - melted away, like it had never existed. I was as free as that tree in the twilight, leaves in the wind.
And I saw what I was becoming. How I was so caught up in every day that I'd forgotten to see the end of the road, where I was going with this. So lost in the trees, I couldn't see the forest.

I remember you. I remember how you used to be, how you used to think. How you used to feel. To live. Somewhere down this long road, I'd forgotten.

But I remember you now.

There are times when we need to step back. Regain perspective. See where we are, where we're going. Remember the people we used to be, the people we wanted to be.

And I'll remember you.

And I'll be you.

And I am you.

back on track

Things are looking up.

Thought I'd gotten badly jacked last month - our God Of All Things, the Almighty Finance, had miscalculated my taxes - giving me five months of grossly inflated salary and no questions asked; all very well and good, and deeply if silently appreciated, until it's July and time to file your IT returns and hey, you know what? you're screwed, buddy, you're dead meat, roadkill on the gravy train. (trackkill?)

But ok, still on track. A diet of chana for the next 6 months and I'll be fine. Good, too in a way; all the crazy eating out will get controlled.

Surprising how, at the time when you most need to save, you have the max unexpected expenses? It's like the universe knows that this is the only time you can afford this jhatka.

used to think it would be so easy

Windin' your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well another crazy day
You'll drink the night away
And forget about everything
This city desert makes you feel so cold.
It's got so many people but it's got no soul
And it's taking you so long
To find out you were wrong
When you thought it had everything

You used to think that it was so easy
You used to say that it was so easy
But you're tryin'
You're tryin' now
Another year and then you'll be happy
Just one more year and then you'll be happy
But you're cryin'
You're cryin' now

Way down the street there's a lad in his place
He opens the door he's got that look on his face
And he asks you where you've been
You tell him who you've seen
And you talk about anything

He's got this dream about buyin' some land
He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands
And then he'll settle down there's a quiet little town
And forget about everything

But you know he'll always keep movin'
You know he's never gonna stop movin
Cus he's rollin'
He's the rollin' stone

And when you wake up it's a new mornin'
The sun is shinin' it's a new morning
You're goin'
You're goin' home.

Wish I could. There is no home, now - no place where I can get away from this - have to deal with it here.
Why'd it have to be such an issue, man... the whole world and it's great-uncle has their opinion.
Attrition
feeling myself getting ground down
little bit at a time
outside in and inside out

I've got off the 6:30 slow to Andheri, and I'm walking down the platform towards the exit. An old man is walking towards me, slowly shuffling. He has a bandage around his head, from which a clear, transparent tube emerges. It loops over his head and ends in a square of sticking plaster embedded on the side of his nose, leading back into his head. He seems to be directly inhaling his own cranial fluid.
I watch him shuffle past and get lost in the crowd. He doesn't look around, just keeps going, staring down at the ground.

memories

I have two phones - one that I use, and the older one that lies collecting dust except when used in emergencies.
Took it out today for the trip - don't want to risk damaging a slider - and was scrolling through the old SMS's.

You can't experience this if you delete all of them - but old SMS's are like photographs, like an old note passed to you in college now found buried deep inside some junk during a spring cleaning... years later, that one short message can evoke so many memories, faces, experiences. Emotions.
It's... bittersweet. Pain, hope, agony and ecstasy, anger, love, encouragement, frustration... each message is a bud, unopened, of a completely different life path that never blossomed. An experiential seed.

And I read them, and I remember the faces, the words, what I had dreamed of, what I had feared... and what still makes me cringe today... and what makes me proud.

It's a unique, fleeting, medium, transient as the proverbial snowflake in hell. What is the lifespan of an SMS? Days, at most. Finding these... a sudden rush of nostalgia.
You can't save them, or wait for them, or expect them. They were never planned.
They just happen.
Remember how transient life itself is. The most secure investment may disappear... and the most random, unexpected castoff can survive.
And bring a much larger benefit.

climatic catastrophe

Me:

there are cold cold breezes

my spine, it simply freezes

the chill, it just not eases

while this daikin zephyr teases
the ac does what it pleases
my fingertips wrinkle into creases

my each and every breath seizes

with coughs, and colds, and wheezes

Praddy:

and i am sitting in absolute humid climate

no power in office
I need excuses to not cut you in to pieces and feed you to the fishes

New Office - First Impressions

In a word - Russlandfeldzug!

The Eastern Front, 1941-1945. German invasion of Russia.

Hitler's invasion of Russia had many similarities. There are sub-zero temperatures, and the TIL army is wrapping up in furs, big furry hats and greatcoats, shivering and turning blue in the chill mist that hangs in the air from the overenthusiastic air-conditioning.

Because there's no canteen, and it's just too blisteringly hot outside, food is at a perennial shortage. Famine stalks the cubicles. Biscuits, choc bars and other snacks are fought over viciously.

In between the fights for food, the army huddles around cigarettes; the nearest cig shop is outside the compound, a nice long walk away. Cigs are also running short and have become a precious commodity.

Communications are faltering and intermittent; the 1 Gbps connections struggle against a firewall that must have been the Berlin Wall in a past life.

Sporadic fusillades of ringtones echo deafeningly around the office like artillery, as the intercom system is configured while the phones are stuck on maximum ringtone volume.

More reports shall be forthcoming, if I am to survive this terrible June winter...

alt+ctrl+del

My friend, the computer.

They're as much a part of my life as anything else. I interact with them, work with them, play with them, put up with their megrims and vapors, their tantrums and brilliance.

Which makes me think - what have they taught me?

1. There is no problem that cannot be resolved with a simple shut down and restart. Take a breather. Look at what's important. Clear out the unnecessary clutter hogging your head. Make a fresh start. You might lose some work, but nothing that can't be redone.
   
2. You cannot multitask to infinity. If there's some stuff that can be done, do it. Too much will slow you down, grind you to a halt.
   
3. Save frequently. Anything can happen anytime, power can go out of your life, anything can happen. Take precautions.
   
4. Backup and Protect. The world is full of malicious people creating malicious ways to hurt you just for their own fame or money. The more you explore the world, the more you expose yourself to it's dangers; keep a good shield. Don't lose what you value. Burn DVDs regularly.
   
5. Equip yourself. There are things that you need to have to experience the best of what life has to offer, in safety. You need an AGP card, a DVD burner, HDD space, RAM, speakers. Spend some money. It's worth it.
   
6. Explore. What you started with is fine, but to really realize your potential, go out there, see, experiment.
   
7. Everything costs money, more than you thought. But there are shortcuts, hacks, ways of working around it.
   
8. There will always be less time than you think. Don't lose sleep doing inane timepass.
   
9. Organize. All the information in the world is useless unless you know where to get it. If your stuff is in a mess, it's worse than useless. It's negative, draining time and energy and mental peace without any results.
   
10. Once in a while, disaster will strike. Something so bad, terrible, unexpected that you were completely unready, and your life's work will be wiped out. But you don't give up at that. You sit down, take a deep breath, and type a simple little command.
    

Format C:
Warning! This will wipe out ALL information on your disk drive! Proceed? Y / N
Y

And sit back calmly, light a cig, and flush away everything - everything that was diseased, corrupted, dangerous, malicious. If you've been careful, the really important things - your music, movies, books, pictures, writings, and job - are safe, burned on a DVD somewhere. Your friends, their conversations, ids, everything is still out there. This is just a breathing space, a time to recoup, reorganize, and recover before you explode back out in the world.
Watch the counter reach 100%. Label your drive. Look at the dark screen, and think of the time, long ago, when in the darkness, there was a Word. One Word, said in the right directory, from where everything began.

And that Word was...

setup

time flies when you're having fun

what happened to the last six years?
getting old. when i was 18 i had all the time in the world to do everything... now running out of it to do stuff i had right up there at the top of the priority list.
i guess that's the biggest difference between a beginning and a middle, between 6 pm and midnite when you pull an all-nighter.
knowing the score is never a pleasant experience
someday i guess i'll thank me for what i'm doing today. but still - it may the right thing to have done, but is that the right thing to do? right now?
a future for a present. can i lose both?
a present. the future will follow?
attach too much importance to things. don't attach any.
right things. wrong things.
neither. both. any.

every minute gone won't ever come back
going now
so much i wanted to do - where did the time go?

game on!

My TV table has started resembling my PC room - enough cabling to build a fully functional elephant hammock, and LEDs that, if not the bridge of the Enterprise-D, are at least good enough for the Reliant.
Borrowed a PS2 and picked up a second joystick, discovered a new (good) games supplier, and I'm all set for the summer vacations, had I had any. Man I miss summer vacations. Nothing I want more than, not much, just a few weeks of AC, PC, PS2, and gametime.
Do I buy a PS3? or an Xbox? Am beginning to see the benefits of a dedicated gamesystem - consoles let you switch onto a game instantly. No bootups, no switching off inessential apps, no messenger windows popping up, and no Blue Screen Of Death. On the other hand... I do need to buy an engagement ring.
Decisions, decisions...

Roommate has acquired a 3-DVD set of Mr Bean, and we have just the single TV.

I'm also converting every plugpoint into a lethal firetrap, begging for a short. Pray with me, as I appease Raiden.

anachorismization

2001: A Space Odyssey.

It's fascinating to see old movies made about the future. This was done in the (fifties? sixties?) and while being completely groundbreaking in the central premise, nontheless looks incredibly outdated when you read between the lines. When you look at all the cultural assumptions built in.

2001 is already almost a decade past. We don't have Jupiter missions, or passenger shuttles, or Clavius base. But we do have human-machine interfaces that are generations ahead. Everything is... so much smaller. Buttons. Computers. Cameras. Food trays. Furniture. Everything.

At the time it was made, the movie looked very futuristic because the cultural bias was invisible - like looking at crystal in water. Cultural bias, when seen in the culture it belongs to, is impossible to see. Half a century later, the crystal's changed color, and sticks out like a sore thumb.

Text is HUGE. Displays, labels, buttons... diagrams are 2-color. Every screen is a 14-inch, and large displays are a matrix of multiple screens. With gaps in between to prevent gaussian blur :)

It got me thinking - there always will be some rules that can hold true for all sci-fi for a long time, given where we are now.

1. No artificial gravity. The benefits far outweigh the cost. apart from the resources wasted in terms of energy, look at the wasted space! Walls, ceiling and floor should be interchangeable. Footfall had that right, at least.

2. No large empty spaces. Not even cargo holds. At the max, maybe a net system outside where the cargo containers can be moored; that much empty space is just a waste of air, light, heat. No big roomy corridors, just crawlspaces and passages. No rooms, just bunks.

3. Minimal manned EVA. Everything to be remote-controlled, waldos and VR.

4. VR, VR, and VR. When you're in space, you are the ship. You need to move around inside and outside the ship as little as possible; ideally, the entire journey should happen with you plugged into the ship systems, floating in a life-support tube.

5. No High-speed maneuvers and stunts, at least in the immediate timeline; wastes far too much fuel.
6. Aliens will not be hominid, and most probably not even bipedal. Probably not organic either.

7. Space war will last days at the very most, and will result in complete annihilation or unconditional surrender, just because each side will have weapon technology so different from the other that any faceoff will be a race to find that one tech that the other can't counter. So 'war' will not be soldiers, fighters and lasers; it'll be espionage, crackers, viruses, and decryption tech.
8. Further down the timeline, there will be only supercomputers talking to each other.
9. Time travel will be possible, but each instant it's done, the time-traveller will be in a different universe. So you can't change your past, just someone else's.
10. Everything will be cordless, wireless, and batteries will never run out.

Unlike my laptop who's dying even as we speak. Ciao.

the bears ARE real

you know how it goes, right? step on a crack in the sidewalk, and invisible bears that wait around the corner for you to do just that will appear and eat you up?

I don't believe it for sidewalks; but the bathroom is a different story.

There ARE bears hiding between the cracks. They DO eat the people that aren't careful about where they put their feet.


look at that. you can see the man being eaten. he's got a reeally scrawny neck, and the lower half of his jaw is visible; you can even see a few of his teeth, beneath the blood grimed around his mouth. he either bit his lips clean though, or they got chewed off; his ear's missing as well; a lot of blood caked on the side of his face.
as for the rest... well, it's just bear. can you see the top of the bear's head? he seems to be frowning in concentration, engrossed on apparently tearing the guy's nose off, or maybe just cracking the skull his mouth.

why can I see this, now, after six months of living in this house? maybe my left brain - right brain connections are opening up. creativity translating into cognition and articulation.

or maybe, the bears are coming to life. maybe there were there all along.

people that are about to die can see Death, the skeleton with the scythe, the girl with the ankh. does this mean I'm going to be eaten up, real soon?

Auto strike. Ahahaha.

Andheri Station at 8:30 a.m., peak rush hour.

Believe it or not.

An auto rickshaw strike today in Mumbai and Life Is Beautiful. The streets are empty, traffic jams are a thing of the distant past like a bad dream, it takes a grand total of seven minutes to reach the station... Why can't life be usually like this? When I return to home tonight I have every expectation that the streets will be equally clear.

Hopefully, this should make people realize they don't really need so many autos. And the suburbs will be as pleasant as Town, henceforth and forever... I wish.

men are dogs

and now Sandoz has unequivocally endorsed that sentiment. Check out the packaging for the men's and women's calcium tablet jars -

What can I say but Woof! Woof!

product life cycle like never before

Today, dear pagecount contributor, let me tell you about my washing machine.

My washing machine suffers from habitual and copious incontinence.

My washing machine groans like a ghoul at odd intervals.

My washing machine cannot take water on it's own, and needs to be put on a separate hose like an IV drip for every wash.

Because of this, it needs constant watching and supervision to make sure the pipe doesn't fall out and sprays water all over my comp. My washing machine, perversely, will start it's wash cycle exactly when I step out of the room in nicotine-starved frustration, with a flatulent rumble followed by a merry splish-splash, causing me to twitch violently at a crucial juncture while leaning sideways over the gas (since the matches are soaked) and singeing my eyebrows.

My washing machine needs a special support stand in order to be moved around, to be able to reach the bathroom drain.

My washing machine displays all the vibrancy of an epileptic seizure in the spin cycle. A vibrancy that knocks it off its castors and upon my unsuspecting feet, whilst partly-spin-dried clothing flies about in wild abandon.

My washing machine is an old, old man, on it's deathbed.

Had it owned large property, or even a hall-kitchen south of Boriviali, I would have been standing over it with will and pen and large, comforting smile.

"If you hate your washing machine so much," asked HR, who was just recently introduced to the joys of new-ownerhood of a brand-new IFB, "why don't you just buy a new one?"

A new machine, it is true, would be young, vibrant, and eager to please with a hint of smug superiority, like an MBA with 1 year's work ex. It will, like Sharman Joshi in Metro, take away all my troubles and resolve them. It may not get me laid as well in the bargain, but with the kind of tech Siemens is putting in it's machines these days, you never know.

But the truth is - I like this one. It's more paisa-vasool entertainment than a Mithun-da film festival. Washing day is lookied forward to with dread, trepidation, and a fluttering int he stomach weeks in advance. Jeans are re-re-re-used until they're insufferably obscenely filthy, and therefore last decades. Office shirts are guarded like Kohinoor diamonds to avoid the slightest speck of dirt. Underclothing contributes to many new species for alien scientists to discover and theorize about the evolution and origin thereof, billions of years from now, by creating independent, individual biospheres. Curtains become bulletproof with mold, mildew and dust, and that too at no extra cost. Enough electricity is saved to power rural Maharashtra for at least a week, which is why I was able to watch DishTV at the end of the Lohagadh trek while savoring a nice hot chai and ciggie out of the pouring rain.

So, such is my life and that of my washing machine.

Even talking about it makes me feel clean.

Is it not the most amazing machine you've seen?

It's lean, mean, and even ecologically green.

Other machines, they look obscene,

When compared. Wah. What a scene!

looking back

If another myself could meet me today, he would be fairly sandbagged as well.

Life has been... interesting. Most of all, in the way things have changed. I used to think, sometimes, a while back, what I would be growing into, what I would become.

The truth, as they say, is usually stranger than fiction. The 18-yr-old Ashish had some ideas about what he was going to grow up into... and not a few dark suspicions. On the whole, I think it's the suspicions that have been vindicated. But in a good way. I've pretty much gone ahead and done everything I wanted to, and got everything I'd hoped for. Then.

In the long look back - it's been almost frighteningly good. Even the bad bits have the golden glow of nostalgia around them now. Wonder if it's a case of selective perception, or actually paying attention to the stuff that mattered that's pulled it off, putting me in a life that, to say the least, rocks.

I am the...

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

discovering archetypes

Everything... begins.
This... began over an inconsideration. On a shared 30-Kbps wireless line, bandwidth is precious; and as with any limited resource, there need to be rules to manage them, to prevent the whole system from collapsing. And when the rules are broken, there are... reactions. Solutions.
.

Gaiman was unknown to me except as a co-author, the other half of a superlative fantasy-spinner. From that one book followed another, and another... and the whole exploration may have ended there, but for... a few images. Images that prompted me to risk one, just one more experiment.

It gave me a name.

And one night, when the rulebreaker was away, a parallel method was found. An alternative. A chastisement.

A revenge.

The name was, then, inconsequential. It just floated along, and was pinned to the board as an as-good-as-any candidate.

The torrent completed its download.

And on a quiet tuesday evening, I discovered The Sandman.

.
I'm only 3 stories down, and already I can feel myself being drawn into that universe. Pictures move, faint sounds, scents. Depth.

Time.

Impact.
And most of all, it's so familiar. Like a racial memory, an archetype.

The Matrix. Morpheus. Neo. The black. Everything you see is a dream, and The One is the awakener.

Stephen King's Randall Flagg. The world that had moved on. The Tower. Alternate realities.

MIB. There are hidden truths, hidden stories all around you. Nothing is what it seems to be.

Illuminati.

The Man.

John Constantine.

The face in the crowd, for just a second, that looks right at you. Eyes meet. The shock, the subconscious recognition. Then it's gone, and no matter how hard you search, you can never find it again.
Walking through them all, is the same image.
.

The Endless.

The Man In Black.