wise pot …

You never know where life’s taking you, until you’ve reached.

Keep walking…

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Potboilers, potpourri, potholes!

I must have grown old.

With my blog I mean.

Yeah, didn’t quite realize but this space turned a centurion with the last post. May ’05, and I started off with all those romanticized declarations of love-shove {blush}, which by the way, some found too bold for public expression! Made a quick sine curve and fell in and out of relationships twice {sigh}: not the typical falling out if you don’t know already, but what the heck: nothing’s well if it doesn’t end well!

Followed it up with a lot of personal stuff, boldfaced indeed, with a tinge of despair evident in all my writing I guess! There were times when I wrote for the reader. It was, and still remains mostly for myself though! I believe it’d be exciting to go back and read the chronicles of your life, in very much your own words, anytime in the future.

I don’t remember much of my teens if you ask me: I’ve no idea how different I was when young(er), the things I did, things I did not. I could of course tell you about my first crush, in 2nd grade – she wore glasses, very soft-spoken, thin legs, a bookworm, yet managed to remain jaunty most of the times. Her family and mine being friends made a perfect catalyst for my childhood crush! That my Dad was in a transferable job meant the most convincingly sullen death for what would have been a much-envisaged, most suitable happy-ending!

For pretty much the same reason, this blog was born. I’ll need my own story, when I’m seventy-plus, when I’ll be a burdensome granpa, still horny with Alzheimer’s. That’s when my blog would come in handy to reminisce of my sunny days, of which I assume I should have had many!

Anyway, I had this not-so shadowy realization that somewhere down the line I’m very conventional, and very-very traditional! Impulse more than sound reason led me to visit the Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple last Sunday. No deliberate ecstasy required to explain, but boy! What a place! Friends agreed that it must be one of the top architectural expressions in modern India. There is such excess of technology combined with spiritual grandeur in those few hundred acres that you feel it’s a whole new world for those few hours required in case total bliss is one of your intended reasons to be there. Huge exhibits with robotic models and Dolby Digital Sound to mesmerize you with a terrific audio-visual entertainment. Almost life-like recreations of people and events, served to you in first-class sophistication! An underground boat ride that takes you through a brief but brilliantly depicted history of India is a first of kind in the country for sure. The fountain show in the evening coupled with thundering chants of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva set your pulse racing. I was a different person altogether for those 6-7 hours. I squatted at all those hallowed idols of Sita, Ram and Ganesh, and it felt so natural! I paid for the ‘Jalabhishek’, and queued with this rage of devotion from nowhere to bathe the deity. I so wish to go on, but this much should do for the holy memoir! Must visit, and if you have a car, take me along!

I might have also begun to appreciate the finer realms of life. Take for example this loo on my floor whose windows have lost the paint that hid our naked bottoms, and which should most certainly bother the decent resident even when nature urgently calls. On the ‘bright’ side, I find shitting with the sun shining right over you an amazingly indulging experience. It feels like being right there in the lap of nature! Trust me!

And btw, I seriously can’t understand what’s all the brouhaha about Shilpa being meted out a racist treatment in Big Brother! I mean is it not supposed to be reality TV? And hence is she not brown? She should have fired that Judy back with comments about her spotted British skin, or her sagging breasts on the non-kamasutra figure! For once I wished it was Mallika Sherawat on the show! She would not drop a tear under any circumstances, can show more skin than the rest combined, can call people names in her Haryanvi lingo without an iota of doubt over her witty speech, she could kiss unisexually, make the audience lust after her with dropping hemlines: in short, she’d be a perfect firebrand Indian woman for reality television. Racism ki maa ki aankh!

Also watched Guru, and am so glad we decided to eat in TGI Friday before the show. The young woman on the next table showed a lot of goosebumped skin in her micro-mini denim skirt that was getting shorter as she shifted in her place all the time. In as much as I’d wanted to question the practicality involved in wearing winter lingerie, I decided otherwise as she followed it up with some passionate lip-locking with her guy in full view of my devoid-of-all-shame eyes! Geez! EYE now THINK kalyug is definitely here! And almost managed to convince a friend to go over to the table nearby where a group of five PYT’s were audibly sloshed up in the ecstasy of someone’s birthday, and wish the birthday girl. I was pretty intrigued to know the possible outcome of this courageous venture! BTW again, off late I’ve noticed pretty young women hanging out with more gorgeous women a lot more than I was used to in normal days! They are everywhere, torturing single men with their I-don’t-need-you-no-more half-looks!

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Yin n Yang ..bang bang!

How bad can life get without a personal computer, that indeed was incredibly personal to me! Reading Mark Tully while sipping on beer in this discounted-for-IIT’ians pub, in the company of this guy who scribbled his totally impulsive poetry on the high-quality table napkins, was indeed some experience this evening. It’s hard to believe that getting rid of your computer can possibly be a life-twisting enterprise! I mean I have visited this same pub like thrice this week already, went for hookah yesterday with few getting-rich-soon guys, reading obsessively in the new year, breakfasting before morning lectures, and ofcourse, attending lectures as well! That’s not meeeee!

Anyway, met this friend who came down from Zurich, and got me yummy Swiss chocolates. Wish I didn’t have to confess, but her being irresistibly gorgeous did decently itch my singlehood! Sigh 😦

And Urvashi actually did a good thing by calling me up while I wasted away pubbing desperately. I pitched her with an if-available-then-lets-mingle request, but she ain’t quite ready yet! She offered to find me someone from the HT Matrimonial, which elicited a most extempore response – “shaadi ni karni oye! I’d rather stay single than permanently mingle right away!” Little did I realise, that wasn’t quite the perfect reply!

“Why do all men run away from commitment?”

Yep, I should have known this was coming! Because intuition works, and it did!

I couldn’t agree more with what you say Urvashi. The tougher part is explaining it in a man’s capacity! How am I at fault! The Creator hardwired such obstinately repulsive disposition in my cranium, and kicked me on this unfair planet!

How reasonable do I sound if I say women do get (much) more involved in relationships in later stages, while men are all romantically libidinous initially! I remember this from the Batman series – “never play with the affections of a woman in love”! I’m no Sigmund Freud Junior to create my own interpretation of how men and women feel differently when in love! But it’s probably not universally true without occasional fails. I mean there are stable, future-secured affairs involving doting duos! Perhaps having a girl in his life massages a man’s ego, makes him feel positive about himself, or may be completes him which most men might not want to confess to. While a man in her life is like a most beautiful event to a woman, which ain’t hard to believe considering its a feminine force working behind the scenes. It must mean something when women get to bear the offspring, and not men – they undoubtedly have this infinite capacity to love, at least decently more than most men! And not that men can’t love reciprocally: just that Mars’ians and Venus’ians feel a lot differently about it. A not-so obvious deviation in perspective is acceptable from the two sexes right!

This certainly is not the best and the maximum I could have spoken about it, but the sex-dependent parameters of love make like an unending debate. They think we jump at the mention of any variations of the word ‘commit’, but I guess its just a matter of perception. The love of a man unwilling to commit wouldn’t in all probability reduce itself. Not necessarily I mean. I could say men have a lot on their minds, equally if not more important than the love of a woman. So do the new-age women I guess. Its just that ladies attach overwhelming importance to a relationship, and they will show it, while the man just wouldn’t! He can’t. He should perhaps, but inherent helplessness is the word!

I just realised I’ve ceased being politically correct on my blog. Or perhaps Urvashi demanded a frank opinion!

I’m no sexist. Just the response to a misunderstood fundamental concept!

By the way, you could say men are like promiscuous bastards, unwilling-to-stop & settle beasts. That could save me some rebuttal here!

Guess some fired-up comments would aptly complete this banter!

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Wisdom, just a drop of it!

Someone said to me this afternoon – “it’s so easy if you are a pretty girl, AND, if you know you are”.

I thought about what he quipped, and how true!

EOD!

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Of music and movies, randomly!

Most Underestimated Source of Immediate Comfort – that’s MUSIC! You might enter into vehement disagreement at the ‘underestimated’ quantifier, but if I’m writing it on my blog, you are expected of unquestionable admittance! I never thought I was a music buff, I mean not coterminous with the free and great availability of any kind of palpable music on our network. I can’t really vaunt of a generous aggregation of euphony on my hard disk. It must be severely assorted stuff. Severely yeah! The worst part is, I normally don’t go back to my collection very often. Just occasional and heavily temperamental playing of a dozen-odd fortunate song mostly. That said, I can additionally be terribly fussy about what songs get to stay on my disk! Since most good Hindi songs are played on the TV, or on the radio, I pretty much have a good idea of respectable stuff in our language. Plus we are such amazingly sane people to have no more than Bollywood, Indipop, and probably Ghazal as the most basic framework of classification of our music. While these Yankees have screwed up the whole concept, introducing moronic categorization like Country, Rap, Rock, Trance, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Grunge, Metal etc. Naturally, the seasoned fraud emulators we are, we have our own versions of the American compartmentalization of music (Desi Rock uh?). In as much as, other than word-of-mouth publicity, I end up pounding Google with search queries like “best songs of 2005”, or “best romantic songs”, or “Billboard’s/MTV’s No.1 Hits” for any potential additions! And more often than not, I end up cranky, considering most of the search results disappoint me big time!

Anyway, enough horseshit! The point was I have lately discovered the power of radio, as the perfect source of musical entertainment, with minimal elbow-greasing. Lots of stations play consistently good music, often interlarded with informatively funny mouthing by the sexy-sounding RJ’s. And for a change, I’m using my phone and the amazingly effective ear-buds conjointly!

And now the pick of the day (am I obsessed with eventful days!) – watched the old Don this evening. Amidst the sensational promotion for the sequel, I happened to find the original daddy with some guy on his disk. Downloaded it promptly, and am glad I did. I sure didn’t remember much of the old classic as I soon realized. But the fact remains, loud and clear – it’s far too good for any sequel (even by virtuosos like Farhan Akhtar) to match its class, execution, dialogues and pertained delivery, acting, apt music, and ultimately, the Big B! Gawd, he’s one hell of an actor! This man is a legend not for no reason, all hero-worship justified. Simply brilliant, even with the relatively inexperienced bimbo Zeenat Aman (no skin-show in this one, what the hell was she thinking: it’s been a forgettable role for her), Amitabh pulls the character of Don with perfect aplomb. The point is, Don was a typical oldie with all the weird impossible fighting sequences, or the erstwhile cascade of irritating music as essential ingredients. However, the implementation has been technically superb, to the extent that you’ll find it funny at times, and casually laugh it off, the movie losing not a pint of its grandeur in the process though! For all this, and more, I have all time lowered expectations of the sequel, which gets faulty right at the basics – SRK as Don! For chrissake, Bachchan vs. Shahrukh Khan! No match! For all you SRK fans, I want to communicate a predictive obituary, cuz he’s simply gonna fuck the character up. He could cry, and do it the best probably, but Don won’t do it! With iconic acting in the original, SRK would find it hard to rival history! May be Abhishek Bachchan would have been a better pick for the role, with his father’s genes catapulting him to a slightly advantageous position! Don-2 ki sabse badi galti hai ki woh SRK hai! Somewhere down the line, I don’t want to believe Don-2 will work its magic. Big B is far too great to be equalled in this century!

PS: And this should perhaps be my last post before I’m off home for a desperately awaited,  extended break! Wishing a Happy Diwali to all my readers! C ya sometime next week!

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Overrated? Underrated?

It’s routinely pattern to connect a set of distinctive characteristics to one, harmonizing with the domicile milieu. Again a conspicuous observation that the discerning lineaments of a person or a society are pretty much dictated by the palisading environs. However, seems like I was vaguely nescient of the obvious nature of the above argument, till this rather dysphoric encounter with a chance female gave me an initiatory brush with realism!

I happened to be in a pub sometime last week, casually sipping on a can of Fosters, while this guy (with Indian looks and probably a faked vernacular) and a gorgeous NRI girl (with a definite svelte non-Hinglish accent) sat next to us, swallowed up in an ostensibly somber conversation with pedantic undertones or something mistily related to academic disciplines. I was positively sure of having not drunk enough to have missed them verbalizing “da da..IIT..blah blah”, with a remark-encouraging regularity and intensity! Naturally my IIT genes forced me to initiate a conversation with the not-so-drooling couple on the subject. I faintly remember letting out a wispy screech, loud enough to have just stymied myself from further speech, when I learnt the babe was a Swiss, and a probable (I’ll add potential to her kitty!) exchange student at IIT Delhi! Voila! I am blunt enough to accept that I saw in a matter of a few stimulated nanoseconds, a bleary but a fine vision of a radiant future with her as a swank girlfriend!

So that’s pretty much the positivistic part of the story. After the shocking discovery was made, and the dream bubble burst itself in the face of a long history of woolgathering ending up in naught, the guy made a speedy quip with truckloads of conviction backing his words up, that left me with a dropped jaw and popping eyes! I think the rum and vodka in my order had done their damage, which I realized when I found myself talking to the glam duo, with the Fosters still in my hand, in the most psychologically detrimental (which it later proved to be) gesture that redefined imbecility, and which ultimately turned into the motivation for this article!

“You are an IIT’ian, and you are drinking beer!”

Squeeze me (read excuse me ..you are not drunk)!!! Never in my life was I this propelled to use the f-word, prefixing a ‘what the’ to the profanity! I mean what the hell! Where on earth does it say IIT’ians are indispensably hardcore puritans, with absolutely no indulgence in the booze-infested material world? In very short and sweetly precise set of arguments, I assayed to explicate my mortal status as just another average member of the congregation, hero-worshipped by those whose fortunes played spoilsport, and were only allowed to revere the institution and its birds from non-IIT realms! If I was able to convince him, is very much disputable though!

It was only when I returned to the sensible world later in the evening in the harshly real living of my room, that I invested few cerebral minutes, cogitating on the gravity of the upshot of such baseless conceptions people around us have nurtured for ages in their psyches! Only an insider would know this belief is not even closely in communion with the truth. Realism in this case has a starkly different nature, and probably has a microcosmic understanding from the wider perspective of the world. I’m one of the few who’ve expended the maximum stay here at IIT, and have seen and known and experienced the extremes of what life has to offer, in the limited domains of the campus. This is what I have to say about the place and its people –

An average IIT’ian would:

• have an intake of spirits with a median alcohol content of 40 percent (beer has around 5 ..somebody tell that awry-disposed guy I was an eighth of an average IIT’ian while talking to him!).
• smoke something like three cigarettes a day (it’s a liberal calculation assuming each one of us were to fag!). Smoking grass or drug intake is not rife, but is a definite activity in sparse quarters.
• watch porn for roughly an hour a day (this differs from the preceding statement in terms of some who would not!).
• have the latest numbers in music, would have seen the most unheard of the movies on his PC, and would extract maximal amusement in all obtainable forms.
• indulge in incessant gibberish with multitudes of similar humbug-addicted creatures, and often making sense with inherent sensibilities.
• have mentalities. No text-book material, but street-smart stuff.

My experiences have convinced me of the genuine versatility of IIT’ians when it comes to role-playing. They had dance, or sing, or play, or act, or write, or speak, or flirt, or love, or just about anything when it comes to rising for the occasion. May be it’s something in the way we are sculpted and engineered in the institute. Or perhaps it’s in the progressively conducive environs, replete with the flexible policies on offer. Perhaps we learn more from breaking the rules, than executing the usual. Probably one can never write a cookbook to closest perfection, that lists the ingredients of the system that produces the sublime species called “IIT’ians”!

Despite all the reverence imparted to us, with or without any intelligent reason notwithstanding, I guess we are confusedly understood. I began with the wisdom of associations to our surroundings, and I terminate with an intuitive settlement that perhaps the virus of bemused perplexities concerning our true identities comes bundled with the package of being in a premier institute of technical education, famed worldwide for its academic rollicks. And hence it’s nonsynthetic for cohabitating aliens to believe we lack a life beyond the academic muse.

It’s just you and me, who would agree on truth being indeed stranger than the fictional paradigms about us stamped in the general mindset. And as long as we are firm on having this knowledge, no amount of negative world opinion can change a thing about us.

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Mama`s Boy!

However obsessed one can term Times Of India`s glitzy daily pullout Delhi Times with the concept of metro/uber-sexuality, one must also agree that they do occasionally serve certain nuritious and perfectly digestible facts and fundas on the platter.

I remember reading this article some time back in the same about how Asian Men are still pretty much their Mama (Mom)`s boys. I dare not disagree with the aforementioned deliverance ..for the simple justification that I`ve introspected myself quite often on the viability of this proposition ..and predominantly I`ve figured myself to be a near-perfect example to accentuate TOI`s Asian-Men-Emotional-Attachment funda!

For instance, I don`t find life in the Hostel enticing anymore. Though the very first time when I left home (after I`d spent some quality 18 years in the comfort zone), I was naturally super-excited in exotic apprehension of the life ahead, and hence felt little emotions as Mom shed few pearls while I said goodbye! Guess the rather long stay at home never taught me the possible pangs of staying away from my folks for extended periods. However fun those initial days in the hostel turned out to be, I remember always craving to catch the next train back home ..or keep calling Mumma everyday ..to tell her everything that came my way during the start of this IIT experience.

That “something is missing” feeling has only achieved widespread expansibility over all these years. I miss my Mom so much ..no wonder it additonally confirms that children are more strongly attached emotionally to their mothers.

And if it`s one of the rare disturbing occasions (as of right now) when I`m down with cold and cough and fever jumbo-combo, I tend to perhaps collapse under this strange psychological self-inflicted belief that I`m going to suffer badly! Somehow I don`t feel like looking after myself even when I`ve perfect understanding that things might worsen! And in those moments of pain and suffering, the one person I want to be with is Mom. All I can think of is myself resting away in peace on my bed at home, with Mumma sitting by my side, her hands caressing my weak frame, often a stroll in the hair (which by some means I find an astonishingly cosy activity) ..waking up in the bed itself to the smell of a hot meal, carefully prepared and customised to my ailing condition ..and she would lay the dishes for me ..put the requisite foodstuffs in the right proportions ..pick the next roti from the casserole as I`m just about to finish with the first one ..get me my medicines in time with a tumbler of lukewarm water ..get me to sleep again ..switch off the room lights ..shut the door softly ..and then after making sure I`m comfortably placed and resting ..she`ll move on with her impending chores courtesy attending to the attention-crazy and may be sometimes feigning son!

Yes, I just love to be pampered and taken care of by this amazing women at home. She has these highly effective bunch of tricks and methods at her ready disposal which simply floor her son down everytime with a show.

I must confess that I`m still very much of my Mama`s boy. I find this uncomparable satisfaction and comfort when she`s around me. I feel like sharing life with her ..every moment ..every triumph ..every failure. She understands me more than I do. She`s simply wonderful.

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Cold Feet

I`m having cold feet ..both technically and metaphorically implied. The winter chill is here. Had The Times Of India not reported that Delhi`s minimum dropped to a cool 4.7 degrees, I wouldn`t have felt this continuous psychic shiver of the torso since morning! Suddenly I feel like trapping all the sunlight of the world around my increasingly diminishing frame, and lock myself in my room ..shut all doors and windows ..turn all lights off ..transmutate temporarily into a recluse ..because I need a break. Yes I need to get away ..I need a voluntary retirement from life for some days ..the exams have drained all the energy out of me ..I`m too stressed out ..not that I`m scoring absolutes in those papers ..but still, to spend two hours surrounded by the best brains of the country ..all deeply engrossed in solving questions of the toughest imaginable levels, sadistically designed in weary succession to crack your confidence in your abilities as an IIT`ian ..with the huge misconception that they are preparing engineers of tomorrow ..and those fellow Computer Scientists subconsciously caving in to things they just have to do because it gets them a 50k+ monthly salary or an entry to one of those Ivy League Colleges abroad! Its sick!

People have retarded their thinking prowess ..and channelised it to just one concern ..getting high grades in those once a double fortnight examinations. It is worse than school. Its no college. I don`t crave for the premier tag of this institution any more. It`s all bloody hogwash. Once here, everybody`s sole aim is to add this coveted degree in their kitty of academic accomplishments in those stipulated four or five years. Don`t the people at the helm of policy making realise IIT`ians are ending their lives courtesy those obscenely roughshod rules? Do they necessarily have to be this savage to hold up the elitist tag? I don`t think so. A life is worth everything. It cannot be taken to uphold some freaks` decision making abilities.

So you can see that I`m visibly moved at the suicides in associate IIT`s in the last month. Thankfully I`ve never been remotely witness to such an incident. Not that I haven`t climbed frustration levels during my stay in this esteemed institute ..but never actually transgressed the threshold of not continuing this essentially morbid existence!

And now its almost 2 in the morning ..the mercury is dipping dangerously low ..and I`ve to study if I`ve decided to exist in this exceedingly competitive environment ..my eyes seem to give in as well. Nobody dares to be different here ..you do and you are history! I`m sorry ..I cannot flow with the normal channels of academe here. I can think of my own, and I`ll continue foxing the system ..and I`ll always have my way out ..cuz its my life ..and I decide how am I going to structure it.

Yes. Life looks good now. I just need to take such regular doses of optimism to keep me going!

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Power Dressing!

I`ll safely presume you all have sufficiently good experience of shopping for your wardrobe. I mean obviously since childhood we were ferried to those stores, our parents would select the best kidzy garments for us, we were made to try them on, then turn around uncomfortable with embarrasment in all possible directions, often we would not get to appreciate what was superficially wrapped on to our tiny structures, till things were mutually agreed upon by my folks and you were back home, eager to adorn the stuff chosen after such deliberation. Anyway, I`m not reminiscing of those childhood days! The point I want to make is that I`ve tried and tested and am now a firm believer in the shopping skills of women!

Yeah ..I can say for sure that my Dad was always least interested in the design, color or brand of what my Mom used to scrutinize with the sharp, attentive eyes of an eagle. I mean Mummy always knew what would look best on her boy`s frame, and her unquestionable perfection at dressing me up has only improved over years. Blessed as I am to have a sister as well, she`s inherited the talent from her mother, precisely accurate in that regard! I`ve always been amazed at their near perfect recognition of the kind of stuff that should suit me up well. I`m sure I would never, but ma had exact ideas of what hues and shades of shirts I`ve accumulated in my wardrobe, and hence what color of trousers would go well together! And when they are both shopping for me, I`m bound to be complexed and overwhelmed at the same time! Guess I`m reduced to no more than an emotionless mannequin on whom they mercilessly try all available shades, obliviant of the frustrated store keeper! But, everything they choose, turns out to be a certain hit with me 🙂

As much as, I`ve lately resigned to my relatively poorer shopping skills and I exclusively shop with mom and sis, independently though! That way, I can exercise some of my own choices as well! By the way, its not just me, mom still shops for daddy as well!

I hope my better half would be similarily equipped to attend to my dressing issues ..not that I can`t handle the wardrobe department, but for the fact that some things are better left for the ladies to take care of! You can`t match up to them, always 😀

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Globalization ..The Blogger Way

When I`d started, I thought it would be just some intellectually motivating activity, giving me sufficient scope to exploit whatever creative writing skills I possessed, and probably get some feedback on my way of expressing stuff. However, blogging seems to have opened a host of other channels than plain writing/commenting. One of the major ones being the huge amount of networking you can do via reading and writing.

Come to think of it, there`s a large blogging community out there, so many people from multifarious backgrounds/cultures/origin having one thing in common – they are all into uninhibited public expression of their thoughts. I`m often overwhelmed at the sheer strength of the blogging circuit – I mean every blog I visit invariably has links to multiple virgin blogs ..loads of stuff to keep yourself busy. I sometimes wonder if I`ll be able to inhabit even a 0.1% of the world`s blogs till I die ..though I desperately want to achieve this kind of feat ..simply because every one of my maiden comments on fresh blogs fetches my blog a new visitor!

I`ve realised lately the immense social value blogging holds. As in, my first posts had comments from people in a radius of say not more than 2 km. [all fellow IITians] ..while today my blog proudly boasts of loyal visitors as far as United States of America! And networking is not reduced to just a formal exchange of comments ..I`ve made some great pals over the blogger community, all absolute strangers till the day they chose to comment on some post that just hit the right chords, and thus followed a series of non-formal exchange of views as well, often stretching to the extent of communicating via Y! Messenger!

It`s different ..the kind of people I meet on Blogger all seem to be uniquely abled ..everybody`s got a peculiar aura about themselves, some kind of intellectual maturity that leads to instant bonding ..I`m attracted to the ways hundred different people express themselves in ..its so dissimilar to yours but you seem to relate to their stuff with unperturbed ease ..it gives me a weird kick to know people and places by reading personalised accounts of incidents/daily activities or anything else ..and often you get to read people with polished writing skills, which in itself is a pleasurable learning activity.

The world is definitely reducing to a global village, thanks to the ceasing distances achieved by tons of blogging going over the wired world.

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