Mundane Philosophy

Tagged again

2009-10-17T21:12:00.004+05:30

Okay, I'm back after a long time, this time to take Dagalti's tag. I'm supposed to list “seven things I love.” So here goes...

1. Perfect idleness. There are only few things in this world that give me more pleasure than just sitting idle. Sit and stare blankly. To borrow a perfect line from a great essay, “[i]t is our observation that every time we get into trouble it is due to not having been lazy enough.” I'm appreciative of boredom too. It enables one to understand what one really wants to do (which is probably nothing).

2. Theorising. I love to form theories, to formalise the ideas that pop up in my mind, and build more theories on top of that. Needless to say, the subject matter is so silly in most cases.

3. Late night reflections on life, the universe and everything. Some times with friends, some times talking on the phone, some times alone on the terrace, some times after a few glasses of wine or some such spirit.

4. Going out for a cup of coffee or tea in the evening on a holiday after being “perfectly idle” up to that point. And for some reason I prefer going to upscale coffee shops like Café Coffee Day or Barista. (Yeah, shoot me.)

5. Dining at a favourite restaurant with friends after spending enough time planning for or thinking about it (basically, after enough “foreplay”). Lunch at Sree Krishna Kafe during the weekend would outrank everything else in this category, as of now.

6. Hunting DVDs. I spend hours searching for DVDs (and VCDs) in shops that have a good collection. Regularly visit all the usual suspects (Landmark, Crossword, Music World, Planet M, et al.). And when it comes to books, I'm actually quite consumerist in that I tend to be satisfied with merely buying them.

7. The drive back home after watching a damn good film. There's something about having been a “witness” to a great film that really excites me.

Some of these things might appear to be overlapping with each other, but I suppose they do differ in the kind of pleasure they give me. (Yeah, that's how boring I am.)

Raaja and I

2008-10-31T02:47:00.005+05:30

Suresh had tagged me, a month ago, to write about Raaja in my life. And I've finally come to take it. I've rambled a lot (and broken some of the conditions) while answering the questions. So please bear with me.

1. The moment that introduced you to Raaja.

If it's about the first ever Raaja song that I got hooked to, I don't remember at all. I've listened to Tamil Film Music all my life. Music, to me, has always meant Film Music. So, naturally, I got hooked to many a Raaja number even during my childhood. I'm not able to particularly recollect any specific song, but as a kid, I remember loving his chartbusters from the late 80s (abUrva sagOdharargaL and the like) and very early 90s (anjali, thaLapathi et al.). The first ever audio cassette we kids bought on our own was a combination of chinnath thambi and gOpura vAsalilE. And I remember loving the latter much more than the former, dhEvadhaip pOloru then being the song closest to my heart. But I'd not call any of these “my first Raaja experience.”

With the advent of Rahman in the Tamil Film Music scene, I quickly turned into a huge Rahman fan. He was the first music composer whom I began to follow very closely, and became a gushing fan of. I used to feel smug about my affection for the most offbeat of his works amidst other fans who barely knew that he did those albums. Those days, I thought of Raaja as a yesteryear legend who has composed some great albums (my familiarity with his works was strictly limited to his association with leading actors and directors), but I was never a true-blue fan.

I truly came to witness the genius of Raaja only when I went to college. It happened as I got to listen more and more of 80s Raaja. I vividly remember the first time I bumped into some of these songs that simply bowled me over. Listening to IramAna rojAvE while eating in my hostel mess (they occasionally used to play songs from the '80s) when I was in my first year. Listening to the college music troupe perform a rockish version of nI thAnE en ponvasantham. And then there's thenRal vandhu ennai thodum listening to which I used to get so ecstatic and even used to “sing” the full song (including the interludes) sitting in the classroom with no concern whatsoever as to how my mumbling would sound to the guy sitting next to me. I remember being completely enamoured by songs like AgAya gangai, AgAya veNNilAvE around the same time.

By the time I was in the third year at college, I had a computer in my room (till then I used to listen to songs from an “mp3 station” that some kind soul had set up in our intranet labs), and soon my daily play-list had nothing but Raaja. And the greatest reverence was reserved for Raaja-Yesudas combo.

2. Name one occassion where Raaja's music directly/ indirectly influenced your life.

I'm a proper stoic. In that respect, the joy I get out of listening to Raaja's music is quite singular. At times, I've been almost moved to tears. That's as much “direct influence” his music has had on my life. Listening to Raaja transports me from thoroughly quotidian moments to a different plane wherein what I am, ceases to matter. I'd of course come down after a while, but then there's always another Raaja song that's already out there, that I've not yet bumped into.

3. Lets take Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi into account. Assuming that one of this is either your mother tongue or native language, name a favorite song in each of the other 4 languages that immediately comes to your mind.

This is quite embarrassing because I've not listened to that many of his works in Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada at all, and I'm very conscious of it. But anyway, here goes.

Telugu – suvvi suvvi, rAma kanavEmirA and mounamEla nOyi. I know, technically, these are as much Tamil as Telugu, but since they were originally composed for the Telugu versions, I'm picking them over other Telugu songs of Raaja that I've got a chance to listen to.

Kannada – jOtheyali, the violin instrumental theme from pallavi anupallavi (which was later reworked as mella mella ennaith thottu).

Malayalam – tumbi vA. Endlessly beautiful.

Hindi – Har koi samjhe. I actually had the audio cassette of the Hindi version of Hey! Ram. That's probably why I've always felt that this is a proper Hindi song. However, it's been a long time since I last listened to the Hindi version.

4. One song of Ilaiyaraaja that you consider rare and think a song that many people should have known but don't.

Okay, I'm going to take some liberty and list a few.

Adum nEram idhu dhAn – sUra samhAram. An earlier post on the song.

maNNaiyum ponnaiyum – nAdOdi pAttukkAran. What a wonderful song! It's one of those songs that I really wanted to write a customary gushing post about in this blog. Divinely endearing chorus, virtuoso arrangements, beautiful solo vocals. Just brilliant in every single way. The seamless transition from the nAdhaswaram to the flute to the violin in the first interlude has me in total rapture every time. The song changes its scale whimsically, taking seemingly arbitrary turns, but there's something mystifyingly organic about the whole of it. An incredible mix (mishmash if you will) of irresistible pieces that's all the more seductive as a whole.

kaNdEn engum pUmagal Urvalam – kARRinilE varum gItham. This one is quite popular, but nobody is talking about it as much as they should be. A masterpiece that's just perfect in every single note. The uninitiated must listen to both the Janaki version and the Vani Jayaram version. I'm told there's a third version as well, sung by P Susheela, but unfortunately, I've not got a chance to listen to it.

5. Raaja's number that you are hearing right now/ most recently heard..?

mAnAdak kodi from mudhal vasantham. I got hooked to this song a few weeks back and it's been playing in repeat mode since then. I went back to the song as I began typing this post.
Also, maNNaiyum ponnaiyum. I was discussing about the song with my friend to whom I had gushingly recommended this song some time back.

I tag all those who are reading this post. Feel free to use the comments space of this blog.

நீராய் உருக்கி என் ஆருயிராய் நின்றானே!

2008-01-28T12:29:00.000+05:30

நீராய் உருக்கி என் ஆருயிராய் நின்றானே
ஓராதார் உள்ளத்து ஒளிக்கும் ஒளியானே

ஈர்த்து என்னை ஆட்கொண்ட எந்தை பெருமானே
கூர்த்த மெய் ஞானத்தால் கொண்டு உணர்வார் தம்கருத்தில்

நோக்கரிய நோக்கே நுணுக்கரிய நுண் உணர்வே
போக்கும் வரவும் புணர்வும் இலாப் புண்ணியனே

என் சிந்தனை உள்
ஊற்றான உண்ணார் அமுதே உடையானே

To “post-bigil” or not,

2008-01-18T01:52:00.000+05:30

That’s the question. And, a question of Shakespearean dimensions at that. These are the kind of questions one has been asking oneself, unselfconsciously, for a long time now.

Is Bigilism self-contained? Does it leave any scope for a “post-bigilist” school of thought?¹ Can any form of thought be “self-contained” for that matter? Is it not the case that that form of thought will give way to something “post-that?” Does the postman ever stop delivering the letters, so to put? Is that what Gödel said, umm, in a rather mathematician’s way of saying it?

By the by, does genius wear out with time? In which case, I've a Pascalian kind of wager to propose, for the sake of the “larger good”²of, uh, what else but genius.

[1] – Say, it does. The next question of gargantuan proportions would be on how to spell it – elegantly as ‘postbigilist,’ or as ‘post-bigilist’ with an ugly but somewhat useful hyphen?

[2] – Note to self, for some food for thought over some Scotch: well, one has been thinking about this for quite a while now. Shouldn’t one just stop putting words or phrases in double quotes to say them but not mean them the way as some might take them? Frankly, it sucks. Just tell the readers that you aren’t sure. That takes less time, and is a lot more elegant. May be, it’s time to form a “post-double quote” school of thought – oh, wait, a post-double quote school of thought.

Vishal Bard, Wah Wah!!

2007-12-28T02:44:00.000+05:30

Just listen to it. Now. It’s been close to two years, but the awesomeness, the orchestral and choral flamboyance, the wild and unfettered singing, the boisterous fun in this song hasn’t waned one bit. One of those songs that makes me frenetic; that makes me want to stand up and dance, my two noncooperative left feet notwithstanding.

I can't stop gushing about this man Vishal Bhardwaj. Four brilliant films and many wonderful music albums in his kitty.

On that note, do visit Vishal Bard Watch (from which I steal the pun for the title of this post), a blog started by Ramanand to follow the movies and music of the man, to collect news and views about him; also, watch his latest short film Blood Brothers.

Postmodernism as the path to shut up

2007-12-19T23:01:00.000+05:30

True postmodernists tend to be utterly ambiguous, and when they write, they unrelentingly confound the readers; also because they’re not sure of what they want to say themselves. To think of this as almost a virtue, one tends to think, is the primary characteristic of a postmodernist.

Many a time, the postmodernist next door starts to write something down. He thinks he probably has something to say. You know, stuff one feels like saying. As he writes on, he realises the horror of what he’s writing. Sometimes gradually, but most times instantly. “Do I want to say this? Is this, um, right?” he wonders. And, invariably, he realizes what’s not so right with it. It could probably be right, but most often not so right as to write it down.

The height of postmodernism, one sometimes tends to think, is to just shut up. Which is what one usually does on one’s blog.

2007-11-29T01:28:00.000+05:30

It's not really Glen Drummond, and one knows it. It's Raaja. His genius. mabbu glass'la 'yA irukku?

Arbitrary musings on male chauvinism etc.

2007-10-25T02:25:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, I had a weird argument with Mr. Sriram. I argued that he doesn't come off as a male chauvinist in the true sense to me, when he claimed that he is a male chauvinist with no reservations whatsoever. And, he came up with some reasonable points to back up his claim: he expects his wife to cook and maintain the house and all that jazz. Of course, well-informed folks know that most of his gibberish is vetti scene, but let me not cop out in that direction for the moment; instead, for the sake of the argument, assume that he's in fact being honest. My counter-argument was that it's only his way of getting away without doing that sort of work. Which only makes him a lazy ass. An escapist at best. Responding to this, he insisted that he truly believes that it's the wife's duty to cook food for him (and herself, I presume), but he confessed that he won't advocate it to anyone else. This total refrainment from the advocacy of his own notion of a wife's "duty," I thought, was a clincher to my case. (To his defence, he added that he won't advocate anything to anyone for that matter.)

Of course, whether or not he comes off as a chauvinist to his readers is irrelevant to me in all possible ways, but this got me thinking about male chauvinism and gender bias in general, and specifically in our social context.

[Please note, this fruitful discussion happened before he wrote that lousy post about saving rate, aachaaram etc. where he defended theettu, pathu and echchal, and justly earned the wrath of a well-meaning, unsuspecting lady who unfortunately expected him to make sense, no less. In fact, if I may play Freud for a moment, I'm positive that it's his defence mechanism that must have made him come up with something as weird as that post, after having been unable to convince me.]

******

So much for my musings on advocacy of one's beliefs. I don't really have a rigid notion of what's chauvinistic and what's not, and perhaps more importantly, who's chauvinistic and who's not; especially in a social setup like ours where the difference in the treatment of the two genders are so pronounced and deep-rooted. There's more to anyone's life and the man-woman relationships in it than what can be deduced by passing a judgement on what the person thinks about gender roles. There is more to a woman's life than what can be deduced by passing a judgement on how she is "oppressed" and "confined" to the role of a housewife in a patriarchal setup. It's even bizarrely high-handed (and insensitive) to even suggest that these unsuspecting women are definitively subordinated by virtue of their role as housewives.

To my mind, male chauvinism and gender bias exist in all shapes and sizes across all social stratas. Likewise, I am tempted to believe that some form of "real-world" feminism exists across all social stratas. It'd be incredibly naïve to suggest that mere societal conformance or yielding to a conservative mindset (or even possessing one) automatically translates to "oppressing" or "being oppressed."

[On that note, here's a somewhat related and even more incomprehensible post, where I had mused “on how words (especially if it is ‘one word’) can’t completely describe any man,” among other things. To grasp the the degree of incomprehensibility therein, sample this: “The validity quotient of any statement is definitely statistical; and that statistics differs with any physical parameter one can think of.” Wow. It's so much fun to quote oneself, I say.]

******

Let's take our own Tamil cinema. There is this superb folk duet, Kai Valikkudhu from the movie Kunguma Chimizh. (I haven't seen the film, nor the video of the song.) Now, the lyrics of that song will make many liberal feminists tear their hair out. (For better results, try directly reading the lyrics than listen to the song.) The lines of the song espouses many of the broad gender archetypes of our society. "Ammi araippadhu pombala velai dhaandi," the husband says, and if at all he chips in, it's said to be only a favour. Now, for a true feminist, this would most probably be deeply offensive, but I don't find it as problematic. In fact, it's these kind of portrayals that represent the reality of our society and the way it works. And, frankly, it'd only be naïve on anyone's part to judge the relationship between the two on the basis of what the two think about the gender roles and man-woman equation. On the other hand, I find the portrayal of the educated woman in a seemingly modern film like Kaakha Kaakha quite chauvinistic in the way it tellingly reduces the role of the woman (pun intended) to someone who the hero has to protect, who makes him vulnerable. Not to forget the way the film ends -- the hero's ladylove is dead ("killed" by the writer so as to make a martyr of him), but the hero has to go on. (Well, I am not accusing Gautham of being chauvinistic here, it's probably just bad writing.)

******

Some time back, a close acquaintance of mine (who, to my knowledge, is significantly liberal in her ideas) offered me a serious advice that I should go for an arranged marriage. Why, I asked. Because, in that case, the wife "will listen to me," she said. At the same time, she was all for a girl to go for a love marriage and found it only fair that she "does the talking" instead of "just listening to her husband" out of the marriage. Effectively, she advocated love marriages for women because the girl will be an equal partner or even have the privilege of "dominating the proceedings," even as she advocated arranged marriage for men. Needless to say, I was deeply perplexed. It's the same person who thinks it's appropriate for the man to "dominate" in an arranged marriage but also finds it as appropriate for a woman to "dominate" or at least "be equal to" the man in a love marriage. Now, is she a feminist, or one who reinstates -- inadvertently or otherwise -- the patriarchal system?

******

One is probably better off without making a point, but I am afraid I've made a couple of them in this post.

Aadum Neram Idhu Dhaan... Idhu Dhaan!

2007-10-24T04:21:00.000+05:30

The genius touches one everyday. And, all one can ever hope is to chance upon as many of the innumerable instances of it as possible before one simply ceases to exist.

ஆடும் நேரம் இது தான... இது தான்!

Raaja's version of kaattuvaasi music has always been singularly special. The quintessentially Raaja-ish, otherwordly mood he gives to it, in the rhythm patterns, in the choice of instruments et al. rAman AndAlum, Asaiya kAththula, viLakku vaippOm, the list goes on.

This song is a sublime mix of the elements of this Raaja-tribal-ish music with typical western arrangements, creating sheer magic by the marriage. Every single note here screams genius. ^[1]

The song starts with a fantastic guitar piece, the guitar riffs wonderfully backing up the song from thereon. The unusually used guitar, the mystical flute and the offbeat rhythm patterns, all conspire seamlessly to create the otherworldly mood. Not to forget the urumi that joins the percussion in the second interlude and the tranquil flute that cuts through it.

The first interlude boasts of a great trumpet piece as Raaja plays with the rhythms, while the second interlude goes back to the otherworldly mood. And, there is that all-too-charming little piece of trumpet (followed by that seemingly nonchalant click of the guitar string!) that bookends the first couple of lines in both the stanzas (simply chorus chants!).

Wait, I've not even got started on the singing yet. P. Susheela's intoxicating singing and the intoxicated chorus chants ^[2] takes the song to a different level.

[1] – I wish some filmmaker does a Scorsese with the boundless reservoir of songs of Raaja, the kind that are simply not made anymore irrespective of the genre. I mean, let's suppose one is in want of a truly hip song, is it even possible for someone to get hipper than a Tholin Mele?

[2] – Where O where are the full-throated choruses of the yore? The ones with a very healthy dose of coarseness? Like the earthy chorus that so beautifully goes "Tharathaththa tharathaththa tharaththa thararaa" in the beginning of "Paada Vandhadhor Gaanam"? The so-sweetly voiced choruses of today aren't half as captivating.

Doctorate degree for Kanaga next year

2007-07-19T12:15:00.000+05:30

Shilpa Shetty is now Dr. Shilpa Shetty. (Link via Confused.)
The Leeds Metropolitan University, apparently a leading university in the U.K., is conferring a doctorate degree on the actress, presumably for her eminent contribution to arts in India.

Now, anyone who's familiar with Shilpa Shetty's wide spectrum of works in Indian films (from "Chura Ke Dil Mera" of Main Khiladi Tu Anari to "Muthu Muthu Mazhai Muthaadudhe" of Mr. Romeo) would gleefully approve of this well-deserved conferment.
But, it's really a shame, that it required a foreign university to jump in and do this honour to the actress, who has served, and continues to serve, our own nation, in many wonderful ways, all these years.

Now, don't rationalize. They're not conferring this on her to atone for the rather unfortunate turn of events bordering on racial harassment that was inflicted on her in the now infamous T.V. show, Big Brother.
But, supposing that unfortunate incident did have an impact on this matter, I wonder what the degree of harassment and the resultant impact would have been if someone like Kanaga (yesteryear Tamil artist) went to participate in the TV show instead.

சும்மாவா சொன்னாங்க பெரியவங்க...

2007-07-14T05:42:00.000+05:30

“Tch, chinna paiyyan… Ivan kitta poi idhellaam kettaa…” his amma often cut short any tangential discussion that bordered on his nuptial matters, much to everyone’s amusement. He was immensely amused himself. “How incredibly naïve!” he used to wonder.

He speculated, may be, to amma’s mind, he is akin to the typical village belle that one would see in a Bharathiraaja film, who, when reminded of her sexuality, would blush unreservedly and start, well, you know, dreaming. This annoyed him a bit. How the reminder itself is occasioned in those films further added to his woes. And, the suggestion that he might “get ideas” when given the right cues, made him indignant. Not just naïve, but also absurd, he asserted to himself.

When mothers patronize this much, can sisters be far behind? Elder sisters, as soon as they’re elderly enough – that is, once they’re married and start discussing velai vaasi and suchlike, acquire this outrageous, motherly attitude towards their younger brothers, out of immense affection and what not.

Like the other day, his sister offhandedly mentioned about this girl during the post-dinner talk on the current social affairs, suggesting to amma that she should consider her when his turn is up. A quick description of the girl is in order – damn pretty, fits quite well under the various models of orthodoxy and conventions the family conformed to, etc. And, this time, amma didn't hurriedly dismiss it. In fact, she seemed to give a serious thought to it, and he found it to be awkwardly funny.

And, naturally, he started weighing the plausibility of the option too. Looking back, he found, not once has he had thought of any particular girl in this refreshing angle – the angle of a “legitimately arranged” marriage to a singularly likeable girl. This angle itself wouldn’t have been one-hundredth as refreshing to him in usual circumstances. But, ‘likeable’ doesn’t even begin to describe this girl. ‘Gorgeous’ is the one that gets there, he said to himself. And, of course, as he mulled over it for a while, what loomed large in his mind was the utter ludicrousness of it all.

All this – the suggestion and the ensued short, serious thought – was over within two minutes and it has been three weeks since. Yet, that bit of ludicrousness in his mind hasn’t fully diminished yet.

Tagged

2007-07-08T05:10:00.000+05:30

So, I’m tagged by Mithra. Yeah, yeah, I know, it is a teenager thing to do, and I constantly position myself as too old and numb for such stuff. But, silly, gentle emotions overtake snobbishness, when you’ve some idle time and your snobbery is getting you nowhere.

Rules:
1. Players start with 5 random facts about themselves. The random facts must be both deeply philosophical and flatly ludicrous at once. (As a leeway, what the player says need not be random or factual as such.)
2. Those who are tagged must behave like nice people. They should post these rules, modifying them suitably if necessary, and their 5 random facts. They must not think of this as a teenager’s activity. Life’s all about such innocent fun (even if you’re in your late-20s, obsessed with more important things like the original identities of bloggers and blog-commenters, or in 30s and completely bald).
3. Players should tag 3 other people and notify them they have been tagged. (If they don’t feel like doing this, there’s another alternative: they should post 10 random facts instead of 5.)

Random facts about me:

1. Much as I project myself like someone who’s spontaneously absurdist in nature as far as life and such stuff go, I am deeply confused myself. Is the essence ananda or dukka, I kept asking myself and a dumbstruck friend for a few days when those two fancy words caught my eyes recently. Now, you tell me. Ananda ‘va, dukka ‘va?

2. I’ve this thing with wrappers of the things of the kind I cherish (and cinema tickets too). That is, I cherish things with their wrappers. So, even when I take off the polythene wrapper of a DVD I bought, I do that so carefully that I don’t tear it up more than just necessary, I keep the polythene wrapper safely in the shelf. I’ve the polythene wrappers of almost all the CDs and DVDs in my reasonably huge collection. (I even plan to revisit them sometime.)

3. Maths was my favourite subject at school and college (closely followed by history). When I was a little kid, I was fascinated to no end with numbers and patterns in them. A vintage example I remember is this: Exponents of 2 all miss being perfect numbers by 1. (Another favourite musing was this: While 5-times-5 was 25, 4-times-6 was 24.) I used to think I was special.

4. Until quite recently, I thought ‘vulnerable’ is an adjective used mostly in a derogatory sense!

5. In the past year or so, I’ve acquired this absolutely strange habit. Whenever I am writing something – a post, or, at times, even a comment, I search the web for various strings of continuous words (closed in double quotes) in what I’ve written to see if I am employing the words and expressions the right way, and get a precise idea of how expressions and figures-of-speech are being used as against how they must be used. Of course, the result of this is mostly nothing. (I did this a couple of times, even for this post. My grammar is bad alright, but this is too cumbersome an effort for nothing.)

I tag:
1. ‘I’ thambi; because, he’s jobless. (And, I could blackmail him to respond to the tag, by threatening to refuse to co-write the poignant story of a single Tamil boy who suddenly falls in love with a girl whom he last saw many years ago, that I’ve developed.)
2. Inlivenout; because, I think she’s basically a nice person. (She doesn’t have a blog anymore, so she can use my comment space. But, how do I notify her?)
3. Chenthil; because, I want to see an older and wiser man take up this thing so that I’ll stand naturally vindicated.

When God was in pants

2007-06-07T22:19:00.000+05:30

My posts on God often don't run for pages. Simple reason. I’ve nothing to say about Him. But, some times, reverence takes over common sense.
Anyway, this isn't like a pre-80s Raaja essential listening or some such. Listing four songs as “essential listening” is farcical. This is just a sample listening. But, I think it offers a chronological perspective on the early phase of Raaja. Or, so I wish.

1. Kannan Oru Kaikkuzhandhai
2. Vasantha Kaala KolangaL
3. Aazhakkadalil Thediya Muthu
4. Kanden Engum (A song that gave its dharisanam some weeks ago and has kept me in rapture since then; I had wanted to write the customary, short rave-post.)

Now, all these songs are MSV-ish – strictly melody-based, emphasis on tune and exquisite singing, minimal arrangements, no majestic orchestrations, no complex rhythm patterns, just simple and straight.
Long story cut short – and, MSV fans must pardon me here, I think, in these songs, Raaja wonderfully demonstrates with great flourish what all can be done in MSV-style compositions.
These songs epitomise the early, MSV-ish Raaja, for me, and demonstrate how He simply surpasses MSV at the latter's own game, so to say. (Yes, call me a fanatic.) Readers may please add what they think is “MSV-ish.” For chronology's sake, readers may limit themselves to pre-80s.
(A more fanatical way of putting all this is to challenge the reader to show me some MSV songs that match up to these. I’ll tell you upfront, I’d only be delighted. I must also add an escapist but true disclaimer here: I am not greatly familiar with MSV’s works.)

Of course, these songs, in many ways, carry the unmistakable Raaja stamp too. The preludes and interludes, even if “simple,” (by Raaja’s standards, that is) are mostly quintessential Raaja.
Also, please note, this selection is restricted by design to only those songs in which He “emulates” MSV, whatever that means. So, there's a reason why you didn't find His majestic, classical showdown-pieces or the path-breaking Raaja-folk pieces of the pre-80s.

2007-05-29T22:30:00.001+05:30

ஷவரம் பண்ணிக்கரதயும் உத்தியோகத்தையும் உட்டுட்டா, ஒண்ணும் வராது நோக்கு. மனச உட்டுட்டா மகா கஷ்டம்! Life goes on...

– Bhashyam Iyengar, in Hey! Ram.

Giggle, and fuck the bigil.

2007-04-23T18:26:00.000+05:30

Another hike. Giggle. Uncontrollably. And, fuck the bigil. Hedonism, here’s coming to you.

Update (on Apr 23, 2007; 6:46 p.m.): Woo hoo and all that. (Currently listening to Siru Ponmani. Anything and Ilaiyaraaja, I say!)

The road that's taken

2007-04-20T21:03:00.000+05:30

It was a weird feeling. She even found it a bit hard to shrug it off. None of them, her friends, colleagues, various acquaintances, seemed to bear that sort of boisterous mood that they used to when in her company those days – when she was still “available.” Their unrelenting and irrepressible attempts at humour, with occasional “successes” – she'd give a snobbish, miserly smile which was still strong enough to have them in restrained rapture, the unconditional approvals, the matter-of-fact acknowledgements, were all missing. Instead, now, they were totally unruffled, cordial, all smiles, wishing her “all the very best!” (on all her future endeavours, some insisted). No cute silliness, just gentlemanly demeanour.

All this seemed to affect her in a mild – of course – but inexplicable way. She even wondered the possibility of one of these men classifying his relationship with her as “platonic.” Ah, ‘platonic,’ the word she endlessly made fun of, in her mind.

Not her fault really, she’s just so used to all such jazz. What a queen she was during her college days! The guys who showed no shame whatsoever in openly contesting among themselves to “get her,” the girls who tacitly acknowledged her “superiority,” all those crazy proposals, proposals so tedious that they were masterpieces in their own right. And, all the while, she was so level-headed leaving more men floored in the process.

And, now, she has this man beside her, who, to be fair to him, is smarter than it usually gets. Somehow, she wished he tried, visibly enough, to qualify himself for this. But, he seemed to be in no hurry. Instead, he was busy recalling some not-so-dull in-jokes with his friends. (“Some of my jokes are so ‘in’ that only I laugh at them!” he quipped to her asking for excuse, in between. She laughed.) She shrugged the thought off, smiling at herself, and waved her hand joyously when her eye caught a close buddy.

In a few moments, when she was introducing him to that friend, she couldn’t help but wonder a little, “So, just this man. That's it?”

A very rough reminder

2007-03-21T14:23:00.000+05:30

Oh, for god's frigging sake, the "controversial rain rule" that knocked out South Africa in the semi-final of the 1992 World Cup was NOT based -- I repeat, NOT based -- on the Duckworth-Lewis system.

Fuck pride.

2007-03-08T21:52:00.000+05:30

"Now the night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting, that's pride fuckin' wit ya. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps. Fight through that shit."

– Marsellus Wallace.

An all-time favourite line. Needless to say, "Marsellus Wallace was right." Always.

Faith

2007-02-06T23:44:00.000+05:30

O Lord!! *In tears*

On existential wit and profundity

2006-12-08T14:54:00.000+05:30

1. "Illingo. Idhu bigilu, idhu biskothu." - Kamal Haasan in Pammal K. Sambandham. No words for this. Just awesome.

2. "Chappathi chappathi thaan, rotti rotti thaan." - Nagesh in Nawab Naarkali. What sublime wit!

A ‘Ha!’ moment

2006-12-07T18:36:00.000+05:30

My life takes a 360-degree turn every goddamn day. And, hell, it takes me along with it.
-0- on 07/06/2006 7:00:18 p.m.

Yours truly, more on this, at Chenthil’s.

[T]here's definitely something about going all around on what seems like a circular path and coming back to what seems like the same point, but still feeling that you must definitely be standing at a different point.[link]

This is the profound truth that I’ve been trying to express all along in this blog, and by far the profoundest thing I’ve said in it, staying true to the character.

Thank-you Note: Mukund and Chenthil.

A Political Post

2006-10-30T20:00:00.000+05:30

No, no, I don't have a political viewpoint now. Not yet.

But, despite all my own self-proclaimed inanity, which I duly keep to myself, some things, which are at times political, infuriates me quite a bit and drops a pebble in my tranquil mind. And, of all such things, Mr. Anbumani Ramadoss is of the highest order. So, here's [via] Karan Thapar pillorying him just like I'd have liked to. I'd like to say something, though. The man isn't arrogant and stuff. He can't be. He's just silly and immature.
Not that there's anything wrong in being so, of course, but only if you keep one's ideas, children of one's very inventive imagination, and one's mindless servility to one's parent, to oneself and private gatherings of the likeminded.

Actually, I really wanted to catch this on television when I got to know that it was to be telecasted on Sunday, but somehow missed it.

Okay, my prime source of infuriation was his call for banning smoking in films. I mean, to waste the precious time of many a soul on something as silly as that!

I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.

And, while we’re at God’s grace

2006-10-15T02:01:00.000+05:30

Check out Manoj's new Pre-1985 Ilaiyaraja Radio. Just awesome. (Yeah, yeah, the overwhelmed self wrote many a comment over there thanking him profusely.)

Awesome!

2006-10-10T20:07:00.000+05:30

Radha! Radha, Nee Enge?

Just awesome, this one. Oh-so-beautifully sung! And, the violin! Just awesome.

Usually, one’s deaf to lyrics, but the lyrics of this song (Kannadasan) is superb too.

And, of course, this is from the same film that has one of one’s all-time favourites, an absolute masterpiece, sung by Yesu himself.

And, what do you possibly want one to add about Raaja? Is there a temple of Him somewhere? I mean, for God’s sake!

A plug

2006-10-10T15:21:00.000+05:30

It’s not often I get to plug. So, here’s one.

Ranga, an ardent cinephlie who can quote from many a Tamil film at will, and a cousin of yours truly ^[1], has started a blog on, well, what else but Tamil Cinema.

டங்கன் முதல் மிஷ்கின் வரை…

The fellow dabbles in bloody so many things that I can’t possibly list them. Apart from films, he is a big fan of Sujatha, Cho, Crazy (not to forget that yours truly also is, oh so absolutely!) and S. Ve. Shekhar.

Now, I don’t mince words much when it comes to acquaintances, but, this man is pretty much the funniest man I’ve personally known.

In short, one points the readers towards much better reading. If the posts keep coming from there, that is.

[1] - Is this blog becoming a “family type” blog by the day? Time for some Lynch-esque posts to take over, eh?

A let-me-call-it-long interlude of absurdist hedonism

2006-10-07T23:12:00.000+05:30

So, I, along with a bunch of jobless folks, went to Goa the last long weekend, basked in the beaches, laid down sodden in water for long, rode along the mountainous roads in bikes, reached places, and basked there, in turn.

In short, immensely enjoyed every moment of it, including the ones when I walked along the beach almost fully wet (and a bit Rum-ed too) for a couple of kilometers and came back past midnight. (And, yeah, the plain sit-and-stare-at-the-wall ones too.)

Like, for instance, here I'm examining a bottle of Smirnoff to see if that's where it lies.

And, a Leone-esque shot, albeit in a contrastingly picturesque spot.

A moment of clarity, is that?

And, this, I thought, was nice. No?

Umm, how about this?

And, here's the signature shot.

A lot of such priceless pics were taken. Some for the readers' discerning eyes.

Dining Philosophers

2006-10-06T19:25:00.000+05:30

Author’s note: Like anything else in this world, there’s no pre-requisite per se for this post too. But, read this previous edition anyway, it’s life-affirming.

“Now, we all agree that you’ve become nihilistic, don’t we?” asked Vels addressing a grand audience of one person in one of those vegetarian restaurants where Sambar tastes, well, like it does in Tamilnadu and Vada (not Vadaa) doesn’t have coconut pieces ingrained in it.

Ashok is not a man who’d concentrate on his Sambar Vada (not Vadaa), much as he loves it, when posed with a question of such proportions, especially when he isn’t quite sure about the answer himself, like this one. In fact, that’s when he comes out flourishing with obscure drivel, dishing theories one after another. But, in this particular case, he chose silence and Sambar Vada (not Vadaa) over sublime nonsense for a few precious moments.

Then, very assuredly, he mumbled, “Huh? I am not nihilistic.”

Vels, a little perplexed, continued, “Damn you bastard! So, now, do you claim you believe in something? One of those times you even said you staunchly believed in bullshit and blah, trying to sound very cool and Woody Allen.”

“‘Positively, no,’ I should say.”

“Then, you are one.”

“But, I don’t believe in Nihilism either.”

“Another one of your failed attempt at quirky witty and whatnot one-liners. Now, I can’t bother too much to point out the absurdity in your logic, can I?”

“Don’t. I’ll do that myself.”

“Well?”

“See, I know it’s absurd. That’s exactly why I am not nihilistic.”

“You are just fooling yourself.”

“Right, that too.”

“What?”

“Yes, I am fooling myself, admirably well” – Vels started at this moment – Ashok snapped and continued, “I know, you are going to point out that how the hell would it work when I am aware of it.” Vels just nodded in anxious agreement.

Ashok continued, “It would work exactly because of that. I fool myself and I am so well aware of it, and when one’s so well aware of fooling himself” – Vels interrupted and finished, “He can’t fool himself anymore. That is all.” in a heavily M*A*S*H-influenced tone.

Just as Vels thought he had concluded the topic in an unexceptionable fashion, the hot Pongal Ashok had ordered arrived. As if to assert his winning, Vels dragged the plate by his side and gazed satisfyingly at the Pongal.

With a degree of composure that he had not feigned in months altogether, Ashok continued unperturbedly, “No. I fool myself – not to mention that I do that admirably well - and am so well aware of it, and because I am so well aware of fooling myself, I fool myself, um, very correctly. Yes, I know to fool myself very correctly, precisely, exactly. The perfection has come over the years.”

“Why do I feel that you never knew this darn crazy logic yourself just a few seconds before when I snatched your Pongal?”

“Right ho! If my reasoning was that spontaneous, it should be all the more appropriate.” Ashok closed the case, dignifiedly leaving the Pongal for his companion and deciding to have a nice Masaal Dosa (not Dosaa) for himself.

Thoughts on self-deprecation and suchlike

2006-10-05T21:18:00.000+05:30

Self-deprecation is often quite misconstrued as a desirable quality that comes entirely out of unreserved humility. But, some discerning souls do see through it.

Chenthil, while talking about his very commendable attempt to write like this blogger (who incidentally can’t write for nuts) to showcase his ghost-blogging skills, had told me this:

Chenthil: I had to try hard to get that self deprecation (a superior form of snobbery)
me: hmmm.. ^[1]
Over Google Talk. Underlining the key content and adding pointer(s) to footnote(s) by yours truly.

Indeed! That was quite a neat, insightful, little take on a writing style usually left behind for flippant remarks. That got me thinking on what makes one bring in self-deprecation in one’s writing.

Yes, it’s certainly snobbery, a show of soft arrogance, soft enough to conceal it lest somebody see through it. In short, an act of sneering.

But, one sneers at self. And, that, one does, because one genuinely doubts oneself. And, when one doubts oneself, and very genuinely at that, it’s a sheer dilemma - or even worse, a totally tilted I-see-through-this-crap feeling - that makes one express one’s apprehension about the quality, or rather the lack of it, in what one’s writing.

It’s pretentious, of course. But, like in any other case of pretense, it’s not entirely that. And, nobody, including the sneerer himself, knows whether the sneer was befitting or overdone or plain boring patronization over oneself.

Taking a specific example, albeit quite a bad one, let me see why I bother to crack an arbitrary (bad) joke about my non-existent writing skills, time and again. Because, like Kierkegaard would have put when in deep slumber or deeper inebriation, I doubt myself!

To cut the long story short, snobs are basically very nice people, I tell you, especially if their EQ ranges from 5.7 to 5.9.

[1] - What else could one do at such moments but just “hmmm”?

A pointless clarification

2006-10-03T18:35:00.000+05:30

Apparently, I was the “Bombay reader” of this blog.

On any day, I’d have been tempted to think it was only me ^[1]. But, as life would have it, my Site Meter stats thought those visits were from Bombay and I believed it. It was a nice joke on me, I thought. A proper “Thanniya Kudi” moment.

[1] - Though I had configured the tracker to ignore the IP where I blog from, and I don’t read my blog as often; or keep one of its pages open for a frightfully long time.

Oru konjam-chinna update (on 04th Oct, 01:45 p.m.): Oh dear! This post was to enlighten the readers about the “Bombay reader” if the previous revelation was a little murky. And, about the total bulb moment of my discovery that it was indeed me. And, look what some dear commenters have turned that into! Serious'aa, Onnume puriyala!

2006-09-28T18:04:00.000+05:30

This long weekend will be spent in Goa. An orgy of sorts, drinking all day long, is in the offing. But, one's already in really high spirits. Mabbu glass'la'ya irukku? Mansula irukku!

Heard that the Bombay reader will be there too. Hmmm.

2006-09-28T16:57:00.000+05:30

Dear other readers, as I found out on further stalking, the reader from Bombay is not actually in Bombay. He is, in fact, from Bangalore and has never been to Bombay. And, he is male.

Just a while ago, the reader from Bombay reluctantly confessed to have been reading my blog for a while, but vehemently pleaded innocence claiming that he always closed the browser window much too quickly. The Bombay reader also claimed, more vehemently, that he stays in Bangalore.

And, the bastard has a lot of coffee. (I always guessed that it was coffee, didn't I?)

Thus, I saw all the pieces of the puzzle in place, and him typing this post.

2006-09-27T20:33:00.000+05:30

Dear reader from Bombay, I know you very reluctantly open my weblog in your browser and quite immediately step out for some hot coffee, or even to take a neat little nap wondering why would somebody write such stuff.

If that's indeed the case, and God forbid otherwise, please close the browser before you go, if it's not much work. Probably, doing that will close your session at my Site Meter tracker installed in my blog, rather than inadvertently let it make utterly false notes that you spend horrifyingly long time reading my blog.

SQoSSD #7 (or) From the Things I’ve been telling people dept.

2006-09-27T18:06:00.000+05:30

Art is pretty unfair, I tell you, unlike software.

2006-09-27T15:55:00.000+05:30

The beauty that lies in the eyes of this much pokerfaced beholder is apparently not all that charming. Life has transmogrified into a series of conversations, musings, soliloquys, sound sleeps, hot shower baths, coffee-drinking and plain sit-and-stare-at-the-wall.

Damn the visuals, Woody Allen is God.

2006-09-27T03:53:00.000+05:30

Just changed the tagline to this. I am contemplating staying awake all night.

2006-09-27T01:29:00.000+05:30

A couple of weeks back, I had been to Thailand on a 4-day fun trip organized by the company I work with. We were told that we could take a guest along with us. In saner circumstances, it'd have meant a spouse, a girlfriend, or even a sibling. But what I apparently did was one of the weirdest things I ever pulled off.

In what seemed like a chapter straight out of Fellini's La Dolce Vita, I took my appa along with me. Yes, I and my dad travelled around with my colleagues and others, visited places, parasailed, walked under the sea, ate passable Indian food, slept soundly in the hotel rooms, shopped in huge malls, and came back home.

If one skims a little through this blog, one can figure out the level of excitement I'd have towards such touring and travelling. But, my father, a man of a different generation and certainly different sensiblities enjoyed every bit of it. My appa just oozes out frenetic enthusiasm during such trips. He makes note of the places he visits (along with the date and time, no less), wakes up early and gets ready for the next place of visit, takes part in organizing the proceedings and so on. As a matter of fact, during this trip, I kept him in check, not letting him be his usual self. I did realise soon that, it was utterly preposterous of me to impose my "modern detachment" on him, but most of the men around, I was afraid, were "modern" themselves, but probably not as "detached" as I was. But, I couldn't inhibit him from being his usual self and, apparently, he won more friends than I did during the trip. And, he really enjoyed parasailing and the undersea walk (which I was supposed to not to let him do), and recalled his doing the same (against much opposition) during his long holiday in Mauritius.

Personally, I fairly enjoyed the Battaya beach and Bangkok. On the whole, it was actually nice, this stranding together a boy and his father, starkly different in their sensibilities - the son steeped in stoic cynicism and the father, zealous and with strong middle-class ethos - and yet uncannily similar, not to mention the look-alike noses.

*****

I wasn't sure if I should have asked him if he'd like to have a drink or not, during the dinner on one of those days, but as stern stoicism prevailed, I just sat still and waded through for most part of it. And, I had quite quit drinking too. But, he'd have enjoyed a drink if somebody forced it a bit on him, I know. Now, I wonder if I should have, and what his reaction would have been.

*****

Of the words that I repeately use in conversations and in writing, and even tend to consciously keep it in check, the topmost is probably 'bland'. That is the word. That is real. That is my drama. And, my melodrama.

*****

Blandrama!

2006-09-09T23:15:00.000+05:30

You don't make up for your nobody-knows-what in a blog. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. All the rest is bullshit and you know it.

-0-

2006-09-08T12:36:00.000+05:30

Last Sunday, I went back to Lawrence & Mayo and took my new pair of glasses that I had ordered. Yes, it was a full week after I had ordered for them. It felt good.

***

This week, I, along with some folks from the company I work with, was supposed to go to my alma mater for recruitment. We'll be starting on Tuesday noon, I thought. My friend calmly corrected me on Monday morning that we were supposed to start on that very day. So, I hurried up, bought a couple of new shirts, I don't know why, and reached my office just about noon, all set.

The two gentlemen whom I accompanied were both managers which brought in an obvious generation rift. But, the drives (we went on road), to and fro, were very pleasant. Both gentlemen were quintessential Tamilians. They listened fervently to 80s Ilaiyaraaja and were sort of movie buffs. Much as it sounds condescending, I was very impressed with their knowledge of Tamil cinema. We talked about many things; Tamil film songs, Ilaiyaraaja, Tamil movies, Mahanadhi, an obscure movie called Gramathu Athiyayam, yesteryear actress Jayashree, entrance exams, engineering, counselling etc. They nostalgically recalled their college days and the beginning years of their career time and again, and in lieu of their current affairs, kept talking about their kids. Such times are when I realise how much I enjoy a Tamilian company. I have never been a great enthusiast of Tamil, the language, so to say. I mostly deride my friends when they get all worked upon the Tamilian spirit or suchlike, or prove that Tamil is the one of the oldest languages in the world, and even worse, point out that Sanskrit derived a bit or more from Tamil. But, all that history and justification of it being a great "classic language" or otherwise is immaterial.

I am, for all practical reasons, a Tamilian myself, and that pretty much explains my natural affinity towards Tamilian things. Just like any ordinary Tamilian, I love Tamilian things, but not much the language itself.

And, yeah, one of them is technically not a Tamilian. Even, I am not. Whatever.

***

At the college, it was quite odd to see students going head over heels addressing us sir and all that. Yes, of course, I know that's how it was; and, back then, I too addressed such people as sir. But, much as I must have had used it to address certain people, I guess I didn't go to the levels that some students did the other day. (Had I overheard some of my batchmates attending interviews back then, perhaps, I'd have been more ready for this.) The way some candidates bludgeoned me with their sirs as they answered my questions really made me a bit uncomfortable, but I started taking it as a fact at its face value soon.

The recruitment itself was a low-key affair. About 30 candidates took the test (back then, I used to complain that the junta refers to it as 'giving the test' instead of 'taking the test'), a little less than half of them got short-listed for the interviews, I grilled some of them in data structures, algorithms blah blah blah (though I was well aware that I had to brush myself off on these subjects), and we finally zeroed in on two candidates and short-listed them for a job offer.

***

We left in the early morning, the day after, i.e. Sep 6th. The very day I first stepped in on my alma mater six years ago. I actually felt I should roam around the entire campus (esp. my room), but hardly had the time to. All I was able to visit was our beloved Octagon (it was some time between 9 and 10 in the night, so it was almost full), after a hectic session of interviews and dinner, the day before.
It was more than two years since I left the place. I am not able to figure out how nostalgic I feel about those times. Those days are the most unforgettable ones of my life and were great fun. But, I am not able to relate to many a thing out there anymore.

***

I am not even a bit sure about what I should do with my life. Enakku enna pannen, enna panren, enna pannalaam, edhuvume puriyala. I should start cooking. I'll get to peel onions, you know.

Being Periyar

2006-08-30T20:20:00.000+05:30

Vidya’s comments here enlightened me on the controversy about Kushboo starring in a movie on/about Periyar.

She asks,

And what abt the Kushboo-staring-in-Periyaar movie controvery?, makes no sense to me. As far as I know Periyaar had *different* views on *Karpu*. Now PMK is protesting that Kushboo not star in this movie only because her opinions on *it* vilified the sanctity of women in TN.

No, Vidya. You are wrong.

Just because Periyar “had *different* views on *Karpu*,” it doesn’t mean she can star in something as sacrosanct as a movie on/about Periyar.

It only means that Periyar can’t star in a movie on/about Periyar.

Hair Loss - II

2006-08-28T14:55:00.000+05:30

Chapter 2: The Barber

He cuts my hair diligently, day and night. Mathematics is close to divinity, I used to think. And, now, I know, I was right. The precision with which He maintains the symmetry is amazing.
y² = 4ax is for the mortals. He sees it in a glance. Like, how those theorems came to Ramanujan off-the-cuff.

Today, He said stoically, “Ah, there, dear Zero, is one left on the right, which makes it, um, less symmetric, you know…”
I feigned ignorance, and timidly asked, “What is it that is, um, less symmetric?”
“Your face,” He said and plucked.

Yes, God cuts my hair.

As part of the ambitious “Hair Loss” series. Previous post on “Hair Loss”.

Note: Since I have reprised what I had said here, this also turns out to be an unqualified entry to the haircut blogathon. Predecessors elsewhere: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

2006-08-28T11:39:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I ordered for a new pair of glasses, deciding to change the ones I am wearing now which I bought more than two years ago (I forget if I went for a new frame too, or only changed my lens, back then), when I had not even stepped into my first job.
It felt good.

My Meta-life

2006-08-25T16:12:00.000+05:30

The coffee had come a long while ago and I hadn’t picked it from my table. I was just thinking about my life, like any other day. A meta-life of sorts, I have.

Love is not even conspicuous by its absence. There is such a disconnection between me and the world around me that I have started failing in many an aspect of my daily life. This sort of alienation, I find, is puzzling by its lack of complexity. I have long become a person, who looks at one’s own life as a specimen and expresses things about, not oneself, but one’s life, and universe, if one fancies.

This looming sense of emptiness has been there for a long while, but, as one can apparently see, it hardly matters, as far as one holds up to something; with the help of which he can wade through life.

But in this state, I am afraid if I have lost that too. The only thing that excites me is films, listening to music, etcetera. All I am left with is just some pseudo-artistic inclinations to quench myself in vain. Honestly, someone whose bread-and-butter issue is settled, and is hard pressed to spend time in a “quality” way, is the perfect recipe for an aspiring artist. But, I don’t aspire to be anything because I am scared of aspirations. And, I think I am right doing that.

And, now, I am sipping my coffee that has gone cold, and planning to go to Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu tonight.

P.S.:- As I resumed writing this, even the coffee was taken away without my noticing it. So I will stop here and get my fresh cup of coffee.

SQoTD #6

2006-08-25T14:53:00.000+05:30

Why thank God it’s Friday when He’s going to give it anyway?

Ah, well, one may still thank Him because He’s indeed giving it anyway.

Is she hot?

2006-08-22T11:22:00.000+05:30

Some questions which this blogger has been meaning to ask people for a long time now.

1. Who is Ayn Rand?
2. Why is everybody after her?
3. How did every soul in this sweet little world of this blogger, except himself, happen to read her?
4. While this blogger understands the teenagers’ adoration to works like The Catcher in the Rye, which address their youthful angst, this unconditional universal admiration among the youth for Ayn Rand is not really as obvious to him. (And, yeah, he is old.)

Some disclaimers that should have rather gone without saying.
1. This blogger hasn’t read The Catcher in the Rye as well.
2. He hardly reads books.
3. He might know the answer for all the questions above.

The blogger’s note: Though I was meaning to write this for quite sometime, it was this comment I wrote on a post at this much likeable blog (on which I first stumbled upon, I believe, during a discussion on God, no less, but didn’t read much then), that pushed the publish button.

I am the sort of reader (who can hardly be called so) who saw an Ayn Rand books[sic] at every house/place/room/blog he bumped on to, and never bothered to pick one up.
I can quote two reasons.
One, the word 'objectivism' to which she is associated to (and perhaps attributed to, as well) was very uncomfortable (and close to nauseating) for my taste, or the lack of it.
Two (and the truer reason), I hardly read.

Now, those were some really lousy loose words that were written in jest.
Neither am I very uncomfortable or baffled with an objectivistic outlook, nor do I find it remotely nauseating. Just that I don’t feel like it; leave aside, reading a book on it.

In fact, objectivism, when it makes sense talking about “selfishness” et al., seems too obvious; and hence becomes, um, trivial.

Rand fans, pardon my ignorance and do tell me what I have been missing all along.

P.S.:-
1. Not to mention that I find nothing uncomfortable or nauseating.
2. When I say ‘objectivism’, I mean whatever I could make out of it on hearsay.

Last modified (reframed the lines and added a little more) this post at 6:29 p.m. to induce a bit of objectivity to the post, much ironically.

From The Nocturnal Notes

2006-08-18T19:20:00.000+05:30

I am like an art film.
I am an art film.

An IM Conversation on ‘The Meaning of Life’

2006-08-10T19:22:00.000+05:30

Following is an all-important IM conversation I had with a friend of mine a while ago.
(Please note: It reeks of bad sentence structures, awful spellings, and has avoidable content in general.)

X (8/10/2006 6:27:12 PM): dude u have stopped putting status msg
Z (8/10/2006 6:27:28 PM): probably indicates i am stateless
X (8/10/2006 6:27:48 PM): how does it feel to be stateless
Z (8/10/2006 6:28:03 PM): it feels like being, um, stateless
X (8/10/2006 6:28:32 PM): k n apart frm taht it does not feel anything
Z (8/10/2006 6:28:52 PM): it does feel like nothing.
Z (8/10/2006 6:29:03 PM): so i can't say it doesn't feel like anything.
X (8/10/2006 6:30:24 PM): k nice u have come to terms with that, i m still struggling with that
Z (8/10/2006 6:30:40 PM): i have come to terms for a long time now.
Z (8/10/2006 6:31:01 PM): it doesn't feel any better actually. again something which i have come to terms with
X (8/10/2006 6:32:23 PM): kkk, yeah un know its like socialism , gud in theory but actually fcuked up in practice...u can think there is utopia, but it actaully there isnt .
Z (8/10/2006 6:33:37 PM): any theoretical representation can't reflect in one's pratice in entirety.
X (8/10/2006 6:35:10 PM): n plus theritical representations were invented to pacify the over zealous minds, to create an illusion of paralle universe...
Z (8/10/2006 6:36:33 PM): the game is for 90 minutes. and i am not sure if it's all fun.
X (8/10/2006 6:37:51 PM): nope it is not..its a wastefule expenditure of energy. but then agin it manages to create an illusion of fun..
Z (8/10/2006 6:38:29 PM): if fun is illusory, so is despair.
X (8/10/2006 6:40:03 PM): yeah its all v clinical,,certain hormones released, whihc fire some neuro transmitters n so on...
X (8/10/2006 6:40:18 PM): its more clinical then illusory
X (8/10/2006 6:40:21 PM): our emotions
Z (8/10/2006 6:40:54 PM): who cares if it's clinical or illusory? are they really that different?
X (8/10/2006 6:41:22 PM): hmm i guess illusion is an euphemism for clinical
X (8/10/2006 6:41:32 PM): after all everything is clinical
Z (8/10/2006 6:43:19 PM): so it ceases to hold any importance.
X (8/10/2006 6:43:39 PM): it ceases to be fantastic
Z (8/10/2006 6:44:28 PM): I meant, if every goddamn thing is biological or clinical, it ceases to be important.
X (8/10/2006 6:45:59 PM): no why unimportant. dont underestimate matter..take atoms for instance ..they make up X, without even realizing that they r making X...isint amazing
X (8/10/2006 6:46:24 PM): i mean the smallest structure inside ur body is lefeless
X (8/10/2006 6:46:30 PM): n u r aliove
Z (8/10/2006 6:47:05 PM): well, so? as far as you don't need any more help from it, how is it important for you?
Z (8/10/2006 6:47:16 PM): from the cell or atom, i mean
Z (8/10/2006 6:48:10 PM): more importantly, u can't have any more help from them.
X (8/10/2006 6:49:44 PM): i was thinking may be then can help me unlock the key to true happiness.. i mean the first thing which happens after ur body dgenerates is that all the constituent atoms fly away, wearing off ur body..all rite its their nature to be free, not bonded...but still then how n for wot reason they decide to come together n form complex strutures lie sun, earth , life ,emotoins
Z (8/10/2006 6:50:49 PM): why should there be any reason?
Z (8/10/2006 6:51:05 PM): we are probably here because God sneezed.
X (8/10/2006 6:52:14 PM): i mean why shoudlnt ther be one
Z (8/10/2006 6:53:08 PM): it's not that there shouldn't be. there could be. but why is it a must that it's tuned to our desires and needs
Z (8/10/2006 6:53:37 PM): again it's not that it shouldn't be
X (8/10/2006 6:53:57 PM): yes i ll tell ui why becoz its so depressing to know (n even though it si clinical) tath there isnt a reason
Z (8/10/2006 6:54:55 PM): then cook up a reason and believe it.
X (8/10/2006 6:55:31 PM): thats the hardest thing ...cuz i can always reason against sthing i reasoned for
Z (8/10/2006 6:56:50 PM): then that's what you are. Aren't you disillusioned with looking for meaning?
X (8/10/2006 6:57:30 PM): i think i m solving a puzzle
Z (8/10/2006 6:57:40 PM): i am disillusioned with disillusionments. i have run out of them.
X (8/10/2006 6:57:42 PM): i have the pieces but can get the bigger picture
Z (8/10/2006 6:57:49 PM): so i don't feel "cheated" at all.
X (8/10/2006 6:58:17 PM): hmm k for u have attained stoicism
X (8/10/2006 6:59:02 PM): but tell me b4 u ran out disillusionments, how did u feel
X (8/10/2006 6:59:20 PM): abt this whoel conspircay theory or wotever is ur explaination
Z (8/10/2006 6:59:45 PM): i had better things to do. i ran out of disillusionments just when i started feeling disillusioned. all in one go, i did batch processing.
Z (8/10/2006 6:59:58 PM): i had a big checklist of meanings and struck them all at once.
Z (8/10/2006 7:00:30 PM): checklist of meanings of life.

Ah, right.
I had a big checklist of the potential meanings of life and struck them all at once!
It was that easy, and such fun too; and, consequently, of least importance.

Random Unqualified Nihilistic Balderdash

2006-08-08T18:23:00.000+05:30

Today something happened, which I very much expected and even wanted to happen. But, when it did happen, it closed the doors of what could have been an option for spending the next couple of years of my life a little differently.

Like I said elsewhere, I am terribly unsure of what I should do for the rest of my life. I have reached a stage in which I am assuredly aimless for all practical purposes and I am not sure how far I can go on like this with a smile, or a sneer for that matter, on my face intact.

Currently listening to “New York nagaram uRangum neram” (“நியூயார்க் நகரம் உறங்கும் நேரம்”) from Sillunu Oru Kaadhal (nicely sung by ARR).

Needless to say, I don’t connect to such melancholy as that is expressed in the song. I never, or mostly don’t, feel lonely. But, I am lonely. Love, it seems, is as much an alien concept as hatred. That probably explains why I just keep cracking bad jokes; and dine fervently at Adyar Ananda Bhavan.

On “identifying genius”

2006-08-07T17:42:00.000+05:30

Sincere apologies to the man from Australia, who landed up here, looking for some help to “identify genius”.
This blogger is no authority on such stuff. Though, Google, way too blogger.com-friendly I should say, thinks otherwise .
This is just a little stupid blog that, on an average, gets 4 hits a day, and, as fate had it (and rued later), featured an unspeakably inconsequential post on “genius”.

Hair Loss - I

2006-08-01T18:18:00.000+05:30

Prologue:
You are not your hair.
You are not even yourself.
Your hair isn't yours.
Your hair loss is yours, though.

Chapter 1: The Parabola

He closely examined his broad forehead in the mirror. He didn’t mind it being quite broad, at least, he didn’t use to, but the small inroads the barren space, passing itself as the forehead, has made diagonally beyond the temples on both sides of his forehead, thus forming an acute parabola of sorts, was bothering. He held his hair tight towards the rear side of his head. The signs were telling, even if it didn’t mean anything. He wondered if Nietzsche also had these inroads early in his life, and if it influenced his outlook of life.

“How did it all go? And more importantly, when the heck did it all go?” He wondered. It was quite depressing to know, a man could go bald just like that even before he realizes it. Just like that. Not that he has already gone bald, but the forehead sure has grown by a centimeter or so, in less than two years.

He wished he was warned, warned enough, by somebody. Somebody - his mom, his girlfriend, and here it has to be mentioned that he had none, his roommates during his college days, or the goddamn mirror – should have told him, at some point earlier.

But too late, it was. No “fortifying” shampoo or hair oil outwitted the parabola. He was reminded of the numerous marriages he attended in which the groom combed, or rather bristled, his hair letting it fall free over his forehead. And also about the really bad jokes he cracked, when he was in his college, at the Professor who taught Computer Networks. He reinstated, quite honestly, that the jokes were about the Prof’s startlingly juvenile idea about computers, leave aside computer networks, and never in anyway related to his gracefully dark pitch-bald head, hair adorning it only on the down end from one ear to another.

He was still looking at the mirror, carefully searched for any strands of hair left in and around those two singular regions.
Ah, there! There was one, a rather long one. He was stretching it straight so as to check its length, and, inadvertently plucked it. It slipped away from his hand.
And was lost.

Epilogue:
As they say, and now he knew why (or knew he will never know why), “Mayira Pochu!”

தந்து விட்டேன் என்னை...!

2006-07-25T18:53:00.000+05:30

Wow! M.S.V., I bow to thee.

muththukkaloa kangal thiththippadhoa kannam
sandhiththa vaelaiyil sindhikkavae illai
thandhuvittaen ennai
[...]
muththukkalae pengal thiththippadhae kannam
sandhiththa vaelaiyil sindhikkavae illai
thandhuvittaen ennai [Muthukkalo Kangal]

(In want of a better source of the lyrics. This will be duly updated if a kind soul provides one.)

Endless loop, for more than a week now.

Update at 10:24 p.m.: An update note was added on updating the post with the lyrics of the song, but without an update note, a few minutes ago.

Mourning the Death of Good Old Anonymity and Portending the Ensuing Tragedy

2006-06-27T14:52:00.000+05:30

This blog isn’t as anonymous as I would have liked it to be, and I am already fretting over that fact. Heck, it’s not anonymous at all. Can you call it so, if your uncles and aunts know about its existence (and banteringly refer to its title and suchlike)? Certainly not! And, though it’s highly unlikely, what if they, God forbid, actually read it? Will some justice prevail?

That’s where I stand. Lynch-esque posts will not pop up and flourish in all their glory as often. The well-well-why-not-be-a-“good-boy” philosophy of mine will take the front seat. Contents of this blog will become saccharine; I will hug people online, thank them profusely. I will write favourable reviews of “Thavamai Thavamirunthu” and the like. And what not!

But, all is not lost. With all due humility, a little bit of whatever this blog used to be ^[1], will be retained.

And, as is my wont, I will end this post, by adding my bit to the readers’ woes, make them cry “Why O why? Why at all?” and sneer at this blog, its author and the Creator Himself.

This blog will soon host, God forbid not this time, some fiction – dark, gloomy, morbid, sinister, moody, searing (and life-affirming, if time permits) tales about human existence from time immemorial and other things.

[1] – “And what was that?” I wonder.

Off

2006-05-19T16:34:00.000+05:30

Anyone who looks at this blog for the very first time would easily sense its overwhelming insensibility along with an almost surreal revelation that it’s, after all, written by a fellow human being.
But, I don’t claim to be weird. In fact, I am not weird. I think claiming insanity is a bit too pompous. Insane people don’t happen just like that on an ordinary day. Just some irrelevant inconsequential writings do not a lunatic make.

“Why are you boring us to death with all this?” you ask. Well, just when I was about to leave for a 2-weeks long vacation to Chennai, I pompously made a statement that more “inanity is in the offing,” in my previous post. Sheer over-confidence.

Anyway, it’s time to eat some humble pie. I am put to shame. I confess that, I can’t be perennially insensible. And, I am not insane.

No posts (or I might sneak in one or two) for a month or so, much to the relief of young optimistic readers looking forward to a bright colorful future.

Off to a big vacation!

The best smoke of my life

2006-05-14T22:56:00.001+05:30

Just an hour ago, I had the best smoke of my life. Actually speaking, it was the first true smoke in which I actually inhaled it and all that jazz. It felt good~~; in fact, great~~!

My admiration for smoking as an act of doing something still remains. Just that it went up by a couple of notches after this event.

Note: Insensible posts will follow soon. Not that there has been any break or something. This is just an assurance to the non-existent readers that more inanity is in the offing.

Updated (that it wasn’t all that great after all) on May 18, 2006 at 11:18 a.m. after 4 full days of arbitration.

“Number ‘Theory’”

2006-05-05T18:54:00.000+05:30

All numbers are equal, but some numbers are more equal than the others.

Here’s my take if asked (and even if not asked) to enlist such numbers.

0 and ∞ are (not to mention that they are one and the same) zero and infinity, and hence qualify by default.

1 represents unity; that is, the commonness, symmetry et al in the universe. And most importantly, it signifies the symmetry between 0 and ∞. Just for that, it qualifies.

2. Two. To be, or not to be: is that *the* question? Or, is that just a question? Now, that’s something I have been thinking about for a long time. Is ‘2’ special? Is binary natural, by design? Or, is it just an ‘implementation detail?’
The world in binary mode seems too simplistic. But, at the same time, ‘2’ definitely seems much more special than the rest of the numbers.
“Is this problem indecidable by nature?” I keep asking myself, much as I am convinced that, how much ever I try, I will never get the moment of clarity. (Since, there isn’t any!)
The question is whether ‘2’ is special. There are 2 answers that seem equally good.
Oru Korvaiyaa varla?
So, it qualifies in its own way, even as it fails.
Moreover, it represents two sides of the symmetry between 0 and ∞, which however are one and the same.
Haiyyo! Bayangara Korvaiyaa varuthu!

Well, the rest are mere numbers, each of them just as mere as the rest.

SQoSSD #5

2006-04-20T19:54:00.000+05:30

There are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who are already dead and those who will be soon.

The Human Tragedy

2006-04-19T18:01:00.000+05:30

The human tragedy isn’t much of a tragedy in itself.

Actually speaking, it’s a comedy; dark, black, bitingly sarcastic, slapstick, humane, feel-good or just plain funny. In fact, it’s more comedic than any other single genre of comedy.

As one often realizes, when absolutely delighted and excited after accidentally bumping onto a really good movie, or when immersed in total bliss listening to superb stuff, unconditionally embracing his triviality. Even, when one is excited just after deciding to have a “Rude” under the “Martini Madness” menu in a cool pub, or when pleased at the hot rasam served in a nearby restaurant. Worse even, when one gets ridiculously happy that somebody nodded in agreement on an obscure point that he made.

And so does one, how much ever he tries to dismiss it as a “mere event, part of the great web, that has befallen him,” when clearly stumped by a really cool salary hike after an average ^[1] appraisal.

Life is delightful. More so, if your EQ ranges from 5.7 to 5.9.

[1] - I am really not sure if it was bad or average.

Last modified on Apr 20, 2006 at 1:11 p.m. to infuse some clarity in the post.

Jokes and Beliefs

2006-04-12T12:24:00.000+05:30

A joke. That’s what it is. That’s exactly what it is.

My life is a big joke and probably a good one. I often wonder if it was one single joke or an array of jokes.

May be, it is a single joke and the audience (“God” and I, that is) is laughing waveringly at the hilarity of that single joke. At times, laughing hard rolling on the floor, at times slowly recovering from fits of laughter and clutching the handles of the chair to sit back on it, at times smiling gently and reclining comfortably into the chair, and at times bored of the joke and repeatedly repositioning oneself in the chair; all these fleeting moments constituting the fine units of the overall timeline of the joke, that is being cracked.

Or may be, it is indeed an array of jokes and the audience laughs hard or less, smiles, smirks or jeers at one joke at a time.

I believe in jokes. I mean, I actually *believe* in jokes; “believe”, as in my set of belief(s). In fact, that’s the only thing I believe in. May be, this realisation had not dawned upon me, a couple of years ago. But now, it definitely has.

Coffee. Strong caffeine. Now, that’s another thing that I have started to staunchly believe in, of late.

Of or related to problems and solutions

2006-04-10T17:04:00.000+05:30

I am trying to get rid off some drafts that I had saved in the past and push them as posts, on general principle. This was drafted originally on 13^th February, 2006 at around 6:48 p.m, and modified now to look palatable.
Further update: Contents last modified on 11^th April at around 1:25 p.m. to suit the author's mood and taste.

Feb 13^th, 2006

Problems, in general, can’t have solutions. If there was one, there wouldn’t have been a problem at first place. {So, problems are nothing but facts; facts that are a little annoying, but facts nevertheless.}

Somebody might come up with examples to refute this claim, like this:
Q: how much is 17 times 18?
A: Hmmm, the conventional wisdom has it as 306.
Well, this kind of example is a special case and rejected outright because of the sheer number of living beings that know the answer.

I know there is an alternate version which goes like this:
Problems are meant to have solutions. If there weren’t any, nobody would have tried to pose it as a problem. {So, problems generally have solutions, and they would have been accepted as facts, otherwise.}

Again, some frustrated reader, might come up with examples to refute this claim, like this:
Q: how do I get a girlfriend?
A: Now, I can’t have an answer for this, when you yourself don’t. Can I?
Well, may be, this is a special case as well and need not be considered in this discussion. {So, we will assume that there is an impending solution in this case, much to the reader’s delight; and that, it will take some finite time to find the solution.}

Now, I pose a problem - to find out which of the above theories are right.
The discerning reader would have realised that theory #1 is deftly done and hardly makes any claim about problems having solutions. Where as, according to theory #2, there will always have to be a solution, now that I have specified a problem.

My dear reader, here the supporters of theory #2 are caught off guard unless they offer a convincing solution to this problem. Else, the winners by default, the supporters of theory #1, will go on to make more claims.
1. Contradiction is the only tautology.
2. Incompleteness is the most complete.
3. Cynicism is beautiful.

Now, this write-up was just restating what every kid knows once it steps into this world and sighs. The indecidability, on whether there is a solution or not, for a problem, is just a “constraint”. And, the solution, or the lack of it, is just an “implementation detail”.

Final note:
There are no problems. There are only facts. On second thoughts, there are no facts either.

A token visit to the local temple (a.k.a.) The silly joys of irreverence

2006-04-10T15:54:00.000+05:30

These are some notes that I had written originally on February 27^th of this year, after a pleasant visit to my hometown, and intended to publish it. Not very unreasonably, I never finished it. Now, I am publishing it here, after some bare editing to make it palatable to the reader, in lieu of the general principle that this blog should be the only place where all my written pieces of you-know-what should remain.

Feb 27^th, 2006

I went home this weekend that just went past over us. Among the eventful things that happened were the meetings I had with lot of long-lost reduced-to-hi friends. The one who studied till 5^th standard with me and then diverged his path from the rut and went on to do more manly things, one who quit the school past his 10^th standard and joined a polytechnic course, and so on. It was nostalgic, to say the least.

Not visiting the temple in the past dozen visits back home meant one thing; that I’d have to visit it this time. Also, it happened to be Sivarathiri. Exhibiting absolute pretence, my amma asked me to come to the temple because it was Sivarathiri. The actual reason wasn’t that. It was that my last visit to the temple is already past the expiry date and will no more be valid; even if not with God Himself, at least with amma. So, we walked over to the Ayyappan temple (the Ayyappan temple had a Shiva deity as well) nearby the sea shore.

I, sometimes ^[1], wonder how irreverence comes to me very naturally. For e.g., the first thing that struck my mind when I heard that my Computer Networks professor was *actually* a professor (with a Ph. D and all) is that how dumb the one who gave it to him should have been. The possibility that the dear pitch bald (this is expressed with utmost empathy as there are flourishing signs of the same showing up with yours truly as well) professor was capable of doing something that is confounding to the rest of us never struck me. As a matter of fact, during my final year project work, I myself have confounded him with such unpalatable balderdash (conceptualized during an ‘insightful’ grape juice session) passing it off as new ideas (since he really insisted upon new ideas and publishing them on journals and such stuff) and made him listen to it for some good amount of time.

This time around in the temple Lord Shiva was having his day; or night as a matter of fact. There were a host of aunties and housewives each of them equipped with an unbound book white-covered thin book full of slokas in Tamil/Sanskrit, most of them written in Tamil though. My appa was on the mike reciting Rudhram and Chamakam, the couplet in the Vedas/Upanishads on Lord Shiva. There was one more person, much younger, accompanying my father who just couldn’t recite it as loud as my father did. (Angry with himself and this world, he came out and repeatedly checked if the mike was working right and tried really hard to bring its volume down so that his voice could also be heard.)

Greeting everybody you know on your way with a token “Hi! How are you doing?” is perhaps the most difficult task in this world. Worse it is, when you are from a nutshell of a place where everybody knows everybody else. So, as you smile and try evading one aunty, you would have already missed another one. That’s good, you may think. But, as you round about the temple ^[2], she will catch you again and you’ll have to explain the possibility of you actually missing such a huge figure. And you rue to yourself, what Subhash Nagare says in Sarkar, “Kitni baar samjhaya hai tumhe Zero! paas ke phaide dekhne se pehle, door ke nuksaan ke baar mein sochna chahiye.”

So, it’s better to catch as many of them while they were reciting the slokas so that they pardon you with a portending smile and miss those slokas (which somehow gives you a great pleasure). My sister who was pretending as though she was really interested in the proceedings was only managing to doze away. I had already started thinking about the post that I am making right now and more specifically this line that I am typing now.

[1] - which means that, I really don’t wonder, but claim that I do, so that I could pass something off as a new post.
[2] - this, perhaps, could be the reason why this tradition of going around the deities must have originated; so that one can meet people and talk to each other on the way and spend some quality time.

A Rude Shock

2006-04-07T11:39:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I was in for a rude shock, when I realised that, in one’s mind, melancholy could creep in like that. Just like that, in a moment.

Now, this came in as a rude shock because, after all these years of propounding theories, one after another, I was somehow of the idea that I had learned to perfectly dodge melancholy.

I have had learned to laugh at myself. There was this moment of clarity somewhere in these 20-odd years which made me think so. May be, it was not a single moment, but a vast passage of time that metamorphosed me. (As I have already confessed somewhere in this blog, I feel I have already lived for a very long time; so long that it’s virtually impossible to categorize myself as a young man, though “saner” minds would do so.) So, often I laugh at myself when I spout theories about life; when I fret over a taxing day at the office; when a the CD/DVD cover a favourite movie cracks a bit; when I wonder if I had a disturbed childhood, on an idle day; when I live my life. Thus, the idea that maintaining absolute frivolousness could evade melancholy.

The day in itself (yesterday), if it’s not obvious, was as bland as it could get. I was quite tired of loitering here and there on the web and finally decided to go home. But, I had to book my tickets for the next weekend (which I didn’t get eventually) and have dinner in between. After failing to get the tickets, I hopped over to the legendary Sri Krishna Café for my dinner and met an ex-roommate of mine.

Now this friend of mine often sports a sorry face and gets pissed off with life on a daily basis. But that has never been a matter of concern for others (yours truly included) and only makes him the butt of our jokes often. Yesterday, he had a certain unexplainable pensiveness in his face, or so I felt. That got me thinking. Now, something that makes one think is potentially dangerous; unconditionally so, when you actually connect to somebody like that friend of mine.
All things, that are fodder enough for bringing in a contemplative mood, came into one’s mind in a flash – 5.7 to 5.9 EQ, “After all, one does need to do Something in life”, oblivion, senility, “The universe is expanding” - stuff which my dear friend himself, wouldn’t have thought (as only he can, should, must and need to) of.

I sent out an incomprehensible message (as often I do) to confound some friends, who challenge themselves on not getting confounded on the sort of messages that I send, and reply challenging me back with their musings, wisecracks and self-proclaimed brainchildren. And thus, it was already a joke.

Needless to say, I was amused!

The art of the righteous man...

2006-03-22T14:02:00.000+05:30

... is beset on all sides by the geographical inequities of the Creator and the tyranny of evil yesteryear imperialists.

A fellow eastern philosopher

Blessed is he, who in the name of the supreme art and insuperable intellect, shepherds his camera lens through the valley of darkness, for he is truly the art's keeper and the finder of its lost nuances.

My left foot.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to belittle and destroy these pieces of art.

Poetic imagery a.k.a. the personal fave

And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay those pieces of art, that he captured in the Occident, on this blog.

Paying due respect to the occident a.k.a. the artist's signature shot

Note:- This is issued in response to public demand.

An Introvert's Version

2006-03-10T19:35:00.000+05:30

Amit points us to this brilliant article by Jonathan Rauch, a complete WOW-WOW-WOW material (as I had put it here in a fellow-introvert's post on the same :P) that left me with a very strong connection, absolute delight, and an immediate thrust to read it all over again and muse over it. Do read; and read over again. Also, read this interview. Oh, thanks so much Amit.
I know. My name is Zero, and I am an introvert; irrefutably so. I guess everybody I acquainted all my life would vouch^[1] for that. Though, eventually for some of them, the perception blurs out (perhaps, they were misled by the “more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed~~, more refined and more sensitive~~” persona) and they seem to think otherwise. But, I digress.
I was telling you that I was very much that thing, an introvert. Couple this with the extreme cynicism^[2] that sits on my head and you will get a fair picture of how I stood holding^[3] the much-coveted shield that we won during the all-important inter-departmental cultural festival back during my college days. Well if you weren’t imaginative enough (or couldn’t just connect to the introvert-in-a-party situation), I was holding it like how one would hold a bag stuffed with the day’s shopping (a little exaggerated actually, but you get the idea). Of course, I was much delighted. But, my idea of celebration wasn't doing gung-ho jumps or making loud victory gestures.
Here’s another extrovert-introvert write-up that I had read sometime back, which observed, among other things, that I won’t be a popular blogger; something which I knew pretty much myself. {Comrades alert: it does have some unsavory things to say about us like that we are “incapable of making [our] point and [we] would be at a disadvantage passing on the revolutionary new idea that [we] had” and things like that. (Note to self: From when did you start getting revolutionary ideas anyway?)}

[1] - I didn’t conduct any survey asking if I was an introvert or extrovert. (We will leave that to the “people persons”, shall we?) It’s a thing that you can easily know.
[2] - While Jonathan Rauch in his excellent piece decouples a lot of qualities from introversion, I want to know how well introversion and cynicism couple with each other.
[3] - It just so happened that I was the department team coordinator (by default and by default only; but still beats me how I did that!) as all others interested folks had something worthy to do, like actually participating in the events; and I did a little bit of participation too, but that was well-spaced between the moments of deep personal reflection.

Sappily remembering those slaps, albeit a little louder..

2006-02-22T21:10:00.000+05:30

This blogger, though pretends to be completely lacking in exhibiting emotions (claiming stuff like his EQ ranges from 5.7 to 5.9), can occasionally go to much-dreaded extremes (which are better left to be explored and examined only by people like Miss Universe title winners, the Chopras, the Johars and our very own Cheran), but will invariably screw it up. This is one such disastrous act that reinstated the fact that, the most embarrassingly funny incidents often happen in real life rather than in fiction (unless written by someone of the order of Wodehouse).

It happened before one could take a little breath and verify the sanity of the proceedings. It all crumbled down in a moment - the pride that you sported on being an awfully good student, the token congratulations you received from many on topping one of those exams, the intimately cherished moments of admiration-meets-envy in the eyes of a girl deeply disturbed because of her exam results (you got to go back to the times when you were still wearing half-trousers to understand this), all of these and much more... - right in front of your eyes.

All was fine until today morning, when my sister happened to stumble on an old classmate of mine. About whom all I remember is that she tried awful hard to beat me in the acads back then and absolutely made no bones of it. In fact, back then, that’s the only thing we all did; envy the opposite sex and try to beat them at the academic levels. (Much later, when I stepped into the college, nobody had to try that awful hard to beat me, though; except for the ones who managed to get consistently less than 3 in one Ms. Thilagavathi’s papers in the cycle tests; I also realized that the fairer sex was left with a lot more interest, at least more than most of their mean counterparts, on the academic arena. Of course, I shrugged it off, as is my wont.)
Back to yesterday's story. My sister talked to her about some nice things which only women can think of; like where they can find the nearest library (to Tidel Park) to get a dignifying cookbook (influential characters: no offence meant; how about, say, Stephen Hawking’s “Brief History of Time”?). Then, they wound up with a token bye and stuff (got to ask if they even managed to hug each other and all). Not to forget that, in between this, she had also asked about me; about the American university in which I am cracking up all the semesters and giving nocturnal headaches to algorithmically challenged professors. Hmm, held in such esteem!
Through Google talk, the first thing my sister told me was of this chance meet; and in the true tradition of Cheran's film repertoire, I happened to reminisce all that happened during my entire school life (assuring myself that I didn't have a disturbed childhood after all) in a moment of flash. My sister is of the enthu-type when it comes to organizing group events like get-together etc. and perhaps, some fractional shades of it must have got stuck to me. I wistfully observed that we never had anything of the sort of a class get-together, and took it upon myself to indirectly instigate such an event.
All buckled up, I dug out a recent “big hi and how I miss you all” mail from a long-lost gossipy friend (one with a high aarva kolaru quotient, a reason why I wanted to contact him) sent to an incipient alumni group (consisting of pass-outs from all the batches) much to the chagrin of those touchy balding folks who hardly knew him. I intended to reply back to the mail (so that his mail id comes up directly in the to-address text box rather than I typing it) and ask about where and what the rest of our classmates are doing and perhaps suggest a get-together. I so-very-carefully pressed the “Reply to Sender” (having committed such grave mistakes before) button and wrote to him asking about the latest happenings. I off-handedly added a line after my name before signing off - a passing mention on a special treatment I got from my Physics sir during my higher secondary school education, an incident which this gossipy guy sadistically recalled every time we entered the physics lab.

yeah, the same one whom Saravanan Sir, quite infamously, slapped twice during his higher-secondary

Perhaps, I should reveal some key details in my defence - that though I was of 16-17 years old, I looked much younger and timid, gaunt and exceptionally intelligent (the man must have envied me for that), all of which must have given the man a curious lead. I had nursed this incident as a top secret all along. [1]
Back to present, I clicked on the send button and as the request was being sent to Yahoo, I noticed the goof-up in the to-bar and pressed the Esc key roughly 1237 times. No positive effect; if you wouldn’t count sending the mail twice as one, that is.
Now, not only my sister (which was quite a cause of concern), but the whole alumni junta, including the prettiest of the girls in my school - who though never ever drooled over me (Girish, updated so that you don't gasp on utter false interpretations), at least thought I was a nice (if not great) student who came out with flying colours in his life and all that - would have come to know of this unfortunate incident (through not one, but two back-to-back mails); that as much as I was cracking those maths papers on one end, I was being slapped tight and clear by that malicious man on the other end; hell, during the phase of ripe adolescence.
Whom should I blame? That jealous classmate, my sister, Google talk, the mushy-trip-down-the-memory-lane films that indirectly influence even the hardcore fans of David Lynch, or that bunch of idiotic folks who wrote Yahoo mail's javascript code in such a way that the group mail-id gets stuck to the to-address text-box how much ever hard the unsuspecting user so-very-carefully presses the “Reply to Sender” button?? Damn!

[1] - But, I should mention that I was stupefied once when a college friend, winking at me, asked about the slaps after having got to know about it in some crooked way, thanks to another sadistic school friend of mine, as I started wondering how many of them were involved in this conspiracy.

Are men words worth? and vice-versa.

2006-02-21T18:15:00.000+05:30

The very fact that there are words like ‘true’ and ‘false’ shows that there are alternate truths in this world.
- written long ago, probably after analyzing Rashomon for the umpteenth time.

The network is down; which suggested I should perhaps run ‘winword’ and type some trash. I read somewhere in the blogosphere where the blogger was telling that ‘it’s okay to write crap’. So, I took my inspiration from those words and have started writing this.
In fact, it’s not only okay to write crap. It’s very good to write crap; esp. when you don’t have good stuff to write. like when the network in your office is down (which means you can’t pass off as working for company’s prospects, even if you try or pretend to), and yet you are thoughtless on what to write.
One can smartly suggest that I can write precisely on the state of thoughtlessness (which, of course, is a dreadful cliché). But, this blog is so full of it that it is more of a futile exercise to indulge further into the same.
[The network comes up now, but as per the general principle that should not stop this post from being published.]
If I say that I have been writing crap in this blog all along, some readers out of sympathy or empathy, would {say/ (knowingly/unknowingly) lie} that it is not so, or that I am being humble etc. So to prevent an embarassment of that order, I would not say that. Instead, let me put it this way – much of what I write has happened to be crap; perhaps, like this post. The truth is that, I can't always say myself if what I have churned out is good or not.
[I realize I am still not able to connect to the Internet which means I cannot do what I wanted to - hop through the Indian blogosphere. So, am back to this post.]
Of late, I have been severely criticized among some of my friends for being virtually aimless and further completely glorify it. Discussing on why the state of aimlessness is a “right” thing to do is, again, beaten to death in this blog. But, I also want to concede (as if that puts me in shame!) that am not exactly aimless to the core. In fact, nobody can be. There is, at least a little bit of, incorrigible optimism lurking beneath every human creature.
This brings me to yet another topic that is already covered in this blog. On how words (especially if it is ‘one word’) can’t completely describe any man or his life. That may make somebody question the validity of whole process of writing to express oneself; if it can’t be exactly correct, true or valid. But, the same would apply for every act a human being puts himself through. The validity quotient of any statement is definitely statistical; and that statistics differs with any physical parameter one can think of.

There are words. And there are men. No man is a word. And no word is a man. Both of them are much more than the other.

Contradiction being one of my pet concepts and an area of considerable expertise, I should also state that this post itself isn’t exactly correct. (In general, no write-up can be; but what I mean is, this has not expressed my perception 100% correctly. But, for knowing that, you got to be me.) But, I 'll express them any way; because it, somehow, is a great pleasure; even if you writing is really bad.

End Note: Now that the sole reason why this post has come into existence doesn’t hold anymore, I had two options - to flush it down, or publish it in my blog. But somehow, I seem to have chosen both of them.

On emotions, nostalghia and suchlike

2006-02-20T11:57:00.000+05:30

I am not able to clearly distinguish if it started yesterday, or today morning. But, it’s been quite an emotional time (not that I managed to express any) for me; which has become a rarity nowadays as I had mused in my previous post.
Much of what I term as ‘emotional’ and which I claim I went through yesterday were inexplicable (and duly flushed down the toilet). The light state in which I don't understand why I am in a pensive mood soaked in nostalgia. For example, the inexplicability of why I, while trying to recall my childhood, very oddly reminisce, time and again, a rather nondescript day ages ago when I (studying in kindergarten) came along with my amma to my sister's school (who was in her I std.) during her lunch hour and how I cut that big piece of potato using a sharp spoon while having my lunch (or rather my sister's lunch onto which I was barging in; which I am not able to recall now). {Though, on second thoughts, I am able to rationalize it by claiming that this potato-cutting incident has had the privilege of being recalled (as part of recalling-one's-childhood ceremony) every other year and has taken the position of a significant event (by mathematical induction or some shit like that) resulting in this strange sense of nostalgia w.r.t. a nondescript day.}

Or perhaps, this whole thing is not as inexplicable as I make it out to be. May be, it was two days of watching Tarkovsky, thanks to Collective Chaos. But, then it was the 2 days before yesterday and I actually had to miss the best pieces - Nostalghia and The Sacrifice - screened yesterday (Sunday). Or more probably, it was because I spent the whole of yesterday with my elder brother and reconnected to somewhere down the memory lane.
Cutting the story short, it was personally quite an emotional ride (mind you, there was no idle time spent which invoked this wistfulness; we visited a couple of acquaintances and it was late in the night when we came back home) very heavy on the contemplation quotient in which I strived hard to get a moment of clarity. But nevertheless, I did maintain a nonplussed/deadpan countenance all throughout, and gave it all up when sleep and common sense prevailed over.

Life is simple; and it's design, for sure, is impeccable. Here, I am back to normalcy. Mundanity is slyly looking at me. She knows I am incomplete without it, and I understand and accept her inevitability and even the urgency to plunge into her. (Not that I am completely smitten by her. Our relationship, as any other relationship, is bitter-sweet.) I smile at her back, with a tinge of eroticism. You call it a lesser pleasure (now that I have equated it with sex), impure and all such crap. But, I know how well we (I and she) bond with each other.

Life is sad; and that is funny, especially when your EQ ranges from 5.7 to 5.9.

Looking for Comedy in The Real World. (or)How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the... Well, forget it!

2006-02-16T13:29:00.000+05:30

{Note to self: This blog is not any more as anonymous as you thought it would be. Presumably, some influential characters may also be reading these posts and you may get some flak elsewhere. So, be nice.}
{
Note to readers (inlivenout, you there?):
1. This blog was supposed to be half-topical on mundanity of day-to-day life, which was unfairly ignored as the blogger started musing more and more on obscenely abstract topics like,
a. why cigarettes originally must have been circular in shape;
b. why there lies a considerable amount of vodka in all human beings somewhere down their stomach, in the pancreas or somewhere; and so on.
2. This could also be seen as a sequel to this post, which quite self-indulgently explained the possibility of absence of love in one's life.
}

In this mundane (now that I haven't used it much till now, the reader will have to bear my using the word time and again from now) existence of ours, it's hard to find and do something exciting on a daily basis. As I was musing on these lines while walking down to my office which is more than 1.5 km from my home, I fancied myself dancing down the roadside, jump up and touch those boisterous tree leaves (who themselves were dancing hard to touch the ground) and sing “Idhu Oru PonmAlai Pozhuthu..”. Loving nature's beauty and all that jazz! But, it was hardly a ponmAlai (for non-tamilians: golden evening). Firstly, it was a morning; and more importantly, it was not remotely close to being golden.
So how else could I pep up this whole thing? I tried something really humane. I thought of smiling at everybody on the road and wishing them good morning (here I must add the indirect inspiration was solely from my visit to U.S. some months ago; my friend used to get all excited as every damn soul wished him a good morning as we start hurriedly from the hotel, everyday to the office). “Plan B”, I told myself and made a mental note of it so that I could reuse these ideas on some other equally bland day. But the task was hugely difficult considering the number of human specimen I had to handle. It becomes further difficult if I count the huge population of dogs (in and around the Airport Road) in for this monumental mush fest. Moreover, there was this guy curiously watching me, as he walked along (there are a host of human species walking on both directions in the much-dreaded Airport Road), since I half-heartedly tried to touch those leaves with a feeble blink-and-you-better-miss jump as part of Plan A. As I was hoping for a Plan C to introduce itself to me, I arrived at my office. Now that the quest for some morning masala to spice it all up failed miserably, my face got a little grimmer and an aura of seriousness crept in. “I am God's own lonely man”, I tried real hard to sound philosophical and get a little too heavy on this issue of extreme blandness (possibly an oxymoron), write a film script out of it and become the next Scorsese. Well, at least, Paul Schrader.

When I was a kid, it wasn't like this. I had various exciting stuff (albeit forced) to do on many days I woke up. Like those special days when I actually brushed my teeth. Parents follow curious techniques to regulate their children brushing their teeth. While some kids used to mop up a lot of paste down their mouth, I was never really too keen (not that I hated it; but I forgot usually) on doing this as a daily task. So, my dad used to place some tooth paste on my brush before he buckles up for the task of the morning, that is to wake us (agreed, I was the worst; but it always feels better to include your siblings) up from our deep (and in my case, heavily philosophical) sleep. There were two reasons. One, I should not put his shaving cream and brush my teeth and let some hair grow on my teeth. Two, he wanted to make sure I actually brush. But now, the magic is completely lost because of an everyday-familiarity that I have struck with my toothbrush, for long time now.

In the current state of affairs, it's indeed hard for one to do something exciting on a daily basis. No rip-roaringly funny incidents, No “divine interventions”, No thrills of somebody secretly following you (and even if so, he/she never carries a gun), no profusely mushy romance. So, there you go. No Wodehouse, No Tarantino, No Hitchcock, not even a Karan Johar, and one usually doesn’t want a David Lynch. For all practical cases, there has been no need for us to be equipped with this thing called EQ, which means people like yours truly have half-lost it. (In fact, I would go a step further and deem the word as ‘unparliamentary’.) Some accept this as a fact, as a mere event. Some, again like yours truly, even romanticize the deadpan quality of the whole thing, and write self-indulgent posts like this.

And quite understandably, the rest of the people, are peeved at this issue to no end. What is surprising is that, in all such cases, the quintessential solution offered is to “go get a girl”! {That they are not available in the “market” yet is a very big fact(or).} So, the indomitably spirited rest, like a friend of mine (let's call him Mr. K with a reason), try hard for the various little possibilities on those lines; which brings us to the romantic life of Mr. K.
A very complicated one, actually. He has totally met 7 girls (the exact number changed, that is increased, so as to protect his identity; and also to salvage some pride for the dear friend) in his life; and most of them, at some point or the other, meant a lot (so much that he actually made the greeting cards himself, that he would hand over to them on a host of random occasions ranging from Friendship day to Pillion-riders day) to him.
But yet, Mr. K is an eternal romantic. Each time he boards a bus to his hometown, he contemplates the possibility of some girl sitting next to him; and on some wild days, he even hopes that she will ask for the magazine that he will be going through; in which case, he goes and buys magazines on topics as boring as say, automobiles. (Here the reader should also appreciate his sense of understanding girl-things.) But then, blame it on the Indian society (easiest thing to do, I tell you). An event that is supposed to be of probability 0.5 (being very fair irrespective of various prospects) is pushed down to as low as 0.01 or worse. Incidentally (or due to some divine conspiracy), yours truly has made more than a hundred travels between his hometown and the city where he lives and haven't had the privilege yet. But I digress.
Let's get back to Mr. K. Of course, the one who sits next to him never happens to be a girl. Even if such a thing happens, the girl always manages to find somebody else, another bleeding male, who is more than ready to shift his place next to poor Mr. K. That chivalrous man has his small milestone for the day and is terribly content with it; but Mr. K is not even allowed to exhibit his already diminishing-beyond-recognition flirtatious skills. (After one such incident, the other man sat, made himself comfortable and gleed at Mr. K, happy that his event of the day has finally happened. Mr. K gave back the shortest and rudest of acknowledgements possible.)
Then one fine day, Mr. K gets to read a preview on Chetan Bhagat's new book, “One night @ The Call Center”. So, the next thing he does is to book his return tickets in a train. (His engineering mind also makes a calculation that probability of a girl sitting among those 6 seats is higher, inspite of all the social conspiracies.) “Train journeys are always comfortable and better!”, he exclaims to himself with a gleam in his eyes, staring at a bright future. But then, as he found later, trains worked much worse for him. Actually, it was fine to start with; and he thought that Chetan Bhagat was indeed a genius. There was one girl sitting just opposite to him. He silently observed her, praying to his favourite God Hanuman, that she would come and ask him to wake her up when the train reaches her destination. Or something like that. That gave him a bright idea. Voila, he can do the same! He kept back the magazine (which was his Brahmastra) back in his bag and asked her if she can wake him up when the train reaches Bangalore. Alas, it so happened that Bangalore was actually the train's final destination. She just gave him a real odd look for a moment, and told him the same. At this crucial juncture, Mr. K laughed out loud, pretending to have cracked one hell of a joke. But by then, the girl had already drowned herself into a magazine; an automobile magazine at that!
Well, Murphy was staring pretty hard at the poor chap. But not being one who gets dispirited easily, he took out his Brahmastra intending to try the same with a prettier lady who was sitting 2 seats next to him. But blame it on the Indian society again; her father was sitting in between the two. That this father guy took the magazine from him, read the whole of it for a couple of hours, then snored all through the night, and never returned it back, made this story a bigger tragedy.
That was Mr. K, hoping to redeem himself from the blandness of his life, for you. At least he did what the majority of the population ends up doing, albeit adding his own touch to it. But, I have seen other friends doing crazier things, which might server as a follow-up to this already obscenely long post.

End note: Well, I think this post wasn't funny at all (and the readers will agree for sure). But, that's the whole point!

P.S.:-
1. Though the author has avoided to mention that Mr. K is a Tamilian in the fear of repeating a fact, now relegated to a cliché, the essence of that word could be associated with terribly exact precision to Mr. K.
2. Day before yesterday (Feb. 14), the author (not wanting to fret over the specific bland quality the day posessed) was at his equanimous best; and planned to go and watch a movie, “Mixed Doubles”. But the tickets were sold out, for obvious reasons. (As a tangential observation, the author also wonders how dangerously that film could work for a couple, giving them new ideas. But that's for another post.) So, he sits back and writes an unfinished piece which he completes much later, that is today.

On why I'll never know the God completely..

2006-02-07T17:22:00.000+05:30

Well, you simply adore the man; and he is why you come close to being a theist. You write posts like this in your blog; and keep referring to him in your messenger status.

And then, you get to hear these wonderful songs for the first time (hat tip: Guitar Prasanna; got a chance to listen after reading that article, which btw is a great read, multiple times in the past).

Man.. it's time to eat the humble pie and play that great little gem Pazhaiya Sogangal [1 (rm file), 2 (mp3; resgistration required, go here or use allout/allout ;))] in repeat mode. Ah, Bliss!

Incidentally, Icarus Prakash has had pointed one Mr. Kavi to the same location in an old post in Narayanan's blog. (Though the links he had provided is with the old domain name, www.raajangahm.com, which doesn't seem to work now. In fact that's the case even with the article as well. Will the site admin take note? But for that to happen, I definitely shouldn't be writing in this blog.)

In defence of Bank Robberies

2006-01-23T12:40:00.000+05:30

The other day I and my friends were discussing about the different career options we were left with. This post is an off-shoot of that discussion when we suddenly realised that we had been assuming a sense of superiority over a certain breed of human beings, till then. This is to atone for that sin of ours...

There is this charming aspect of bank robbers (or robbers in general) which is often ignored unless it is exhibited by someone of the order of Catherine Zeta-Jones, or suchlike, in a heist flick from the Hollywood. But, I realised their irresistible charm, as late as last week, though I have always had a vague idea about their existence since my childhood (mostly from those heist flicks in which the protagonists come with smart plans to loot huge sums of money from ultra-secure high-profile banks which have stuff like high-precision digital fart-detectors installed).
But this write-up is not about how smart their methods are. If you are interested in that, walk out to the nearest DVD store and pick up a dozen heist films and watch it over the next weekend. Not to forget that this might even ingerminate an idea for a new kind of heist in your mind. In which case, you can either choose to implement the idea and become a martyr. Or, you can write a film script out of it and sell it to the Lakshmi Movie Makers; or, even to Warner Bros., if you fancy.
But, I digress. This one is about the laudable attitudes that those noblemen exhibit; and so it'll be.
Robbers, especially bank robbers, are actually quintessential idol-materials for the bourgeois class, just as the stars of the filmdom are. Let's see why. The bourgeois junta wants money; which they are given when they work. So, they want work. They are given work when they are educated. So, they want to educate themselves. They are educated when they give money, which completes the circle. To cut off this recursion, they in turn expect (quite tragically) their parents (who just got themselves educated for the sake of money) to work and provide the necessary money. This chain of actions extends on and on endlessly, that ultimately the common man forgets why exactly he did whatever he did and ends up professing theories much worse than this write-up when asked about the origin of this vicious cycle.
But bank robbers act differently. They are daring, iconoclastic. They defy all the common norms of living, and how! They realise that all they need is money (like the rest of us) and take the shortest possible route. They drop in to a nearby bank, a place where what-they-want is available in plenty, just snatch considerable chunks, walk out and make a living out of it. Pretty straight, if you ask me.
Let me stop with this final note. It's high time we acknowledge all these qualities in them and have an annual event for bank robberies; Call it the Grand Robbery Mela (we can have a couple of wiki pages too). In which we will keep a bank dedicated for bank robberies and deem robbing that bank as legal. The bank may have all the state-of-art security set up, have people investing in it and can work like any other bank; except that anybody who is caught robbing this bank is not punishable by law. That will be fun and deserving folks will get what they want; rather than we losers having it.

{It might have been be easy to digest this piece if you had already read this. Hmmm.. these stuff might make for a terrible mini-series.}

The elusive 2 bucks between chivalry and penury

2006-01-18T17:43:00.000+05:30

Start note:
From now on, this blog will get mundane by the day.
A new series (which, in all probability, will stop with its first edition) will feature in this blog; in which various incidents, which will serve as testimonies for the fact that this blogger is indeed a complete nutcase, will be recalled.

This happenned long ago.

It was early in the morning. The sun hadn't shown its face yet. The time must have been around 5 a.m. I was returning back home from my college. The majority of the travel was already made and I was waiting for a bus (I had to switch buses to reach home) to my hometown which was an hour away; and it was just like any another day. Only that I had a girl (and a very pretty one at that) by my side; and she wanted to have some tea. It's not a regular case that a girl proactively suggests to have tea in a roadside shop. But, she did. The way, I hear, it works is that girls don't walk upto a place like this shop all alone and have some tea. So, when she said she wanted to have some tea, she perhaps meant that I take the baton and bring some tea for her and myself if I want one. My chivalrous inclinations are close to being ineffectual, if not exactly absent. But, I had all that earthly sense required to walk over to the shop and bring some tea for a friend. But, there was one problem; a seemingly simple problem. I didn't have the necessary money. The 2 bucks which was all that was required.
I was not exactly penniless a dozen hours ago. But how I spent what I had speaks volumes about my attitude.

{Here we need to cut to a busy frenzied men's hostel, for a tiny flashback}

The day before this morning, our second semester had ended and we were all relieved. Everybody was busy packing their bags. The stomachs were already craving for great food. As is the general case at the semester ends for the localites (from T.N.), many were short of money. If your friend, who generally is well-equipped with his rich vocabulory of cusswords, approaches you calmly and asks how you did your exams, you know what he is upto. Such was the situation. To recall it now, it is very funny to see how each one of us floundered all the money we had and made sure that we had only the exact money required for our journey back home for the vacation.
Our gang was not too bad on the economic front and we all had pocketed enough money for the fag end to take ourselves home safely. But the problem was that we had some hours to kill after the exams got over in the afternoon, before we take the buses/trains by the night; to our respective hometowns, that is. So, we arrived at this decision - the one that lead to that fateful moment described above. We decided that we will end that beautiful semester season by seeing a movie. We quickly got ready and headed over for the evening show in a theatre called Maris Mini (or was it the porn theatre that was called Maris Mini? I forget!) to watch the biggest hit in the town, Minnale. The movie had already completed more than 150 days and was relegated to this mini theatre for jobless folks like us who kept watching movies again and again. Now, we were all financially equipped till then. More important to this story, is that I was financially equipped till then. But, fate would have it otherwise.

{Here we need to cut to our computer centre, for a tinier flashback}

A couple of weeks before, during the semester examinations, I received this mail from that girl that she is gong to book the tickets in one particular bus to go home for the vacation and she can book a ticket for me too (through her dear uncle who stays within the local limits; and to whose place she visits to satisfy her hunger for tasty food, I presume) if I want it that way. I replied back saying that I would indeed like my ticket booked. Now, she was not a very dear friend and the only connection between her and me was that we came from the same place. It was very nice of her to ask this and I accepted it flatly with not much gratitude, as if I deserved a ticket from her. But, that was characteristic of me.

{Cut back to the little theatre Maris Mini}

Ashok (one of the vile friends who accompanied me) was reasoning why he would not pay for the ticket and I should do it.
Ashok: "Dei.. unakku thaan un aalu* ticket book panni vechirukkaalla.. Enakku oorukku poga thaan panam irukku.. unakku ticket reserve panniyaachu.. so ippo ticket'ta nee thaan edukkara!".
The socialist in Ashok was speaking, I realised.
And for all the naive and innocent person I was, I agreed to what he said. I went ahead and bought the tickets for the grand team of 3 people to watch the film. The theatre was pathetic to say the least and had a mono-speaker on the right end of the screen; and we had paid something around 40 bucks per head for this. More importantly, all from my pocket. But, I enjoyed the movie nevertheless, with least botheration about the fact that I had less than 20 bucks when I am supposed to travel for about seven hours in the night. Once the movie was done, I bade goodbye to the folks and caught a bus and reached the main bus stand.
There in the bus stand, to top it all, I indulged myself further. My dear reader, I further filled my appetite with a coke!

{fades out as the protagonist has a couple of gulps of the priceless coke he just bought}
Little did I know then, that there would be a moment when I would be expected to buy a cup of tea for 2 bucks, a simple act which fate would deny me from doing.
{fade in back to the tea shop}

She asks, "Shall we have some tea?"
Of course, I would have loved a good tea. But, I having a cup of tea will just increase the already alarming probability of I reaching a situation in which I will have to to confess how ended up penniless, to a pretty girl (repeat, a very pretty girl).
I replied back, with my thoughts and fingers lingering around my empty wallet, "No.. I generally don't have tea." I further condescended to tea - "I hate the way it smells.."
And then stolidly accompanied her, walking well behind so as to avoid any chances of she expecting (it's a meagre 2 bucks after all) me to take the wallet out, till the shop, watched her pay and drink all of that tea.
Once we got into a bus that leads to our hometown, I told her, "You take the tickets for me too. I will give you the net sum later. I guess I don't have the change.", pretending to be making an off-handed request.

* - Aalu roughly translates to a girlfriend, and of course, Ashok was bantering about when he referred to her as my Aalu, as yours truly never got anywhere near. My EQ ranges from 7.5 to 7.9, btw.

End note:
I wonder how funny she would find this account of mine if she reads it. But never mind, this blog has hardly a handful of readers :).

Mr. Zero goes to the Bookfair (pun intended)

2006-01-16T19:09:00.000+05:30

This blogger is a complete nuthead and wades through the life for very unobvious reasons. Most of what he thinks, talks or writes is about (or, related to) films. This time he revives a little bit of his enthusiasm towards books, which has come in intermittent fits in the past, and goes to the Chennai Book Fair 2006.
This time he ventures into the bookfair mainly for some Tamil books (IHHO, this bookfair is just not the place for English books). He is truly an ignorant chap when it comes to Tamil books. Not that he is a voracious reader of English literature. But, at least, he had those fits of enthusiasm at different times.
That, he somehow managed to get his stories (and even some dimwitted poems) written in Tamil published in his college Thamizh Mandram website is something he is able to look back and laugh at.
The only Tamil poem this blogger ever recited (yeah, he never wrote poems, a la Gunaa; once he recited this "poem" jocularly mocking the poem competition his literary friends conducted; however, they went ahead and published it in their website!) read something like this.

Thoorathil paarthaal, unnai kaattum...
Arugil paarthaal, ulagai kaattum... Kannaadi!

The poem is paraphrased and pullis and aacharya kuris added for desired effect, if any.

Back to yesterday. He makes a rich haul of 6-7 Tamil books, a personal record; much of which were suggested in this blog; like Aathavan's En Peyar Ramaseshan (one of the prime reasons for the reason of his visit) and Kaagitha Malargal; and also Sujatha's Eppothum Penn. He also picks S. Ramakrishnan's (who, he hears, wrote some excellent articles in Aanantha Vikatan; but somehow chooses not to buy those - Thunaiezhuthu and Kathaavilaasam - because he expects some acquaintance of his to buy/must be already having it) Urupasi.
Even the last year he did visit the bookfair; but didn't look beyond film-related books. From what he remembers, he bought the screenplay of Santosh Sivan's film Terrorist. {There were screenplays for a host of movies made in other languages. But he doesn't exactly like the idea of reading the screenplays of other language films in Tamil. He prefers either seeing the film subtitled, :p, or at least reading an English translation}. This time, he buys this book, if his memory serves him right titled Nadippu Enbathu ~~Enna?~~, written by Mahendran (he has already read Mahendran's Cinemaavum Naanum and the screenplay of his masterpiece Uthiri Pookkal, before) and a bunch of issues of Thirai, one of those low-profile high-brow Tamil film magazines (like Uyirmai and Kaalachuvadu), the contents of which he mostly disagreed (quite vehemently) with, in the past.
Also among the picks were Sundara Ramasamy's Oru Puliyamarathin Kadhai (about which he has heard his friend rave about) and Vaanagamae Ila Veyilae.
The funniest of all, he buys this book called Naalu Moolai, a collection of essays by Ra. Ki. Rangarajan published in Annanagar Times, just because the cover looked good![*] Though, he would rationalize it by saying that, he did have immense liking and respect towards Ra. Ki. Rangarajan, because of the simple reason that the same writer co-wrote the dialogues of the film which he considers as the best of Tamil cinema.

[*] - The man in the same stall kept suggesting this new book about the Travis Bickle'ish lives of software engineers in India (apparently, a first of its kind in Tamil literature) whose title he has forgotten now. He should try it later.

Thank-you Note:
Lazygeek and Chenthil.

End note:
Time for some good reading!

Update (on Jan 17 10:46 a.m.):
This blog has no readership whatsoever. But, just in case, if somebody chose to click on the link to this blogger's published short story and entertain himself/herself, he/she might have to ~~use IE; and even worse,~~ install fonts from here.

Who am I?

2006-01-05T20:13:00.000+05:30

I am just a sperm who got a lucky. I realise I have already lived too long compared to my sperm-bros. Though apparently I seem to have lost all my memories of that phase of my life, I must still say, from what I perceive, life should have been much similar there. There were some folks who were deliberately slow and had no plans of reaching their supposed-to-be-targets. They were called the weak ones. Now I realise how unfair it was to call them the weak ones. I confess I called myself "lucky" only by mainstream standards and because it made the line look cool (an indulgent writer's POV). Personally, I can't really say that I was lucky or they were unlucky.
Yeah, I am just a sperm who got "lucky". A very lazy sperm at that; who lost all its naivé optimistic zest when it reached the largely coveted spot. I am a "winner" who is basking in his past "glory"; not bothering about his next spot. On an average case, I have much more time to look forward to.
Much as people try to convince me that man (or sperms for that matter) doesn't get to live forever, I still think life is infinite for all practical purposes and hence there is no internal thrust to fastly reach the next spot. May be, I am confusing indeterminate with infinite. In fact, yes! {Here the reader has to pardon me for suddenly jumping into classical mathematics} In classical mathematics, an indeterminate value can be anything. But, applying it to philosophy, an indeterminate value can be anything precisely because it's value doesn't hold any significance. Thus, an indeterminate value can take any value and still can be perceived as being the same. So, you don't feel that somebody is catching up with you. which makes you feel that you are living on and on. Thus, some of my sperm-bros who dropped earlier didn't lose much, I understand. But hey, I didn't lose anything at all! In fact, now that I am already a "winner", I have nothing left to lose. That's exactly why I am basking in my state of losslessness.
This dude contemplates suicide, time and again. Funny as it may be, I never got those suicidal thoughts. I really don't seem to question futility of any kinds. Living in complete coordination with the pervasive (or infinite) futility makes the sense of the pervasive futility disappear completely. And I start thinking about which restaurant I should hop over for my dinner. And there, I complete the full circle. All in a minute.

Of Spirits and Spiritualism

2006-01-04T14:46:00.000+05:30

The Prologue:
The vodka[1] doesn't know you drink it. You have feelings about it, but it has no feelings about you. The vodka doesn't know what you paid. People shouldn't get emotionally involved with their vodka.
- Anon

The Post:
Of late, I have started feeling that booze is over-rated. This was the last significant theory I had come up with to bore my friends. Here, I have also found some obvious parallel between Vodka and God. Vodka never does it to you. You do it using Vodka. But, human beings always want to attribute certain things to external influences. God is one. Vodka is another. I really don't question this phenomenon, because I embrace irrationality as it comes. If not for that quality, the human race wouldn't be what it is. This attribution of our acts to external and internal influences have always been a point of discussion and arguments for our ancestors, and suggestions for external influences have always been interesting. Thats for another blog post. Or, may be not.
So, this degenerates into another ramble after I realised that booze is no more what it used to be for me. I am disillusioned, like a devout theist suddenly pondering why God never actually eats the prasaadam which is made for him. Yeah, the sudden rational questionning about the destination of Prasaadam is quite unfair to the God. But, I am not gonna budge. Now, I keep challenging my friends that mabbu is within. Perhaps later, I might (in all probability) come a full circle and become a theist back again. But for now [2], I am a teetotaller-convert!

The Epilogue:
Mabbu glass'la'yaa irukku? Manasu'la irukku....
- Zero, as on Dec 11, 2005.
{It is to be noted here that the author apparently had 3 sessions of booze and deep contemplation after making this particular quote and is completely convinced of its validity}

Footnotes:
[1] - The reader can replace all the occurrences of Vodka with his/her favourite drink. Mine was not Vodka. But, it somehow was apt from a writer's POV. Something like a Tequila was too cult'ish for this post.
[2] - It is a pure coincidence that such a stance is taken during the dawn of another year. But, now that it has coincided, I might as well call it my new year resolution! But, does "I might not drink much as of now" count as one? :D

QOTD #4

2005-11-25T14:32:00.000+05:30

I have just realised that, regardless of the fact I love my job or not, I would always love quitting it.

- Zero, as on Nov 21, 2005.

Cigarettes

2005-11-25T12:15:00.000+05:30

The Prologue
Statutory Warning: Reading this post is injurious to health. Before you think I cracked an abysmally insipid joke, I suggest you to get going with the post and figure out at the end how much good sense this "statutory warning" makes in the larger context, apart from being a lame joke.

Chapter 1: Cigarettes
Here at 3 in the afternoon, with one of those weekly team meetings just over, I move back to my spot and stare blankly, for quite a while, at the monitor before deciding to write this piece.
Another guy whose participation in the meeting was as bland as mine - thus letting him be in the same empty state as me - doesn't do the same. He drags one of his chums off to the terrace, pulls a stick from his pocket and lights it up. He does it. So does every smoker, thus evading those empty moments, that arise after one laughs at his manager's jokes, by doing something; unconditionally. Habits, my dear reader, habits! Habits make a Man.
No emotions, no discussions, no contemplation; just a few fleeting moments of unreasonably (here some smokers may raise an objection; but that was a compliment) pleasing act, as perhaps Hitckcock would have put it.
Before the reader presses Alt-F4 irritated at getting to hear such a preposterous "reasoning" *for* smoking, I would like to emphasize that my reasoning in itself is senseless. But, that's exactly where I am hitting at. Without being senseless at times, life wouldn't be what it is.

The Epilogue
Some stare blank. Some smoke. Some write. Some read what others wrote.

Stupid QOTD #3

2005-11-21T18:22:00.000+05:30

Its fine to have opinions on gobi manchurian; but not on people who have opinions on gobi manchurian; at least, not when it's to do with a 'gobi manchurian'. :)

Lovelution

2005-11-21T16:39:00.000+05:30

How poetry ever got written -- that never struck me!
- Richard P. Feynman

The Prologue:
I agree to the above statement to various degrees at different times. But never did it strike as completely false to me. And in a peculiarly similary way, it applies for love too in my life.

The Post:
Recently, I read Bharath's write-up on this thing called love (though I felt it was more about loss of one's love), and started musing what it meant in my senselessly stupid life. I talking about love is like camels talking about bungee-jumping. Even as I type this, I realise that I have given a rather nice form to love (bungee-jumping), here. Sometimes, I end up comparing it to several unsavory things (toilets, for example).
Not that love was/is impossible for me. Its only that I don't seem to have actually felt considerable amount of love for anybody till now. If you want to get a fairly accurate depiction, think Rajesh from Gautam's Minnale (I don't quote examples from inane movies or those which I don't admire; but the characterization, with the right amount of ineptness, never got closer than this). Hold on. Before you think I was roaming around bullying people around wearing thick black jerkins and bunch of fancy chains around my neck, the comparison was strictly meant for the level of interaction with girls and the directions it took during the few times I did interact (which is mostly when we are pulling the legs of some poor guy linking him unsavourily to some quiet/enthusiastic girl in the class).
The general (and hence senseless too) perception is that, in the social setup in which I spent my time as a teenager, for a guy to fall in love with a girl (or at least run/crawl after skirts in general), he had to be this hip guy (another inept description; but the material seems to deserve it) or the mushy-mushy "you-are-what-I-live-for" love. Unfortunately, yours truly was neither and (hence?) belonged to the rest {a real fat percentage at that, who never actually fall in love until some day they get married} theorizing love among friends (not quite similar to Vivek in those several "college-romance" flicks, but in the same ballpark; note the innumerous inane references in Tamil films throughout in this post).
Honestly looking back (and pointlessly theorizing why I was the way I was), I never grew up from being the boy who fiercely competed with fellow female classmates in acads and local quizzes during my school life to become the prototype adolescent who flirts in a real dumb way with the fairer sex. By the time I grew up and started appreciating the finer aspects of the female species (like Psmith would have put it), I was far off from being the dude whom I would describe henceforth (for the sake of discussion) as the "I-need-girlfriends" type (another phrase conceived by Pa. Vijay for Boys; need I repeat that it is another reference to an inane movie?). I admit I had crushes; in fact, lots of them. But, none of them turned out to have even 1/10th of the mush quotient (no disrespect here; to reduce the mock-factor, let me make it 'emotional quotient') required to be actually called love or to deliberately introduce some familiarity with the girl concerned. The result was this total absence/stray occurrences of interaction with females. And like the true boy-next-door-in-a-town-in-Tamilnadu {unfairly neglected in the representation of youth in Kollywood cinema considering the sheer numbers in which they are bred in real life; except for those rare cases like Sethu}, I was better off being one who laughs his ass off when a guy mumbles/explains/cries about his true love for some femme fatale.
This post does ring a bell with my "love life".
Yes, I did sit in last bench for most part of college life. I use profanity of all kinds in all languages. I did sometimes think (perhaps, quite stupidly) my sense of humour (take it with a pinch of salt, now ;)) is alien/didn't match with many of the females I had known (at least from what I had heard about things they *choose* to giggle at). I yak a lot of bullshit in any topic but can't really say if I can/can't "start a topic with a member of the oppoisite sex", because I never deliberately did it (loads of ego, perhaps). I am not anywhere close to being a fan of rock music too (though my close friends worship it). Yes, all thru my college life, I belonged to this boys gang in which nobody had a girlfriend. {On the flip side, I hate Gaana songs and I really hate Deva. I am a guy with two left feet. I watch all kinds of movies. eat any food; somehow I maintain this vegetarian thing which might jolly well go for a toss any day.}
But the key difference is {I learn from here that it is called post hoc ergo propter hoc} that while that dude is explaining "why we never get them" (thus giving a cause-effect relationship), I never seemed to have even tried hard to get them (thus thinking of this as a correlation). To sum it up, I never indulged myself into love and took some immense stupid pride in it.
When in a relatively saner state, we (I and my friends) have tried to reason (for discussion's sake) why we are what we are, and came up with different reasons which ranged from frequency mismatch (assumption of intellect), too emotional for the pieces of wood that we are, multi-layered futility {which, I realise, is the most important factor - this observation updated much later; on Feb 6, 2:15 p.m.} etc. Sometimes we were even told that it will happen to us one day when we get "matured".
I don't question why things are the way they are. Well I do - actually way too often - but, only for the sake of a discussion. When it comes to deeds, I just float like a piece of wood (a rather dull description of a rather joie de vivre life ;)). Hence, as much as I don't question the existence of love, I also don't question the inevitability of a marriage (an arranged marriage at that). Interestingly(?), in Minnale, Rajesh eventually meets his kind of girl. Every man has an opinion of his kind of girl (even as I type this, I feel this definitive urge not to write it; call it a big fat ego not to reveal your need for something to anybody or plain shyness). Mine is some girl who is very similar to me - who can yak about bullshit (preferably with a vocabulary with rich profanity that challenges mine :); am not an expert, btw) for hours, which will make me feel at home. In short, she should be able to comprehend this senseless/worthless/stupid ramble and its undercurrents :).

Epilogue:
I guess, I kinda understand the need/desire for a female company in the life of any man. But I seem to ask, "well.. what's the hurry?". Yeah, I am like Jeff, the Dude, in Big Lebowski.

How not to have yourself arrested 101

2005-11-15T13:45:00.000+05:30

The Prologue a.k.a The regular ramble
This blog that is half-dormant wakes up when I seriously try to reiterate the obvious; or quite unusually, when I really have something to say. Or do both these things mean the same? It certainly appears so.

The post
Another day. Another thing. Suhasini has joined hands with Kushboo after apologising to her on behalf of tamilians and has received brickbats from all quarters ranging from the Nadigar Sangam to what not (and a new case is also being filed). I don't feel the slightest of the responsibility to apologise on behalf of the rambunctious bunch who raised this as an issue at first place, though. Apparently, Suhasini did and is in the loop now.
More importantly, I wonder if a non-bailable warrant can be issued against somebody who didn't turn out to attend the court hearing on a case which is worth contending for the stupidest of the cases ever filed. Isn't there any validation before calling for a court session? Or, was that the Mettur Judge actually felt Kushboo did something which is worth a hearing?
One of my acquaintances pondered over this:- What would have been the reaction from this wild bunch (sorry, Peckinpah) if it was, umm, a man - and a born tamilian at that - said the same thing? Now, that reveals quite many dimensions of this issue. There are still people out there believing that they actually have let Kushboo live in T.N. and she better dance to their tunes (which apparently she did in the past :p).

The Epilogue
I believe staunchly that all living beings (and their beliefs) are equally stupid. And, time and again, there's somebody out there who comes dangerously close to dash this theory off.

2005-11-07T17:00:00.000+05:30

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, isn't coding the process of introducing them?

Remembered reading this quote somewhere. Can apply this ditto to life!

The right to be Stupid

2005-10-11T11:30:00.000+05:30

I don't want to have opinions, though I have been accused quite many times to have many many opinions. At least after long years of mindless arguments (though I continue to have them :)) I am pretty sure that one should not have opinions if he wishes to wade through this life like he would sip his morning coffee - quite mindlessly and nonchalantly, yet with an actually undeserving happy feel. But, thats hardly the case in real life. We all tend to have opinions and there is no real line which we can draw as the limit.
First thing in the morning, thanks to my addiction to blogs, I hear of this thing (from a very likely source for me, George).
And here, I find myself having hardly an opinion on it. Nothing seemed to strike me. Not Freedom of speech, not Bloggers' rights. Nothing. Sure, I am shook myself to know that a guy had actually quit his job for standing with his opinions about some goddamn institute. Gaurav may be one of the very few to do such a thing. But, the blank reaction comes when one asks what is my opinion on this? That one should fight for his rights? What kinda rights? I had found many people stupid. Yet, if I keep ranting on, say, an Abdul Kalam (thanks to his talks on future, dreams and success), I will sure receive brickbats from many quarters and I guess there is even some provision in constitution to put me behind the bars. So, what is the point? Is it that IIPM doesn't deserve to react when somebody points out some glaring stupidity in their claims as the President could afford to?
Well, I am not making any point here. Its an explanation to myself as to why I am shook by this incident and yet not having any opinion on it.
One might say that the moral of the story is: "If you play with matches, you get burned".
Someone else might say the words need to be chosen more carefully with enough vitriol, like this: "If you introduce yourself to pigs, you might end up in deep shit".
Comparing IIPM to matches (and this whole story to the quoted proverb) is hardly the thing I would like to do. Nor am I going to say the latter fits the bill. But, both of them mean the same. Don't they?

Which came first? - II

2005-10-07T13:52:00.000+05:30

Again, Which of these came first? and which one followed?

a. Atheism,
b. Theism, or
c. Agnosticism

Answers?

Which came first? - I

2005-07-29T11:17:00.000+05:30

Of all the thoughts that really fascinate me, backtracking through man's history (or a more generic form of life) to guess how man discovered various entities in life/nature/world/universe from scratch is one of my favourites. Or, to be more precise, my most favourite topic! So, here it goes....

Which of these ideas struck man first? and which one followed?

a. God,
b. Luck, or
c. Murphy's law (in its spirit, of course)

If clarifications required, read about God, Luck, and Murphy's law.

Now, Answers?

S. Anand (a.k.a.) My first post without references to Zero, Infinity and Kurosawa

2005-07-19T19:43:00.000+05:30

I wonder if S. Anand ever wrote his opinions/thoughts; Or, is it that he is paid to write some rambunctious rebellious [no compliment, that one] articles [preferrably involving some caste] on/about Tamilnadu. How else would you explain this [Link via here]? And after writing this and this recently.
Read the whole lots.

P.S.:- Though I generally refrain from personal rant on the contents of these articles (paying my homage to the movie, you-know-which!), most of his articles revolving around religion/casteism (to a pseudo-level, u know) triggered this piece of rant.

QOTD #2

2005-07-19T19:14:00.000+05:30

I am feeling really bored and and it seems to be as unreasonable as my birth was.

The zero-circle connection

2005-07-11T17:00:00.000+05:30

Ever wondered why 0's figurative representation was a circle? Add to this that they are the most cannily natural in the world/universe [The likes of e and pi being the uncanny ones]. Assuming that Arya Bhatta decided its shape, I wonder if he wondered about why he chose that shape, as much as I do/did. For me, its a stroke of genius!
But, many a times, I arrive at this particular simple reasoning which anyone would give when posed with this question.
A primary-school physics theory goes like this - Suppose a man starts from a particular point and comes back to the same point. By theory of physics, he has travelled a distance of 0 units.
This very well could have been the reason for that shape [If you see, counting and representation of numerals were invented from mundane real-life experiences rather than trysts with surreal genius]. Such a simple explanation and I find myriad philosophical interpretations of it.

QOTD/TFTD:
In trying to explain the most complex things, we end up explaining the most obvious ones.

P.S.- The discerning reader would note that the above quote is an example for itself.

Incorrigible optimism & its underlying theory

2005-07-06T17:25:00.000+05:30

It's been quite long since I understood I can't have my takes on peace or any other futile but overbearingly optimistic thoughts/processes. May be, I know too much to believe in a better humanity and an all-peace world. But, more I think on those lines [that is, more I actually know it's quite an impossibility for us to improve (and that its not that we exist the way we are destined to. But, it’s that we could have existed in only one path and that’s the path we have taken. Also we will be taking the only path we can take)], the more I think we all fake this theory too much. The thrust for something in life is omnipresent and I will be playing a pseudo-Sanyasi, who finds sex futile for his life (only after copious doses of it, mind you*), but still cannot resist it at times and decides to bust it all off, if I claim otherwise. So, back to square one**!

* - Don't you think I end up rephrasing many clichéd proverbs?
** - I would have personally liked a phrase like 'back to the start point' or something to that effect referring to a circle. Because, talking about squares is so naive!

Drunken Philosophers

2005-07-06T17:01:00.000+05:30

Prologue:
Woody Allen muses about life in the prologue (may I reinvent the word in the movie's context?) of the movie "Annie Hall" with a quote about two elder women talking in a restaurant (about how terrible the food is in the restaurant, and at the same time in small portions). Here are some such musings (though this happenned much before I saw Annie Hall) about how contradictory life can be to what we think (at a surface level) it is; and heck, somewhere around, even we seem to be aware of it's irony!

Chapter 1:
"Don't you see?" - Ashok exclaimed, frustrated at Vels, wondering at his inability to see what he is able to see. Add to this the fact that both of them were in their fourth round of booze.
After a split-second pause and then a gulp, "Zero and Infinity are pretty much the same. That’s why I think it's all a big neat circle!"
"Which all?"
"Everything"
"Like?"
"Life!"
"So, now you jumped to life! Huh?" - Vels retorted.
"I was talking about it, all along.. Isn't it?"
There was this unusual silence when the bearer came and placed a jar on the table.
"Look. I agree I am drunk and all that.." - Vels nodded in ack - as Ashok elucidated his theory.
"Haven't you felt this? Taking in more and more of something pulls away the interests you have on it and you effectively don't do much after doing so much."
Vels blankly kept staring at the last round of whisky that’s supposed to heat up his food pipeline and light up his mind’s thought line, and was wondering if Ashok was referring to the whisky they were having. But, if that was the case, Ashok was from being correct. "Lots of whisky, more love towards it", he thought.
"I don't know why every other person I meet has this T-Shirt with 'Why a beer is better than a woman' junk. "One large beats both of them equally good"..
"Yeah.. I too hate beer, man. The mabbu* per unit volume is pathetically low."
Ashok resumed the discussion much to Vels' despair.
"Suppose you start learning something and act according to it. As you dig deep into that something, you slowly are disillusioned. More deep you learn it, more you realise you need not have learnt it at all. There is sense of incompleteness in the quest. Then you slowly stop acting according to what you have learnt. act as in double-quotes, which can mean "following your principle", "doing good to the society" or anything in that league. That means, logically its like you have unlearned everything and you are back again to square one."
"..." - This was Vels' attempt at a retort.
"I know what you are going to ask me", asserted Ashok with a sense of supremacy, which one can afford to have when he is with a guzzler (and only that) like Vels by his side.
"The concept of 'acting according to what one has learned' can mean anything.. As we acquire knowledge of things around this world, we make an interpretation of it - What's good and what's not; what we should we do and what we should not; what we enjoy and what we don't. But, slowly the inevitable disillusionment occurs on everything. For example, you must have, at some point of your life, felt like you want to somehow make a difference - force a change in so many things. So, I would go on to say that 'acting according to what one has learned' could be like doing anything, a so-called-positive-thing, we are doing can be put under this category - to force some change. Then you realise no one can force any change... There is this unchanging phenomenon that you sense. Futility becomes our middle name. But again, we put your mind into something else is an altogether different matter worthy of another day at this same pub. The cliché goes that 'The Universe/World is in the way that it's meant to be'. When my father told me this, I thought he didn't put much thought into it and that he wanted to get away with some answer for my inquisitive questions. But, now I realise how true he was."
Then, Vels came up with something that made Ashok chuckle in delight with intellectual respect for Vels.
"May be even your father was talking the same to a sane idiot like me when he was in his 20's and you will tell pretty much the same to your son as well, when he asks for a fancy bike which his friend, whose father will happen to be a CEO of a MNC, had bought. You will tell him that nothing will make no difference.."

Chapter 2:

Ashok and Vels continue musing over the world, life and themselves. Only that, this time they ramble in equal parts.

V - "This life is a double-edged sword. Isn't it?"

A - "In my honest opinion, it's not even a sword! Life can't be described by any word, but itself. I am generalizing the quote from 'Citizen Kane' here. That's why we have the word 'Life'. Isn't it?"

V - "Okay. but if it was a sword, it wud be double-edged. isnt it?"

A - "...."

V - "Let me state myself clearly.. coz I am not here to prove to u the premises I assume. Everybody has got his own. I just want to verify the inference with you..."

A - "So what if I don't agree with the assumption itself.. because if you want me to agree with the inference only as against the assumption, how wud you call it 'verified' by me?? Isn't premise yet another inference made from some other premise which in turn wud be another inference?"

V - "err.. What about axioms??"

A - "there are no axioms in this world! But then u would ask me, how could something be made out of nothing. then I wud use the theory of maaya to explain. But that would again make you correct as well.. besides me and others, of course!"

V - "but then tell me.. Whats the truth you believe in?"

A - "In searching the truth, we fail!"

V - "did you?"

A - "what?"

V - "Did you fail searching for truth?"

A - "I didn't search for it."

V - "So, you didn't you fail?"

A - "I did.."

V - "Then, what's the point?"

A - "Nothing. Why do you look for points?"

V - "Why don't you? Doesn't not doing something involves the same amount of mental work as doing it?? Don't you believe in something? For example, I staunchly believe in truth.. Something like that.. huh?"

A - "Yeah.. I am staunch believer of bullshit.. thts a truth I see myself in.. But this too will pass on."

Epilogue:
I don't need no shit and nothing makes no difference.

* - The colloquial word in Tamil for 'drunken effect' (there's not straight translatory word, u see)

Long Time.. No Post..

2005-05-09T15:46:00.000+05:30

Now, lemme admit. I am a movie freak. If at all, I am shedding off my cynical (and my pet theory is: cynical ain't pessimistic) look at life, its for cinema. That is why, this blog has been the step-child for me since I started; The straight-child (in want of a better word) being this. New posts are getting rarer and rarer (as if there were many already!). Existing posts are some random ramblings (which I intended this blog for). But the ramblings must come at a brisk pace.

Of late, What have I been thinking, of late??? will come back once I got what it was/is. If you are wondering WTH is going on, this post will be in writing-stage for quite long time. So, "I will" actually means "I had", when you are reading the post.

Just ditch the experiment in the narrative in the last paragraph.

Update: Apr 11, 7:07 p.m.
That i might get fired soon keeps me in check from going on and on browsing the net.

Update: May 9, 03:36 p.m.
I hate this whole <b>caste-match-thing for 2 ppl to marry</b>. It mite be really stupid to say this hackneyed lament and put it in ur blog as well. But currently this goddamn thing (in reluctamnce to use the F word) is the shit, I feel I should get out of.

And, I also want to close this long-time-in-drafting stage post with this. Time: 3:46 p.m. May 9.

every bug has its own time..

2005-03-03T20:05:00.000+05:30

Every bug has got a lifetime for itself. This is going to be my proposition tonight. Not that I felt it today or right now. I ve felt it quite a many number of times and wanted to write on it (and this concept of writing being spontaneously felt works only for those who had all the time for that).
I got the time now (May be... nay.. always, every germ-thought-for-a-write-up also has its own lifetime!) and so am putting my thoughts as words. We somehow try to fix some really headache bugs thinking day and night on that (this attributes to ur fresher-to-the-industry too as I ve observed) and it does get fixed. But, not when you wanted it to. Later, sometimes much later, that it starts sounding trivial to you as you might not have done much to catch it. Here, I would like to tell what extent of generalization I ve applied on the word "bug". This could be an issue the solution to which you need to find (not exactly a fix to a wrong solution, I mean). A reforming of your code to make it work clean etc. anything. not essentially a wrong-to-right jump!
Thats when you feel, you being the coder still are not able to find what's wrong in your code as it grows in size. Your helplessness is sometimes perplexing. But thats only for a moment. The experience-storage facility implemented up in our brain, then on, tells u in future that "hey buddy! you r of course helpless!". And, thats when you get such a magnitude of complacency, loss of reasoning and lawlessness that would very much result in a very similar essay as this one.
Consider this. You are the God and the program you write is a simpleton who seems to go the way God shows to him. Thats when the bug thing comes up in its mind and screws up the whole process of goody-goody codes and equivalent results.

But, you do know that God (here, I mean the actual God, if he exists) is not able to control the way world moves with its bunch of simpletons! (you, me and the rest of a**holes!)

Don't you see the analogy? (look back.. those words.. 'god', 'simpleton', 'goody-goody', 'bug', 'screws up', 'equivalent results' etc.)
Thats a lot of noir stuff, in disguise! huh? ;)

Sometimes you are the crow and sometimes the statue! Sigh!

what is genius?

2005-02-28T17:27:00.001+05:30

We (I and my friends) got into an argument one fine day as to what 'actual' genius is (I warn you, the erudite guys we are, we never try to arrive at a solution/explanation). My friend was peeved at the level of physics, as a subject, that was taught to us in school-time (essentially Newtonian) which essentially was quite "disproved" in this century by Einstein and likes. He said - "We were all fooled man. go and read recent research in quantum physics anywhere. U ll know physics is 'actually' nothing of what Newton said or even Einstein for that case.." That Newton/Einstein fooled us (or rather himself). what he said then is not 'remembered' exactly here. but the point was not 'fooling' but being wrong. The earlier theories were many times intuitively guessed, he ridiculed. That he has fairly good amound of physics up his head should be easily inferred from the fact that he is aware of the latest happennings of disproving of what Einstein said during his times. But what he seemed to miss was, according to me, "everybody will be disproved in physics" (put in real crude fashion!).
Anyway getting back... The earlier theories were many times intuitively guessed, he ridiculed.
Thats when I actually got hooked in after thought-wise-loitering around the fringes of the "topic" (we used to fondly call our discussions so), thanks to my poor knowledge in physics.
"In fact, Intuition (that whether I meant 'correct' intuition is not answerable now without references to Rashomon!) is Genius", I asserted. Anything gotten out of pure theory already laid out or derived out of existing theory is 'ordinary' (compared to the intuitive kinds!)
I seriously felt so. That I myself found it an intuitive thing was not able to give any formal proof. But to prove anything, I go to maths (which i find so closely resembles life). Talking about proofs and intuitions, one person who comes to my mind is Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was so used to 'finding' (yeah, finding!) mathematical relations that, he actually could not offer proofs to most of his theorems. Some he felt was very obvious that the proof went without thinking.(something like 'goes without saying' for mundane people like us). And some he could not even if he tried to go to lower level debug trace of his mind. It was his friend/associate who took the burden of proving some of his theorems. He found the genius in Ramanujan (thats another level of intellect, u know? identifying genius, like what i am yapping about now). Ramanujan was a genius. Not because, many of his yesteryear number theory theorems are being used currently and are actually rite. Even if some of the mathematical theorems/figures/relations (what he did was not essentially some useful things, u know?. he suddenly thinks of whats the sum of factors of n! which had no reason to be thought upon but for pure pleasure of maths!) were wrong or will be proved wrong. That he conceived all of them in his mind is what makes genius. If the idea conceived is wrong, perhaps, thats flawed genius; But Genius, nevertheless!

do i write at all?

2005-02-28T14:06:00.000+05:30

If anybody looks at the timestamp of the prev post, the question i posed in the title (to myself) seems inevitable!

heck! i dont seem to write at all...

P.S.: I didn't know that George Orwell had a similar write-up (titled "Why I write?") in his book "Such, Such Were the Joys". and was overjoyed to read it here. So hope I am going Orwell's way... ;)) His childhood uncannily resembles mine too! :))

why do i write?

2005-01-31T16:38:00.000+05:30

why do i feel the necessity to write?

indulgence?
interest?
express myself?
kill time?

suddenly i feel all the above mean the same shit!

i ll talk later!