There comes a time when...

execution is more important than theory.

Tiger won Augusta.

And the rusted quizzer....

... will compete (never, never participate, mind you) for one last time on the 8th of May.

I remember, during RV, One of my....

.... real ambitions in life was to wear a T-shirt with "Because I say so..." written on it.

Alternate career, somebody?

Madness: Ranga Shankara: 24/04/2005: 7:30 PM

Would not have gone for the play had a close friend not been acting (two other good acquaintances were there too).

So there were M and I, walking inside the place among orgasmic groans of a desparate, anguished writer (extremely cliched, if you ask me) for a near quarter of an hour while the people were settling down. I wonder, with the writer getting transformed into a wisecracking, conversational guy the moment the people settled down and the play started, where that anguished poet in him went...

When I was a beginner elocutionist in school (never went much beyond that...) the elocution teacher at school used to urge us not to chew in the last two syllables of a sentence when we were speaking on stage, especially without a microphone.... Wish a few of the folks on stage had a teacher like her in their youth...

Being the amateur critic that I am, I insist that in stage plays, if you have a character like the writer of the play, or the sootradhar, I unfortunately do not know the english word for it, you should downplay it completely.... it is not your job to display your emotions, it is not your job to come up with extended soliloquys... let your characters do it....

And indulgent, extensively long, meandering, inward-looking scripts/stories are the easiest to write and the toughest to be made interesting to the public. Trust me, am speaking from experience over here. And seriously, black theatre needs a bit more of research that normal. Was absent. So fell flat on the face.

And now that my quota of vitriol (pun intended) is sort of finished, here's the positive. The woman acting as Sheila, was absolutely awesome in her soliloquy. Seen her previously in 9 Jakhoo hills, and found nothing standout-ish. But this performance of hers was something special.

This guy acting as Ram, the politician's son, isn't a good actor or something, but genuinely felt his role. So the end product that came up, was quite good.

My friends did come up with right decent performances, in whatever little they had to do in the play. And both of them have such strong voices...

The sexiest jobs in North America?

I wonder how different it would be in India. Softwarewallah will absolutely rock. Cricketer will come in tops. Entertainment will come in rather high too. Pilots will fly high. Docs and Lawyers will do rather well. Pinstripes will be doing decently :)

Fireman?! Nowhere in hell. Politicians, though, will be down in the lowest level of dumps for sure.

And as for 'Firemen are just regular guys like everyone else that stand for something more than a baseball player playing for money, or a rock star singing for big bucks,' The ordinary man in India is loved only on the left-hand corner of the TOI.

Malda, Murshidabad and the CPI(M)

Not surprising. Quite a few of V's ramblings have a basis. In this one over here, he might just have hit a home run. Incidentally, it is Buddho, no less! Slight raised eyebrows...

The Wright Legacy

I need to write a post on John Wright. And why I believe he is a one-off. And how India's next outsourced coach would be having a much easier time than Wright himself had had, the groundwork for that being laid by Wright himself. And the legacy that he left behind. How the concept of Team India came into existance, ironically, under a foreign coach and a very un-Indian captain, in a country where hero-worship is a norm. Where we love to have our champions as 40' cutouts when they are doing well, and tear them down when they are not. How in a country where after scoring a century in a dead track against a paltry bowling attack, a batsman used to point their bat at the press-box, and how that has now been interchanged with batsmen kissing the India logo on their helmets after they score their centuries. How something as alien to our culture as a huddle came to symbolize the collective form of our national representatives who define the first step in cross-border relationships. How we have, well, started to expect the world from our cricketers. How merely defeating Pakistan in the world cups is not the end of the story for us. How this new Indian team actually has the best players that we have in store in our country, or very nearly it (JP Yadav, I still believe, needs to be given a chance in one-dayers). How our level of expectations from our representatives have gone up many a notch in the last five years. Yes, we still lose, rather badly sometimes, but the earlier talks of match-fixing and regionalism are not really heard anymore, are they? Really, the Indian team has taken the proverbial next step forward in the last 5 years. And let's not be the Bishen Bedis; let's appreciate him for what he was and what he has given to the Indian team.

Here, read some notes.

Spelling!

When are you guys gonna learn to spell ?

This grievance comes from those who aren't aware that British and American spellings sometimes differ.

We've been at the centre of some rancour, but we're not going to take offence or harbour any grievances. The catalogue of complaints won't colour this organisation's programme. It's a grey area anyway. And we don't want to labour the point.

(Stiff-upper-lip, the upturned nose and ah, delicious snoot....)

Politically?

Expectedly...

Economic Left/Right: 1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.15



Courtesy http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and lawyer.

Midweek oranges.

Had an accident. Minor. Right foot hurts. My own personal motorcycle diaries continue. Drunken drivers should be whipped mid-street.

Ratzinger becomes Pope.

Natasha Jog's voice, everyday morning on NDTV, is bliss. If honeydew would have been explainable by sound, this is it.

I just love the Airtel ringtone.

A certain play's promo's last line says "Come- Live a little" ..... well, all I have to say to that is Oh my god...

It all started HERE !

Yeah right. So?

After the rather busy week, with piled-up work to be completed in office (was done too… and rather adroitly, if I may say so) weekend came. And went.

Let’s see, snippets would be…

The departure of Peeves.
The crying of Room 186. Mom-write. Sublime.
The fantabulous Murali rip.
Pseud movies with white subtitles on a white background. So Brazilian, so bloody obscure it ain’t even funny.
Seven hours of hedonistic indolence at Koshy’s. Started to really look forward to these moments. But knowing me, I’ll get bored of this too, sometime.
Snoot, yet again (a friend describes us as misanthropes). And kill me, I am not quite seventeen.
But hell, I am the dancing king. F-Bar doesn’t really rock all that much.
Missing Che hurts. So scripted my own version of the motorcycle diaries… scary shit.
Chats is on display next Saturday.
Revisiting old memories of final solutions. The stage still beckons at times. Just that, there are other, bigger battles to be won.
Bagchi and Verma get married. The all-MDI couples list has one more addition. Surprisingly, our batch has much less than the general average. Can thing of about four prospective such.
50 pages of vibrancy is what The Famished Road has been as yet.
When slumber beckons, I have regained my slot on the higher plane.

Rajdeep Sardesai quits NDTV

In retrospect, I almost anticipated this, after his interview yesterday of the Defence Secretary, (Narayanan, was he?)... where he was visibly disinterested.... could almost see the lack of commitment.

Question is, what will happen to the "Big Fight"? And would we roommates have our post-Big-Fight big fights any more? Yes, i do not rate his handling of topics brilliant, there are many a times when with a real verbose, real loud participant, we tend to move out of focus.... and Rajdeep misses it at times. Also, at times, when the real issue is subjugated by another issue which is more debatable by the panelists, Rajdeep gets commercialised and tends to move to the more enticing sub-topic. But all-in-all, after a long time, there was a TV programme which we used to wait in anticipation.... and hope it remains that way, with or without Rajdeep.

The Singapore Sling, courtesy Ms. Mo

Weekend Koorg trip part 2 (or Serenade and the death of Delhi)

Ok a tiny little mention. Saw P write a brilliant piece on the same topic. No, hang on, I will stand my ground here, in terms of literary skills my production was of a better quality. But well, wordsmith I am and wordsmith I will be. And never a writer. Very proudly I say, I am not entirely unpalatable writing. But so very often, I don’t feel my writing. I don’t feel for my written word. Which P does. Which she did. And very often, thus, the beginning of a narrative is where I am all gusto, all vim and vigor, and by the end of the first part am just too bored to continue, and thus never go beyond (this blog is strewn with many such examples), this time though, getting totally inspired and all by her piece, I decide, quite like Magnus Magnusson, I’ve started so I will finish. So here goes.

I had forgotten to mention this in part 1, After I return to my room, (remember I told you there were three people sleeping in the room which was a double-bed) I saw that the bed that was lying on the ground was empty, and there were two people sitting on the two beds. So quite ruthlessly I say, “So who among you is sleeping on the ground”? Trashcan raises his hand. (In retrospect, what a relief!)

Good sleep, I would not deny. Saw Ashish Nehra gobble up Afridi off a nice delivery, first thing in the morning. Happy, happy, good start to the day. And now, my usual trek soap, strong hard smell… deo, pungent… I’m on.

And by now, we couldn’t be bothered less about the whole shit around us, and the holied-than-thou attitude crept in easy. The general attitude prevalent among us was, “Well, I will concede ground by allowing myself to take your trip, but don’t you think that this means that you could do the same to me”….

And so was stuff. D and I had a nice conversation in the morning over tea, and afterwards, we recorded a lot of our incessant bitchings about the whole shit pervading around us in his recorder.

Hmm. Breakfast. Better than yesterday, but only slightly. Nandroling, again. We had gushed a little about it with the jokers, and they decided that they could not miss out on any of the fun that we were getting, could they? And there was this gang-leader of theirs, a whole-hog bastard, who thinks he is the Doode, the kinds who just cannot be liked; he was creating shit all along, trying to boss around. Of course, he was too … what’s the correct word…. scared to taked either D or myself on….. so was given to whispering crap about us.

So Nandroling again. Again, wait for the photographs. And this time I did not have any semi-tiff with P.

And coming back….. I cringe at even the thought of what happened….. Again, our tempo traveler became a dance floor….. in the afternoon? Oh yeah! These morons would just have to try having fun. For all the shit I pour on them, I cannot blame them for lack of tenacity…

So they dance. And it was worse than last time. And incessant screams of J, come and dance with us pleeeeeeese and P, come and dance with us please…and even a few D come and dance, S come and dances too…. Made us think, hey, what the hell, it wasn’t so bad a weekend getaway, was it? We sure did manage to find our own bit of fun, and that’s fine…

So J and P being J and P, start off. I was hiding myself in a corner…. But hell, in a tempo traveler, tiny as it is, where are corners? So after twice being buttocked on the face (buttocks of different genders….. Male and …. Umm, Ogre…. As P would insist), I’d had it. Get up, shake a bit of booty, (and hell, it was as crowded as Spinn on a Saturday night…. And I absolutely hate Spinn) and I can manage myself on a dance floor, trust me. And now that I was about to get into the groove…… I hear a scream… S, I love you….. What? A male voice, what’s more….What the fuck?

Hell, it was the same guy who was eyeing J. And hell, not me now! I turn towards him, antarctic cold… and say, I am straight, and not interested. He breaks into this Neanderthal grin, and while I am feeling like punching his teeth out…. He is like Hehehe, I’m sorry.

Now look here, I have nothing against gays. It’s free will, and as long as one doesn’t jump onto me, I’m fine. But no, there was even more to come from trashcan (aw shutup, no pun intended).

And our perennially U-turning tempo-traveller decides to take one last 180degree for old time’s sake, and take us, as Doode here has planned, to some arbit waterfall (Balamuri falls, I guess it was called).

Now I like waterfalls. I certainly prefer a dry myself to a wetter version, but a waterfall is a rather picturesque thingie, and I dare you challenge me on this. But my idea of fun certainly does not include walking about under a crazy harsh sun for quite a few miles to reach a waterfall which I have to enjoy with a few thousand others.

But then, U2 won this time too.

So we give them a headstart, and then get on. P’s sunscreen lotion (Mary Schmich and Baz Luhrmann would be rather happy for this) gets poured in large dollops onto hand, face and head (hey, I do have more skin to cover).

And we walk. And D is scandalized by the 15 swear words that I put into every sentence I utter. We sweat. We sweat some more. And when we have almost decided we would just do the legendary plonk under a tree, smoke a cig (that would be me) and talk routine, we see it.

A beautiful babbling brook, coming down the highlands created this absolutely delightful rapid (Hey lawyer, it wasn’t quite a waterfall, just a rapid, but it was ours)………… There were these few people there, just one single group, say of about 4-5 people…. And we had to go there.

We did.

Monday was to be an important day in office (it was), so I was in no intention to get down into the rapid and catch a cold in the process. But D and P had already gone in. J was not going…. And I, honest to say, was really tempted. So S the impulsive water animal fought a grim battle with S the pinstripe corporate starlet… and guess who won?

D doesn’t swim. And P neither, whatever she might claim. So they were just standing there enjoying the whole thing… when….

I tread down, denims and shirt and all….. into an extremely rapid rapid (ok, that was a gross one)…. Ah the splash, ah the shiver, ah the feel of wild water on my face…. allowing the tide to take me along, resisting, swimming back, pushing forward, the feeling of man against nature…… Ah, glorious.

Hmm, a hint of love handles! Hit the Gym, S. And soon.

Oh well… what is this hard soggy little blue thingie in my pocket? Oh gosh! My Delhi! …… And that was to be the end of Delhi, a cute little charmer of a cellphone, who decided to brave the tides with this guy to whose pocket she was married. After putting up a brave fight with a beautiful brute of a rapid, she eventually succumbed to injury, and drowned and suffocated to her death. Her body, though, was rescued, and indeed, her heart (ah the brave heart) has already been transplanted into another’s body. Her mortal remains will remain on public display, and a prayer meeting will be organized for her soul.

While coming back to Bangalore, I was serenaded by this gay guy. Here I was, sitting in the bus, with this Neanderthal doing this tribal dance and song routine to catch my attention…. And I realize, this is a major failure of mine. I cannot raise my voice. I am capable of extreme sarcasm and vitriol, but all of that is delivered at a rather demure tone. And all that is rather useless when one is dealing with a person who has more fingers on his hands than IQ in his head. So I re-invoke Asansol into my system, give the guy an extremely evil glare, and whisper, You stop your nonsense, or else I will actually raise my hand. I guess that did work quite well.

And that was that. Journey ends. We all come back home. It had rained rhinoceros and hippopotami in Bangalore during the weekend. Wet squelchy mud. Brilliant evening weather. Bangalore is just the way I had left her. I’m home. And I am extremely sleepy.

Lethe….

Weekend Coorg trip (part 1)

It was not a trek, so that was rather depressing. I would anyday prefer the grit and grime and cramped legs and destroyed shoulders, and mosquitoes and leaches and eucalyptus oil of a trek to the relative peace and organization of a trip. But a trip it was….

I was rather unsure whether I would be able to make it to the trip, Friday was to be spent firefighting for next week’s reviews. But everything got pleasantly over in time. This was a trip with J’s office colleagues, and P and D would also be coming along….. so that was nice. Have not met with D for a while, and I like the bloke. At the risk of equating, he is rather like a slightly more easygoing, slightly less funny M. And of course J and P are pals for all seasons.

Skipping over basic details like coming back from office etc…. we reach P’s house (she was the last to be picked up) and I go up the stairs to call her from her house (oh, alright, basically to use the restroom)….…. And come to realize that I have forgotten her house number…. So call up J from the Tempo traveler outside, and …. Well, ring the bell…. No answer…. Again…. No answer…. And then (a rather jaded, just woken up from sleep) aunty opens the door…. P is sleeping. Wake her up…. Give her a piece of our minds…. And off we go…..

And so it starts, the journey….

To tell you about the junta that was accompanying us….. (and yes, I am the deserving lord snooty over here) they were the archetype of the engineering college junta, desperate to have fun, but most often too confused to know how to, and even more often unable to make the transition from engineering college fun to corporate life fun……umm, no pun intended….. and I guess we are too old for the college type fun, unless it is the same old college gang we are going out with, and basically traveling in time….. College is the time where reason is generally relegated to the backburner, and one is inclined to manufacture fun for the heck of it…… while older, saner we tend to reason out, are we having fun yet? (you know where I have picked this up from, P). And ok, accepted, age’s got nothing to do with it…. My sis I guess would not accept anything to be exciting or funny unless she’s had reasoned out that it is, in reality, just that…. And she is 20.

So that was sleepless night Vol 1 with eight nincompoops creating general mayhem in a tiny tempo traveler turned dance floor, and four world-weary travelers attempting some sleep in between ducking flailing elbows and thrusting buttocks.

Reach Coorg. Freshen up in hotel. Rock-hard idlis for breakfast. RTV some arbit park. Did too. Now what’s so funny about a park? What’s so exciting about a park? But then… as U2 would say, walk on…

J tells me that this arbit desperately-trying-to-be-funny guy in the group is trying to get ultra-close to her. Well, J is this nice, sweet-to-people kinds, hardly ever given to a harsh word… with P, she is quite the devil-may-care types, so these arbit shitholes generally tend to get intimidated….. all of us are extremely pissed. And J has told him off a few times… but he seems not to take any hints at all.

After that, a dam. Now what would one born and brought on ‘Maithan Dam weekends’ do going to a dam? We decide to take a break. And are rather pissed with the rest of the group. D obviously is on with his camera, taking snaps … and all four of us are in a rather snappy mood.

We insist, it was a wild tusker that we took a few snaps of while coming back to the hotel.

P as usual creates a scene in the ride home to the hotel, normal tantrums we are now quite used to, but are absolutely out-of-the-blue for these pieces of trash. One of them, by mistake I suppose, happens to touch my head (tonsure and all), and I come out with an icy-cold “I…..do…not…like…people…touching…my…head” which makes him dissolve in a bundle of sorrys.

And these guys want to chill out in a swimming pool (see how easily the “us vs. them” thing comes in?). Ah, that’s the difference between trekkers and travelers. We would possibly be as inclined to sit in the shade of a tree, smoking a cigarette in an arbit, in-the-middle-of nowhere location, comfy and all, as they would be, but how could we go chill out in a swimming pool when there are these hundred sights and sounds to discover in this new land?

And so we break up and visit the Nandroling Monastery…describing the grandeur of this place is not a thing to be attempted by words…. So the photos which I would put up sometime should have to make do, I hope. Just a few pointers. The spectacular first sight of the main prayer room, brilliant lighting and all. The passion with which the monk Padma Bhikshu was speaking about Buddha and Bodhisatwa, and also the hatred with which he spoke of the capture of Tibet by China. The first floor room of the first temple, the house of sin, as I call it. Beer and soft drinks as ‘prasaad’. My yin-yang trinket. Loved the place. And had fun.

We go back and meet the group over a bonfire. Bullcrap bonfire. It was raining. So we had food (rather bad), and the four of us talked with each other.

And I insist, I hate cats. Pathetic, vain, shit-eating animals.

It gets to be night by about 9:00PM at Madikeri, and the four of us take a walk for a while in the darkened Madikeri. D’s roommate pansy (who is built like a bodybuilder, but uses 3 perfumes before going out, and uses Livon on his hair) or my roommate trashcan (the one who was making passes at J) … notes were shared. We are both staying, 3 people, in 2-bed rooms. P and J are roommates in a 2 bed room, there are advantages of being female.

And therein ends day 1. Check this space of day 2.

Telephonic conversation, in sync

This is how the conversation went, Bangalore to Chennai.

V: Hi loser*.
I: Hey loser.
V: So how’s midweek?
I: Ah, just thinking how infinitely boring my personal life has become.
V: Oh good, that’s sort of putting it in perspective…
I: Need to go to the US in 4 years, man…
V: Indeed!
I: Yeah, wanna enjoy the student thingie all over at 30
V: Hahaha (from now on, all conversation is interspersed with huge guffaws)… When you are applying, do tell me… I will apply too. You could do your journalism, and I would my Math and stats, you could do your grass and I would do my booze
(some stuff deleted here)

I: Remain losers…and at 35, get married to some bong babe
V: some ghoti babe of 34, three times as smart as we are, earning twice as much as we do, not a looker, and who treats us like shit, like dirt...
I: And live happily dominated ever after…
V, I : Hahahaha...

I have never laughed so hard, or so much for a long, long time…..

The sms that came next day, said (V): So which university in the US have you chosen to allow you to be found by your personal dictator?

Ghoti babes, we insist, are the scariest species that were created. Now I should know, have two samples of the specimen at home. And seriously, the prospects of another one sends shivers down my spine (although that, V says, is destiny) .

(* loser is a very common form of male greeting. It could mean many things, but most often mean forcefully disilllusioned, or given up to destiny. In this context, though, it could {and maybe did} mean intrinsically incapable of long-term relationships. )

Gmail / Google

Can hardly stop gushing about these guys. Check this out.