THREE DOWN

The next two days can only be described as what will be a mental marathon.

two down

One down.

A Day to Remember contd...

The couple of the year

(giggles) Standing tall, bending short...whatever.

Unsafe to comment

The Bio girls

MerDer: This has absolutely nothing to do with Farewell...but I just love it.

For more pics of Mer, Der and the rest of the Grey's Anatomy Cast, click on my Grey's Media link on the sidebar.

Random Observation

I have realized that the reason why I hate physical contact with another person is that I have a very strong aversion to drama of any sort. Drama in this case encompasses every extreme of emotion and action. I like things calm and orderly.

Which is not to say that I don't like watching drama. I most certainly do. Whether virtual or real, drama interests me. But I enjoy it only in the capacity of a passive observer, not an active participant.

A Day to Remember

The Dirties entirely between their element.

The 12th standard Biology class of 2006-07!!

Computers Rocks!!....apparently

The PhD, The Cyclotron, The Green Vitriol and The Improbability Factor

A rite of passage

Posted above are the a few of the many pictures in memoriam. Jeez, in memoriam sounds so morbid. Anyway, the titles are a little cheesy. If you think of better ones, let me know, and I'll change them.

My Farewell Speech

We have waited for this moment all our lives, the moment when we leave our childhood behind and step into the world to forge our own paths in life. We have counted down the years, the months, the hours, minutes and seconds, and finally, that moment has arrived. I find myself not a little sad , for I will be leaving behind people that shaped my life and a place that is as much a part of my identity as the name I bear.

Kumarans is like an intricate mosaic, and it is not the final picture, but the individual peices that I will miss the most. I will miss the familiar feeling of disembowelement as I ride down the road to school. I will miss the stampede that follows the 9th period bell. I will miss the delightful smells from the chemistry lab that waft their way through the ground floor. Most of all, I will miss the very heart of my experience as a student; my friends and my teachers. Thank you teachers, for all that you have taught me - lessons that extended well beyond the four walls of a classroom. Thank you, all my classmates, for two wonderful years - for all the fun, the hysterical laughter and the valuable lessons in Tamil popular culture. Thank you Deepa Ma'am, for providing me with myriad opportunities for growth during my time here as a student.

When we leave here today, we will take with us the memories of these seemingly trivial things. Memories that we will, nonetheless, cherish for the rest of our lives. And I hope that just as we take with us these memories of our school, we will leave behind our own imprint; an echo of the laughter we once shared, a shadow of the students we once were.

When?

This afternoon, while my sister and I kept my mother company in the kitchen, the talk turned to Aishwarya's new found environmentalism. (What can I say? She's my sister. It was bound to happen.)

She was very disturbed by certain statistics she had learnt in school regarding the disposal of plastic materials (the exact values of which prove elusive at the moment). A very large percentage of plastic wastes in India are simply discarded on its roads by the careless and are left to accumulate in a wayside gutter until they clog our drainage systems and result in the overflowing of sewage water. (At this point, I would like to point out that the mushy garbage mulch that is the drainage river outside Ranka Colony on Bannerghatta Road originated in the very same way.) Moreover, that very afternoon, she had seen the campus sweepers cutting down a couple of the campus trees, which are supposedly government protected, for firewood.

I believe her exact words were,

"Mommy, I mean, like, how could anyone even do that! That sucks!"

That does suck.

In any case, she wanted to make a difference and galvanize people to a new environmental consciousness. She wanted our mother to help her get people to start recycling and stop cutting down trees.

I had never been prouder of her.

Inspite of my pride and my agreement with her sentiments, I found myself telling her that her plan would never work. The sweepers have to survive somehow. They haven't the money for a gas stove nor can they afford to buy firewood. IIM is the only place where they can cut down trees for free and get away with it. Secondly, India is too set in its ways to ever change. The very school children who hold fairs on recycling awareness, casually discard chocolate wrappers from the windows of their school bus. The whole cause, is useless, said I.

I was shocked at myself. When did I, who always believed in the environmentalist cause, who believed in teaching by example, become so cynical? Was it when I tried and failed to get IIM to circumvent their construction plans around invaluable, forty-odd-year old trees? Was it when I tried and failed in the ninth standard to get the primary school to plant trees on the school campus in honour of World Environment Day? Was it the during the last four years, when I had repeatedly tried and failed to convince my siblings not to burst firecrackers on Diwali and not to use synthetic colours a.k.a. poisonous chemicals on Holi?

Where did my belief that the world could change leave me? When did the hope that a greener India was possible desert me?

Our Conversations

Me: Hiya
All: Hiii!
Vasudha: So in this Veytriyada Villaiada...
Me: So I was thinking....maybe we should try an eco-friendly diwali this year. No crackers, just lights...
Tara: Ai what this Arundhati is saying ya?
Aditi: Arundhati, we can't do all this Americaana things, OK? We are from India, not India-anna.
Tara: We are...1,2,3
Tara, Vasudha, Aditi: L-O-K-K-A-L!
Me: (weakly) OK...but let's just try and see..

(completely ignored)

Aditi: This Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bacchan have gotten off engaged you know?
Tara: Ya ya. Cha!

(enter Hema)

All: Hahi!
Tara: Wassup? Ai these Americaanas are here.
Hema: Boys suck.
All: ......
Hema: I have come to the conclusion that guys are just the worst creatures ever to have crawled out of the oceans.
Me: OK. Why?
Hema: They just do.

NOTE: Tara, Vasudha, Aditi, please excuse my abysmal tamil spellings.

After a Hard Four Months

I finally finished all my college applications!

I was about to delete all the essays I have so painstakingly (pain being the key word) written over the last four months before it occured to me that they would be an absolute waste if no one ever got to read them. So I've selected the best of them and posted them below. It might also give future college applicants from India an idea of what a typical college essay is like.

Cheers!

Write a book report on a book you recently read.

Feasting, Fasting

By Anita Desai

Anita Desai is one of the new generation of contemporary Indian writers who convey their stories in English. Born of an Indian father and German Mother, she conversed in German at home and in Hindi with friends and neighbors. She first learnt to write in English, and therefore, identifies it as “the language of books.” After graduating as a BA in English from Delhi University, Desai went on to become one of the world’s most celebrated authors.

Desai’s writing deals mostly with the feelings and intricacies of human relations rather than physical occurrences. She aims to reveal “the truth that is nine-tenths of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion we call ‘reality’.” Her largely feminist writings portray to perfection the hybridization of the west and east in India and western countries. Feasting, Fasting, nominated for the Booker Prize in 1999 has been written in the same vein.

Set in a small provincial town in mid-twentieth century North India, Feasting, Fasting follows the lives of Uma and her family. Middle-aged and bound to her parents in servitude by two marriages put to farce, Uma is no better than a servant in her own home. Blessed with the desire to learn and obey, but lacking in the capacity to perform, Uma is seen as a burden on the household. A failure in school, and later in the most important job of a woman, to make a good marriage, Uma lives her life chained to her family by spinsterhood, despised by her parents.

In stark contrast to Uma, her sister Aruna is gifted with brains, beauty and a good marriage to a fabulously handsome, rich and successful man. She thus fulfills her ambition and moves to Bombay, leaving her small town roots behind her.

“MamaPappa”, different in body but singular in thought and action, rule their little domestic kingdom with somnolent routine. Desai aptly demonstrates the relationship between a man and his household through Papa’s character. Papa is an established dictator. He controls his family with unquestioned and for the most part, unreasonable authority which stems from an all-consuming need to assert himself. This need for superiority pervades not only his domestic but his professional life as well. Mama, in her capacity as consort and mother of his son, performs her daily rituals of serving Papa tea and agrees with his every thought and action.

Arun, Papa’s asthmatic son and heir, is everything that Papa wished against in a son. Abhorrent of weakness in any form, Arun’s frailty and vegetarianism never fail to irk him. Nonetheless, Papa sets about to educate his son with the most rigorous of schedules and the best schools and tutors that money can buy. In effect, from the moment he is born, Arun’s life is chalked out for him by his expectant father. Oppressed by his family’s expectations, Arun longs for anonymity. Ultimately, he is pushed into the University of Massachusetts for further studies where he finally finds what he seeks.

During the summer break, when dorms are closed, Arun goes to live with the sister of a missionary’s wife from his home town. Desai here sheds light on the plight of women in the west and its startling similarities to that of their eastern sisters. Mrs. Patton, Arun’s kind host, trapped in the conformations of middle-class suburbia, finds relief in her friendship with Arun. In him, she finds an excuse to indulge in vegetarianism and escape from her family’s penchant for meat. Mr. Patton’s character can be identified as a western hybrid of Papa’s character. Mrs. Patton’s compliance with her husband’s ritual of making steak is reminiscent of Mama’s observance of Papa’s daily rites. Arun discovers, during his time with the Pattons, their daughter Melanie’s anorexia, a fact of which Mrs. Patton remains oblivious till the end of the summer.

Through Feasting, Fasting, Desai brings out the most disturbing aspects of female existence in feminist India; their lack of freedom and status as independent individuals. Uma, bound to her parents, Anamika, the brilliant cousin, broken in spirit and burnt to death by her cruel in-laws and even Mama, the embodiment of the Indian matron, all serve as illustrations of the plight of women in the east. Desai deals, in Arun’s character, with the pressure of Indian society on the male child to excel. Cornered by expectation on all sides, Arun turns into a recluse of sorts, shunning any semblance of intimacy. Through Papa’s character, Desai portrays to perfection, the mid-twentieth century upper-middle class man’s need to affirm his authority over his women-folk. To him, his home was his castle, his daughter’s were objects to be disposed of with inordinate sums of money in dowry and his sons, vehicles for the attainment of unfulfilled dreams. Desai sheds light on the similarities between the restrictions society places on women in the east and west in Mrs. Patton’s compliance with her husband’s habit of eating meat. She also brings out the prevalence of the problem of anorexia in the west through Melanie’s character. Disturbingly revealing, Feasting, Fasting can be compared in style and substance with period novels like Anna Karenina.

If you could pose for a formal oil portrait in the style of Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, what possessions would surround you and why?

If I were to pose for a formal oil portrait in the style of The Ambassadors, I would use the shelf to depict my present anchors and future aspirations. Therefore, the lower shelf would carry pictures of my friends, my school basketball jersey, my computer, displaying the first page of my blog (of which I am ridiculously proud) and perhaps a microscope (symbolizing my favorite haunt; the biology laboratory). On the lower shelf, I would display a stethoscope, an electron microscope and most definitely, the northwestern emblem.

What fictional character would you choose as your college roommate and why?

I think Sir Galahad Threepwood; the debonair, old youth from the Blandings series by P.G. Wodehouse would make an interesting roommate. He is unconventional, well-traveled and a gifted raconteur. I think he would be fun to spend time with. At the same time, I would be able to count on his help in a bind.

People tend to accept traditions blindly. Examine a commonly accepted tradition you think needs updating or changing. Why should it be changed and how would you change it?

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

- Voltaire

India has long been a country of startling socio-economic imbalances. On August 15th, 1947, India ceased to be a jewel in the British crown and became a nation in its own right. India’s leaders then swore that they would remove the wide imbalances in different sections of society and provide equal opportunities to the downtrodden; the women, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (the lowest of castes). Thus, the reservation policy or “quota” in public education and government jobs was born. It was to be a temporary measure to level the differences in education between different societal strata.

Sixty years on, the “quota” still persists, transformed from a remedial policy to an unshakeable tradition. Despite widespread protests and demonstrations, the federal government is now working on a bill requiring all National Universities to reserve close to fifty percent of their seats for people from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other designated backward classes, regardless of their financial or economic status. In India, admission into a reputed university depends on one’s rank in nation-wide entrance tests conducted for that university. The competition is stiff and selection cut-offs are extremely high. A fifty percent reservation means that the cut-off for candidates in the general (non-reserved) quota will become steeper, and the chances of a meritorious student receiving admission that he or she deserves will decrease significantly. Indeed, by implication, half of the nation’s best universities will be filled with “lesser-qualified” students, who gained entrance by virtue of their birth.

I am all for the upliftment of the backward classes. However, I don’t think that reservation at the university level, particularly a fifty percent reservation, is the way to achieve it. The reality is that most of the candidates who qualify as scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, are under-prepared for a university education due to a lack of a solid foundation at the primary school level. Even if reservation helped them gain admission, they often find themselves struggling in the classroom. To me, it would make more sense to implement the same reservation in the best schools, at the primary and secondary school level. That way, by the age of eighteen, they would be as competent as their general counterparts.

Moreover, the reservation quota has led to the formation of a scheduled elite; mainly rich politicians, whose children already have access to the best facilities India has to offer. Thus, its effect is neutralized as its benefits are availed by those who don’t need it. If the quota were to be modified so it was applicable only to those families whose yearly earnings lay below a certain income-level, it would, perhaps, serve its purpose.

India is a developing country, and at present, it needs a large pool of highly-qualified college graduates to help it along the road to development. Reservation in its best universities would simply push the nation into an era of reverse Darwinism.

In his book Having Everything Right: Essays of Place, Kim Stafford describes the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia assigning place-names based on the natural characteristics of a location, the events that took place there, or the feelings that the site instilled. "Where Salmon Gather," "Sound of Dripping Water," and "Where Dzo'noq!wa Cried Out Oh," were among the names the Kwakiutl people assigned to their surroundings. He'lade, translating to "Place Having Everything Right," was of particular meaning, as it was the name universally given to exceptional locations. What is your he'lade?

I held him as he died. My vision blurred as I tenderly pushed a fallen lock of hair out of his eyes. The music reached a crescendo and the curtain fell on scene two.

I love the theatre. I have never been educated in the theory behind the placement of actors or the interjection of color and light, but I love it nevertheless. Whether I fill the role of spectator or actor, the quick interplay of movement, dialogue and sound never fails to delight me. A well performed production is as graceful as a play in basketball. The guard screens the wing, the centre’s eyes dart left as she accelerates to the right and cross- passes to a streak of red racing towards the ring through a sea of green. To the beat of pounding shoes and a roaring crowd, the ball traverses a gentle arc and falls through the net with a ‘swish’. Curtain falls.
I love taking a story and converting prose to conversation, metaphor to music and imagery to movement. This year, I made my first foray into the abstract art of body theatre. Body theatre is a form of enactment that uses no props or costumes, and makes use of verse rather than conventional dialogue. The actors themselves serve as props. I wrote, directed and acted in such a play that revolves around a girl’s struggles with anorexia. What, as a story, might have been plebeian, or even boring, as a play can be spiced, diced and made interesting. Each scene, with the addition of such subtleties as the right music, lighting and collective movement, can be transformed into a single wave of emotion, which after gathering momentum, hits the audience with formidable force. As it was so aptly put by Eugene Ionesco, a well-known playwright, “Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.” The theatre is my he’lade.
For a while, when I stand before a crowd in the red sari of a milkmaid from Gujarat or the silken robes of a king, time stands still. For a time, I am truly a different person, someone who is never at a loss for words, who acts exactly how she feels and makes the entire crowd feel her pain, her joy and her laughter. After the cast has taken its bows and the curtain falls for the last time, the return to everyday reality comes as rather a shock. It seems a little like the world has suddenly changed from technicolor to black and white.
I have experienced exhilaration in many different contexts; the intense emotion of winning a championship game and the elation that comes with solving a complex sum in calculus. Nothing, however, can compare to the rush of adrenalin that knocks me into a different world when I’m standing on a stage in someone else’s shoes.

The remarkable citizens and numerous pathbreaking scholars who have been a part of our community – such as abolitionist Frederick Douglas, women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, and philanthropist Joseph C. Wilson – lead us to appreciate the importance of bringing together students from diverse backgrounds and origins. Describe aspects of your personal history that help you understand and appreciate diversity.

I was born a first generation American of Indian parentage in Baton Rouge, right on the edge of Cajun country. Raised on gumbo and the American public school gifted program, I saw myself as American and proud to be one. On an uncharacteristically cold day in fall, when our backyard was thickly carpeted with fallen pine cones, my parents informed me that our family would be moving to India at the end of the academic year.

I was from an ethnically diverse class in the US. Since pre-school, my class typically had a smattering of Asians amidst students of other races. My friends were people who inadvertently taught me world culture through everyday interactions. Six years later, my circle of friends remains as diverse as it ever was. Tara, Vasudha and Aditi together constitute the saambar (a popular tamil rice gravy) mafia. Though they live in Bangalore, their roots lie in Madras, the heart of Tamil country. Tamil phrases and euphemisms weave in and out of their conversation as melodiously as the crass cacophony of the crows that plague Madras. Pranav, Raghav, Avinash and Srinivas are the class’s resident Digs. They make it a matter of honour never to make a joke in any language but Kannada. Their staple diet is oopma (the deliciously spicy South Indian version of….grits!!) from the school canteen. Aishwarya, known otherwise as Lolakutti, hails from the beaches of Kerala. She was the one who introduced Kerala boat-racing music to me. All of my friends and classmates, who come from different states in India, each with a very distinctive culture, add their own unique flavor to our classroom, though they remain, without exception, jacketed in a thin layer of cosmopolitan suave.

I would be lying if I said that before moving to India I had never been exposed to Indian culture. My family made weekly visits to the temple and we had dinner parties with our other Indian friends. However, it was not until I came to Bangalore that I realized that what I had experienced was just a poor imitation of desi culture; a mere shadow of the original, cast against a backdrop of Americanism. More importantly, I realized that the Indian way of life in itself is infinitely more diverse than the Punjabi pop culture that it is largely perceived to be. Experiencing India first hand gave me the desire to learn more about different people and world culture.

I have, since my junior year, run a basketball camp for underprivileged children. I volunteered with Vikasana (a student-run social service organization), with the intention of teaching these children the skills that I was fortunate enough to have learnt. I ended up learning more from them than they could from me; lessons that extended well beyond the boundaries of the basketball court.

For the first time, I understood what a life of poverty in a third-world country is like. It doesn’t simply imply fewer meals and second-hand clothes. It means back-breaking manual labor at the age of ten to support one’s family. It means receiving an education at one of the government’s poorly run state board schools, provided one is not married off by one’s parents at a young age. It means living with ten other people in a ramshackle house in the city slums. The experience helped me gain perspective of my life. I realized how fortunate I was to have been born to educated parents and to have been provided with numerous opportunities to develop as an individual, many of which the children in my camp would never get. It taught me to stop taking things for granted and to make the most of the opportunities that present themselves.


Not only has my move from America to India exposed me to demographic diversity, but to a widely different approach to study. The American approach to learning is, I feel, more flexible. It gives one room for creativity. For example, in America, after reading Macbeth in class, an American teacher might assign an essay like this; “You are planning to murder the captain of your school’s football team. Explain why you chose to do so and how you would go about the deed with reference to the play you have read.” An Indian teacher would probably assign an essay like this; “Explain why and how Macbeth murdered Duncan.”

The Indian approach is rigid; answers must be written in the same format as taught in class. Any deviation in thought or expression is awarded no marks. Moreover, instead of the periodic quizzes I was used to in the US, the Indian system throws a great deal of information at you in a short period of time, on which you are tested at the end of the term. Therefore, students learn how to manage their time and study effectively; eliminating everything but the essential elements of their syllabi.

Exposure to both of these educational systems gave me useful skills. On the one hand, my years in an American school gave me my foundation in writing and taught me how to think out of the box. On the other, India taught me how to manage my time, and study efficiently.

I see myself as an amalgam of two widely different cultural elements. If their properties were to be plotted on an x-y-graph, then the x-axis would represent creativity, uniqueness and extra-curricular achievement and the y-axis, academic rigor, and ethnic diversity and understanding. In my opinion, an outstanding Indian student would lie at a point, say, (40,100) while an outstanding American student would lie at a point say (100,40). I would lie at the point (80,70); a balance between extra-curricular achievement and academics, a synthesis of the east and west.

Phagocytosis

After a grueling two weeks of unreasonably strenuous exams, it's nice to sit down and vent about something that has been bothering me for a long time.

McCormick and co. bought over MTR.

Simple enough on the face of it. Muliti-million dollar corporate giant buys over relatively small local leader in packaged foods. Amoeba engulfs food particle and grows. It's the way of the world and I understand it. In this case, however, it's a little difficult to accept.

Rooted though I am in the ideals of the free-market, it irks me that the US is slowly buying over India. It has already got a patent on Basmati Rice. Now, apparently, it has scored the Mavalli Tiffin Room. It bothers me that India is going through a cycle of events that in the past lead to the darkest period in its turbulent history. Perhaps I'm being a bit extreme, even irrational, but I cannot help but see a pattern. Could it be that the US, like it's European predecessors, will buy India and other developing countries and accrue a corporate empire that would equal or surpass the former Britannia? Could McCormick & co. be the twenty-first century East India Company?

I hope not.

Rejoice!

Rejoice! For the Lal's will finally have their vengeance. The Indian people shall finally see justice. Manu Sharma shall recieve his sentence tomorrow(probably a jail sentence, not hanging)!!

What say you? Should Sharma die?

Welcome to India :)

"Welcome to India" a parody by Mc Vikram and Luda Krishna
Adapted from "Welcome to Atlanta" by Ludacris.

Yaa, MC Vikram and Luda Krishna representing you,
That's right ... increase the volume please ... thank you.
Welcome to India, mango juices and lassi,
samosa crazy desisand little kids that are milking the bhainses.
Toothbrush in my pocket, what is that?
We use our fingers here to keep our teeth clean, who said that?
Luda Krishna here, Vikram owns the Tata gears,
and I'm sitting in the Maruti Supreme, with the cooling glass on no one bothers me.
because stars since the ever famous Mamooty.
Come with me to a place where we sip Frooties
and we eat the sweets while monkeys roam the streets.
Old uncle sits - big belly and very smelly (burp!)
Thank you Vikram, would you please pass the jelly
I mean the pickle, hand it down this way, no mistake.
We greet the people at the end of the day!
Sixty five people hanging out the door, sweat coming out the pores.
Therefore, please don't raise your hand, you are not sure.
I broke into the local corner-store,
bought myself a very nice looking carrom board.
My fingers get sore when I shoot and I score,
and the ladkis all scream coz they all want some more,
of the Luda Krishna and the Vikram MC,
Sweetest things to hit the States since Mango Chutney.
We keep the kundis shaking, you better trust me.
The name is Luda Krishna, but my friends call me thambi, what!? (burp!)
Ohhh, Vikram, is that you my friend?!
That is me my friend!
Oh, please enter this rap game!
Ok man! C'mon ... tell me where you are going my friend.
Welcome to India where the cows eat hay,
and we drive auto-rickshaws everyday,
Goat-meat, yummy sweets while monkeys roaming,
The roosters don't crow till five in the morning!
(2x)Now the kundis don't jiggle till I am rapping,
So please don't pass the gas when you are laughing.
Up the music charts like mango trees I climb,
With a smooth voice like mine, is it a crime
Representing rap music since ninety seven?
Rap maharaja, I don't work at 7-Eleven.
Throw your hands in the air if you've got facial hair,
Not just for the guys, c'mon ladies be fair!
I'm the MFCs most obvious player,
Wearing hot lungis, do you think I really care?
Monday night - computer club,
Tuesday night - at Akbaar rotary saying "Sweet thing, what is up?
"Wednesday - I'm out making Rupees
Thurday - On the lookout for Bharatnatyam queen
Friday - Everybody must know where I'm at,
coz I'm chilling on the field with my big cricket bat.
Saturday - my farts are breezy ... believe me,
so strong they will get you mad dizzy,
Sunday - Yaar, I cannot start weeping
because on Monday I will start the creeping .. Hallo!
Ohhhh ... I love that my friend!
Yaa dawg, that was funda-stic.
Hey thank you, you're fabulous!
Oh, thank you my friend!
Oh ...Welcome to India where the cows eat hay,
and we drive auto-rickshaws everyday,
Goat-meat, yummy sweets while monkeys roaming,
The roosters don't crow till five in the morning!
(2x)Oh, oh, Go Luda, go Luda.
Ah, its my b'day!
That is your b'day man!
Yaaaaah. You go boy!
Oh oh oh ... it's great!
Ah, Indian my friend.
Good night!
Alright, goodbye ... kiss my buttocks!!

Domestic Struggles

Gasp! November 11th? Has it been that long? The truth is that I have been drowning in the sands of wasted time. My own fault entirely.

The problem with a stainless steel plate is that it refuses to let you eat. It plays a cruel game of hard to get. As you lower your hand to tear off a piece of hot roti, it glints maliciously as it swivels away from you and comes to a stop right where your food is farthest from your hand. So you try to maneuver your hand, arm, body, chair, table and house in such a manner that you will be able to tear the roti on your stainless steel plate without it evading your every move. When this fails, you try to negotiate politely with it, offer reasonable terms for its co-operation during meals; a gentle, all-natural, lemon-scented cleaning liquid with anti-aging properties, its own personal rack in the kitchen pantry far away from all the ceramic riff-raff, a jaccuzzi. But all your offers fall to deaf ears. When temptation fails, you begin to threaten it; you will banish it to the puja room to live out its days in a thick, gooey paste of kumkum and sesame oil, or worse, you will give it to your little sister to use in her "indoor activities." But your ultimatums ellicit absolutely no response. Finally, you resort to underhanded methods. You cleverly pretend to be watching Grey's Anatomy, or reading about the antics of the revered CM and his progeny until your plate lets its guard down. Then you pounce. It doesn't work, believe me. The thair catori goes flying across the room, dal splatters all over the wall, pulav carpets the floor and the plate winks up at your stunned face in innocent amusement.

What then?

The wind has blown a sly calm over the sea.
The rays gently tinge the surface with gold.
It gives me a false sense of security.
For in my mind, the hawk still flies and the
regal grey wolf still serenades the moon.
Can my brave page have reached the shores of Neverland?

And yet in doubt, I must soldier on and
save for a rainy day. When the bomb is
dropped and in the rough lies not a diamond
but a slithering blue serpent....
What then?

The Old, The New

I am in a strupor...sooper...aargh..stupor. Self-imposed insomnia will do that to you.
Anyway, I thought I'd break away from tradition and put up a story that is strictly normal, though it is, in my opinion, one of the best I've ever written. I wrote it way back in the 9th standard, so it's a bit primitive. I think that contributes to its charm.



MADRAS MONSOON

It was the monsoon of ’73. It would have seemed to the beholder that a great hole in the sky had been unplugged through which buckets of water were pouring onto the streets of Madras. Thunder rolled overhead. Lightning flashed, illuminating the lone figure of Ramachandra Babu.

“Why me?” thought Ramachandra as he slowly squelched his way down 13th cross. Why was he not home, safe and warm, with his newspaper in front of him and a cup of hot coffee in his hand? Why wasn’t he at home in the front veranda with his wife fussing over him? Why was he the only person out on a Sunday evening in the torrential rain with an utterly inadequate broken umbrella ? “Life simply isn’t fair,” thought Ramachandra.

He trudged dismally onwards. Something small and dirty collided with him. Ramachandra staggered backwards with the impact and almost fell into a muddy gutter. He peered through the almost opaque sheet of rain and spotted a small, dirty, naked creature. The child just ignored him and rejoined a group of street urchins with whom he had been playing. They splashed around in the muddy gutter with screams of delight.

Ramachandra stopped for a moment to contemplate the simplicity of a child’s mind. Something as gross as a dirty gutter brought so much joy into a child’s world. The young mongrels reminded him so much of his own childhood. A time that seemed eons away ; before the responsibilities of adulthood had wrinkled his forehead.

A clap of thunder followed by another strong gust of wind broke his reverie. He took one last wistful look at the screaming children. With a sigh, he pulled his coat a little more securely around himself and took a firmer hold of his umbrella. Shivering, he continued to slowly plough his way through the muddy road.

Life has been surprisingly courteous to me over the past week. Nothing outrageous to report, nothing licentious to complain about. Infact, life at present is akin to a page full of .......s. But I'm not complaining.

I was recently alerted by a dear friend of the existence of a most intriguing and amusing piece of art.I hope to acquire it in the near future. If I do, I will be sure to put a picture up for all to see. Then I will proceed to dissect its many subtleties and tear them to shreds with entirely justified derision.

Can't wait!

Yours Truly

Something to think about, and hopefully do something about.

"Look at the cell phone. The phone has a little mineral in it called coltan. It is a capacitor that intensifies the energy that enables this little machine to send signals. Coltan is mainly mined in the eastern Congo, by thousands of people living and digging in the forest. They need meat. Therefore they eat gorillas and elephants. So your little cell phone helps kill gorillas. Then you had a cup of tea this morning. Somewhere rainforest is falling to plant more tea."


Source:
Interview with George B. Schaller, The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/23/stories/2006092305741100.htm

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

- M.K. Gandhi

In the Land of the Free

It seems to me, that our nation's leaders read the constitution. They read it and promptly tore it, threw the peices on the floor of their beloved parliament house and walked all over them.

Our wonderful government; the one that celebrates Rajyotsava day with great pomp and splendour every year, the one that sits in the shade of Kanteerava Stadium sipping nimbu paani and watches as primary school children sweat in the noon sun waiting to dance, sing and entertain for their majesty's pleasure; the very same government has now proposed to ban all Hindi and English songs from the radio.

In the land that we call Karnataka, the land of the free and the home of the Digs, plans to build new roads and to conserve the city's greenery never make it past the omnipresent line of shoe-throwing, pot-bellied hypocrites, but plans to remove all semblence of good music off the radio will. Without a doubt.

This really is the last straw. It is one thing to preserve our indigenous culture and language. It is another to tie us down and force it down our throats.

Forget infringement of fundamental rights. Prohibition of non-Kannada songs would force alot of successful radio stations out of business. RJ's are already leaving Bangalore for more liberal, and I dare say, more reasonable states. Economic opportunities for all?

Dude, you're off your rocker!

The Experiment of Life

Objective:
To cross the bottomless pit that leads straight to Hell.


Apparatus:
A single swinging rope hanging from an unknown part of the sky.


Theory:
At the bottom of the bottomless pit { :) } lies all manner of pain and ugliness. On the other side lies the closest thing one can find to happiness.

Note:For true happiness, one must give up one's material possesions and live the life of a buddhist monk with a shaved head, dressed in a saffron rag in a mud hut bang in the middle of the Siachen glacier.


Procedure:
1. Pray a little before you begin.
2.Stand 10 feet from the ledge of the bottomless pit.
3.Wait for the swinging rope to come as possible to the edge of the abyss.
4. Take a running leap and grab hold of the oscillating rope just as it begins to swing back to wherever the hell it came from.
5. Ride it safely to the other side.

Result:
Happiness and satisfaction...or the closest one can get to it without actually giving up one's Ferrari (see theory).

Precautions:
1. Time your leap such that you don't drop into the abyss thereby sentencing yourself to burn for all eternity.
2. Do nothing to stimulate the sweat glands during the duration of the journey.
3. Do NOT look down or to the northeast.

Note: To the northeast lies the entire cast of Baywatch Hawaii.

Sources of Error:
1. One may make the mistake of reading this experiment.

Interesting

..and quite funny actually. The following is an extract from an article in The Hindu online.

"Change is unceasing. I am told that the thumbs of modern children are evolving into ordinary fingers. As their speech reverts to grammar-free neanderthal grunts, their preferred form of communication is the text message, requiring a new digital dexterity. As we slither back down the evolutionary chain we would do well to know where we are heading."

- Simon Jenkins

Read the complete article here.

My life is crap.

Madness

Ah blogger, it has been too long.

What I am about to tell you may shock you. It may leave you stunned. It may cause your parasympathetic nervous system to overload and your cerebellum to capsize leaving you twitching helplessly on the floor. I find that in such cases, a strong cup of chocolate flavoured coffee helps.

When I boarded the tiny bus to Woody's, I was aware of the risk I was taking. To board the small school bus is to sign your own death warrant. The driver is mad. Every few seconds, you will see passengers bouncing off the walls and hanging from the roof by their ears. Your body will undergo a series of Gibb's energy changes leading to the superimposition of waves in the pericardial fluid. Essentially, your brain will shoot out of your ears and will be instantly devoured by the screaming kids.

Those kids are scary.

After spending 20 minutes in what I have come to believe is Dante's fifth circle of hell, we got down at Woody's. Interestingly, it was here that we concocted the worst drink the world has ever had the good fortune never to have tasted (I think there's something wrong with that sentence construction, but as I am presently high on sugar and coffee, I am unable to put my finger on it.) For those adventurous enough to try it, the recipe is as follows:

1 cup citric acid
3 spoons coffee (black)
2 spoons of panneer butter masala
1 cup coke(alternatively, one can use an equal quantity of common pesticide)
2 spoons thaingai chutney

Don't say you weren't warned.

....not one of my best posts..but give me some time. I'm out of shape.

A letter to the Taras

Voluntary warning out of good intentions and decaying logical sequences:
The following matter may be innapropriate for children, the aged, those suffering from unmitigated nasal discharge and anyone whose name is Ugranarasimha Veeralakshminarayana Bin Tughlaq. Dirty supervision is recommended.

Hail oh alpha tambrahms!

I give you much thanks for your highly enlightening medium of communication which in all its insipid glory has thrown to light new vistas of hopelessness in the complex nature of our existences.

Why yes, I did get the point, which may or may not exist, and which by following logical thought (whose own definition remains unclear), proves that our existences as complex or abstract beings is in question. Ah...the infinitely confusing and rather boring depths of existentialism. It has driven the best of us mad. Infact, just this morning, a certain person A was going into involuntary spasms over the fact that her economy-sized ego consisted entirely of displacement reactions.

I seem to be rambling, which is definitely a good thing because it leaves my mind with infinite potential to focus. That I am currently not actually focussing on anything of note is besides the point(which may or may not exist).

From your confused, slightly crazy friend,
At a cerebral frequency of 435643 Hz,

Dhadi