Friday, October 29, 2004

Surrender to Minister of State for External Affairs

This man is priceless...


1. What is your observation about the
situation in Palestine?

The Palestinians are going through a lot of
hardship and a very difficult situation.

2. What has India gained so far
strategically from its pro-Palestine policy?

Why do you think in those terms? We have a policy
and we follow that policy.

3. You have been quoted in newspapers as
saying that you will take this issue up with the Israeli government.

I did not say anything like that. Somebody asked
me, so I said that whenever I happen to see an Israeli leader, I will definitely
raise this issue.

4.Is your meeting going to make an impact
on the politics and the situation there?

That you have to say. Why should I say?

5. Five million Indians are working in Arab
countries. Are Arabs allowing them to work there only for benefit? It is because of the emotional and cultural relations we have had with them.


ROTFL.... god save india.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

These desis are crazy....

Had been to a Patel restaurant in Palo Alto with a bengali guy from HP. The owners were a friendly couple, and the food was reasonably priced too, just that the owner refused to give a bill for the groceries bought...

The owner guy was intolerably garrulous, and it looked like his primary interest in life was collecting demographic info from the customers.

'Where are you from?' - Patel
'India' - me
'Arre bhai... where in india?' - Patel
'Madras' - me
'Calcutta' - Bong guy
'Where are u from?' - me
'I am an Indian!' - retorted the Patel, with a proud smile....
'Whatever part we are from, we are still Indians, arent we?' - Patel mama...
'Suno Kanta... Get some water.. fast...' - Patel.... for i had fainted....


Another incident involved the shuttle driver from the hotel where i was put up. First day of stay....

'Good morning... How are you?' - driver
'Fine. Thank you.. how are you?' - the solicitous me...
'Fine. thank you.. Where do you want to go?' - driver in thick spanish english.
Gave him the name and address of the company....
'So, my friend.. where are you from?' - driver.
'India' - me
'Oh, India.... Heard that its a very good place.. I know lots of people from India' - driver.
'Is it...very good...' - me
After a pregnant pause, the driver queried....
'Is India the same as Fiji'.....

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Karmic Tithes

An attempt at science fiction...

The year : 2032
The place: Hellas Impact Basin, Mars.

As Arvindhakshan Venkatakrishnan Pandurangan, aka Vishy peered out through his stereoscopic visors, he wasnt able to supress a moan of disappointment that emanated from the deepest reaches of his constipated bowels.

In front of him lay sprawled Mars, in all the splendour that an ailing 4.5 billion year old planet could possibly muster, and it did a pretty commendable job at that. The steep walls of the impact basin towering 5 kms above the stereoscopic visors dominated the alien martian landscape. The walls gave an impression of having been thrust out upwards by some colossal force of nature in so short a time that it didnt have time to think of an ergonomical design that would have made this place the mecca for lifetime members of Ameteur Mountaineers of Central Kentucky... Anyway, thats a long time from now... Indeed, it was so...Vishy was standing at the bottom of the Hellenic impact crater, a 1600kms wide and 5kms deep crater formed by some freak meteor that just couldnt stick to its orbit.

The only thing unalien about the place was a transcendental feeling of insignificance that one experienced when faced with something as unsurmountable as the walls of the largest impact crater in the solar system, a feeling perhaps not very different from the marked sense of utter incomprehension that struck Vishy right on the face and other protruding parts of his anatomy the day he found a pair of triped Agnoiologists from the twin star planetary system of Zygota.

A martian sunset is a breathtaking spectacle, breathtaking enough to offset the queasiness that a claustrophobic environment like a spacesuit can bring upon a clogged oesophagus. The distant sun was gradually obscured by dust, creating a silver blue halo against the salmon pink martian sky. As the last fading rays of light fell on the iron-rich clay soil, the surface gave an impression of being caramel, burnt ember, ochre , butterscotch, tarnished silver, rust and a number of other subtle shades all at the same time. As these rays bounced off the thin layer of carbon dioxide ice that clung to the rocks, the result was that of an eerie phosphoroscence that gave an almost aetherial atmosphere to the whole place. Even the most morbid sentient entity from the remotest corners of Necros cluster would stop for a couple of minutes to admire the beauty, before returning to what is eulogised in their "Sacred Book of Necrophilia", that being sulking.

Vishy couldnt stand it any longer.

'Why... why me?' he muttered under his breath, and looked up at the sky in the general direction of earth, and let out a long deep sigh, unaware of the fact that his sigh missed the earth completely by approximately half the sky, and was wasted on Alpha Centuari. His gaze then shifted to the bright yellow spaceship that looked like a hundiyal in tirupathi devasthanam...its incongruity couldnt have been any starker. He thought of his crew mates back in the ship who were sweating it out on this uncompromising alien world. His whole frame suffused with a warm feeling of assurance brought about by the knowledge that Bob Marlin, Lisa Tyler and Anna Konstantinova were in the ship and carefully monitoring his every move, while simulataneously gathering mission-critical information to beam it back to earth as soon as the earth comes out from the other side of the sun.

He could almost picture Anna's delicate heinies rippling with excitement as she bent over to examine martian soil for possible signs of life, Bob poring over the communication charts and Lisa in the communication room, talking to him...

Something struck Vishy as being strange... If Lisa is in the communication room talking to him and guiding him, why hasnt he heard from her for the last half an hour... It was panic's turn to suffuse his entire frame... He could almost picture bug-eyed green men with immobilisers attached to their noses invading the spaceship... He was able to smell scorched russian flesh as wave after wave of neutron beams bombarded Anna's heines, instantly vapourising her.

'This is too good to be true' thought Vishy, refusing to indulge himself in such delusions of bliss...Thinking back, he couldnt remember the last conversation after the trio had literally pushed him out of the spaceship.

To be continued....

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Revelation....

A huge surrender to the superorganism called society... Realised that fighting against being a part of the superorganism is, inane at worst, and in the best case, a mere delusion... There goes another of my home-brewn theories...

I have a holistic view of the society, and i believe that society is a very adaptive superorganism. And its adaptation is as a result of the individuals who shape the society. In one of those typical sweeping generalisations, i divide people into three categories :

  1. those who truly contribute and hence are the essentially that part of society that makes it adaptive

  2. parasites like me, who do not contribute anything, but only exist only to benefit from the society

  3. hypocratic parasites - the worst of the lot. look
    here for more about them
    .


Falling into the second category was a conscious choice, and i was naive enough to assume that i am not a part of the society and that i dont belong...

And i was wrong... The solution is unbelievably elegant... Every system has two types of forces acting on it - one trying to balance the system, and the other trying to unbalance it(remember matrix)... The system is held in equilibrium by the constant interaction of these two forces... The balancing force has no reason to exist, but for its purpose to counter the unbalancing force...

Not only did i realise that i was a part of the unbalancing force, but also that i, rather my kind holds a central place in the working of the superorganism... The more you try to resist it, the more the balancing forces act to supress you, making the society stronger....

Ayn Rand was wrong, Sartre was wrong... Individualism is a delusion, more ironically, individualism in one person feeds the growth of uniformity and mediocrity among others... Nothing wrong in this... This mediocrity is the reason why we still exist...

I can no longer frown at people whose sole aim in life is to get married, get a house, have a family and die... I owe the luxury of being what i am to these people... yet, i choose to frown and smirk... cos i love unbalancing... thats my purpose

:)

Vernacular angst

நான் எனது தாய் மொழியில் சிந்திக்கும் திறனை இழந்து விட்டேன். வருந்தத்தக்க நிலமை...

தமிழ் ஐயாவுக்கு பெருமை சேர்க்கும் மாணவ மணிகளில் நானும் ஒருவன். :(

P.S: You need Arial Unicode MS font for viewing pleasure.

Monday, October 18, 2004

Hindu gods on sandals

"The West has no idea about what they are encashing upon, for they do not realise the true value of our divine heritage and cultural ethos," sums up Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.


ROTFL


Dont live in the past, you morons... what was cultral ethos, is now cultural pathos... perhaps worse...

You arent worried about the fact that a lot of states still havent reached replacement levels of fertility, instead you accuse that muslims growth rate is higher; you arent worried that while 3 states contribute to 80% of your GDP, the rest of them act as parasites, instead you pour money into bottomless pits like bihar and UP; you arent worried that schools here offer zero scope for self-thought and that India cannot have a home-grown physics genius, unless they study abroad, instead you choose to fight between commie version of history and saffron version of histroy...

And you are agitated that some arbit guy is has a ganesha photo in his underwear... You guys are amusing, to say the least...
Is life about being happy with life, or being happy with what you are?

To a lot of people, there is no perceptible distinction... lucky ones...

If the answer is the first option, then, i have failed miserably... On the other hand, if it is the second option, I JUST ROCK... not MJ kind of rock... but the ozzy kind of rock...

Friday, October 15, 2004

Am in the process of shedding my passive hypocrisy, have been feeling good about it... till now... almost lost a good friendship... dont know if it can be salvaged... but what the heck... not that i dont care, but... whatever....

Will someone out there please crawl up behind my back, kick my ass brutally, strangle me and whisper gently "Bastard, get a life!"... I'll even pretend as if i didnt notice u until its too late...

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

I am moving to the City of Dis

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished me to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:
LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)High



Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis

You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell.


:) These small pleasures make your life liveable

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Life of a coffeesattva

The coffeesattva, on the lines of bodhisattva, is translated literally as "one whose essence is perfect coffee" or "one destined for caffeine addiction."

Picture 023

This, is the ultimate expression of a craving human soul; this is what i work for day in and day out; this is the reason why life is liveable - this is COFFEE... shot in the coffee estates of coorg..

The most depressing thing about nature is its inconsistency.... Unlike drainages that smell of drainage, coffee estates dont smell of coffee... there is no universal law that applies to everything... Nature sometimes behaves like a person who applies clotrimazole powder over his lungi when his neighbour's cow is in heat...

You dont see a connection, do you? Thats precisely what i mean when i say it is illogical...

Some tangential points...
1. Caffeine withdrawal is a genuine "mental disorder," according to the study, which was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

2. "When people don't get their usual dose, they can suffer a range of withdrawal symptoms, including headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating. They may even feel like they have the flu"

But the clotrimazole is worth it...

Monday, October 04, 2004

Acta est fabula (Its all over)

I can rest in peace now...

A part of my not-so vapid past life- one from the pre-realisation days used to come occasionally to haunt me, despite the fact that it amounted to nothing but a few incidents of typical adolescent misinterpretations, though i would like to claim otherwise, the denoument of which triggered the realisation that i was probably over-reacting and purged the sense of guilt, or whatever was left of it...

Acta est fabula