Perseverance
Here in delhi
We shall with more successful hope resolve
to fight by guile or force eternal war
against our iredeemable foe
who now sole reigning holds
The tyranny of Heaven
June 27th, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
Saturday
Saturday
Saturday evening.
Sitting at a pizza parlour with Ashok.
Menu.
Pizza. One large mushroom, small chicken.
Chicken. The tool of the south indian iyer/iyengar rebel. This generation is certainly enjoying it’s rebellion, but that’s a different issue.
Rebel.
As conservative Tamil iyers we have forgotten what it means. Great to see it happen again. Or believe that it happens.
I want to believe.
Talk.
Of marriage. Girls. The pizza.
A sign of our growing up. A year back it would have been about MBA, business proposals, music, or bikes. Today it’s marriage.
Marriage.
Where do we stand? What’s our stand? Or more importantly where we don’t. All drunk over half a glass of Pepsi. Dark red, it seems Pepsi would like us to believe that Pepsi looks like red handsome rich scotch whiskey.
I want to believe
Whiskey gives you a high before it kills you. Pepsi limits itself to a small burp.
I’d rather have the high.
I want to believe
Smoking Joe’s.
Ashok is singing “Smells like Teen Spirit”. The conservative stereotyped rebel. We talk on about life, it’s issues, pontificate and indulge in a little ego flashing. Garlic bread arrives. Smoking Joe’s is serving thin crust. It’s a small joint. They would like us to believe it’s a family outing to eat pizzas, pizzas actually qualify as food by itself, and the garlic bread, with the cheese on top, is indicative that the pizza is magnificent. Old chap with glasses who probably owns the place. Nice team. I wish him well. He bobs his head. It’s still not a roaringly good place, though Ashok thinks the yellow stick it notes, pasted there seem to indicate business is picking up. A lot of yellow there. I ask him to check out the handwriting.
I want to believe
Pizza is served. Hot. Nice. Beautiful. Rich with a large layering of cheese on top. 20 laps more tomorrow, bringing the total to a whopping 110. Let’s see. Can I do it?
I want to believe
We talk.
I have a nice predictive model of marriage. Ashok’s getting married in 3 years I tell him. ‘Poda baadu’, he says. I am willing to bet on my model. It’s simple.
There are only two factors involved.
Ashok’s boredom.
Ashok’s postgraduation.
Ashok is going to be bored once he gets a job. In college he has the time to pick a thousand interesting hobbies, and the surety that he can pursue them to his own satisfaction, and at the end blame his profs. for his bad degree.
No such safety net in real life.
He picks a job, the onus is on him to ensure he likes it.
The first six months I told him he will booze. He will start learning a foreign language. He will play tennis. He will enjoy his job. He will read.
The next six months he will drop his tennis, or his foreign language, and the booze. Rebellion calls for a constant reinnovation. A mindless pursuit.
The books he read will seem to repeat the same stuff over and over again.
The next six months he will travel.
He will do all the same things he did six months before in new places.
Maybe Pune. Maybe Philadelphia. Maybe Peurto Rico.
Discuss the booze in Philadelphia…
“Illa da machi. I was in Orgeon and we were having sarakku under the stars. God! How beautiful”…
Then he will come back to his appartment block.
Open doors to empty rooms.
He will get bored.
Ashok’s postgraduation.
One item less on the checklist of devout parents.
One item more on the list of possible father in laws.
Interesting byproduct.
How do you best describe a person, a girl or a boy.
IIT. IIM. Fair. 5ft. 10 inches. Bardhawaja gothram. Hindu. South Indian. Tamil. Iyer.
Right.
or.
B.sc.(Chem) with Honours. 5 ft. 6 inches. Kashyapa gothram. Hindu. South Indian. Tamil. Iyer.
Ouch!
My bank manager with whom I spend about 5 minutes every year, asks me for a lot more information.
And we are all going to spend our time with guys/girls based on a description of our characteristics in a hundred words.
But till the time this ad is published our parents would like us to believe we are on a lifelong vow of celibacy.
Ouch!
Funny thing about these ads. The first thing that’s published is the IIT/IIM bit. I am what re. Where are those patrons of social commentary. Alas, asleep or commenting on the state of Surjit Singh Barnala’s beard.
Ashok has now one less reason to quote against being married.
He has a snowball’s chance of hell of resisting it. My model predicts that in a year or two he will be married.
Whether he likes it or not.
Pizza over.
We are walking out.
Ashok’s his usual bluff self.
“No machan. I will resist it man. Anyway I don’t want to”
I want to believe.
June 13th, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
Friday
Friday.
Time for change.
When a million people leave behind their drab whites, lipid lily coloured shirts, dark pants and spring for change. Red shirts make their appearance. Girls who till today decided to preserve an extreme ethinicity by only wearing salwar, decide to wear t-shirts, jeans, pants, tops, and the odd dab of lipstick.
Friday.
Time for change.
Men appear in their t-shirts. Black with the casual monogram on their chest. Emblazoned. Adidas, Reebok, the inverted Boomerang. Faded Blue Jeans. Flying Machine is of course hep. Black belts, and spotless white sneakers. They have never been run in. Sports watches sport on the forearms that till day bore only the steel metal of Tag Heurs, or the leather straps of Titan. Chests are highers, and so are spirits. More laughter, a relaxation, a casualness.
Friday.
A time for change.
A more gracious spurt of the accelerator, on the bikes. More smiles, more plans, more dreams. For two days. Brief reprieve, for fun. For dreams. for belief. A stretching of the neck, a relaxed lunch hour. Days draw to a close. A visit. Excitement. Talk to clients. Goodbyes said.
Friday.
A time for change.
Forms filled, goodbyes said, plans made, parties fed, a spurt. to start off two days that have mysteriously appeared, like good fortune. movies dreamt of, cassetes listened. Stretching of arms, and even of legs. Ice creams eaten, a concept of fun. Pizzas ever more, so too idlis and dosas. Shopping done. Then a warm bed.
Friday.
A time for change
To sleep, to dream, to have, to be. to change.
Friday.
A time for change
June 11th, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
harry potter and the curse of the long tall bicycles
It’s 5 in the evening and I am sitting on my bike, a kilometer or perhaps a kilometer and a half from the theater where a friend of mine is waiting, errr… jumping up and down angrily and waving two tickets to Harry Potter and the Whatever, that he claims, he got at terrific expense, and expressing a heartfelt desire to murder me because it’s fifteen minutes since the movie started and I am still here, a kilometer or a half away from the theater, where he is waiting.
Which brings us to the question:
Why am I waiting here like a dweeb sitting on my bike when my friend is alas there?
The reason is that a small traffic signal has apparently gone and drunk a quarter of Smirnoff, with the result that it’s flashing randomly and green stays on only for half a second.
The good citizens of Chennai tiring of this, decided to take matters into their own hands and now there is a complete snarl here, and I am sitting here and thinking some bright and entertaining thoughts.
1) Harry Potter is a dweeb. forget that. Any kid who just by looking like a nerd, and acting like one can get studios to give him millions of bucks and impressionable and beautiful young school girls to fall madly in love with him deserves to be my role model. I mean I was a nerd in school, college and am still a nerd in office, but pretty females hardly pause to take a look at me, and continue to deny my existence. But then I have had 18 years to get used to it, so it doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t hurt at all.
What hurts though, is the continued refusal by movie studios to acknowledge my existence. C’mon! I am as good, or even better than any magician who ever swung a staff full of the gonads of a unicorn, the kidneys of a phoneix, and the gall bladder of a very irate headmaster, or who said “Avada Kedavara”, to a spider. I mean I look glasses, teeth and a very large scar mark from a spider to whom I said “Avada Kedavara” (Shelob she was called, I believe), but they still refuse to look at me. Come on Warner Brothers, here I am your quintessential nerd.
But they refuse.
Such, is life.
2) Indian cyclists are asinine assholes. Seriously. I mean, which section of the populace would otherwise go and buy cycles that are atleast 2 feet too tall for them. But Indian cyclists do. They go and buy TI cycles which are standard green paint 6 foot tall, wire brake affairs. Attach wide-screen 70 mm rearview mirrors, two carriers, one in front one behind to them, and then have trouble getting onto the bikes in the first place. For instance, this chap before me, he is about 5 feet four inches tall, and is trying to clamber onto this 6 foot tall bicycle. He is attempting this by tilting the cycle at 30 degrees to the road, and then inserting one leg through the frame, and waiting for the sozzled signal to turn green, when he will just push off, and hope to right himself. I would feel right and nice about this, only he has his wife on his rear carrier, and she is still sitting there, feet dangling and tilted at an angle of 30 degrees to the road herself. Hell, they are not the only ones. Everywhere I look I see these guys, all on their bottle green cycles, looking like a set of dimunitive Potters, trying to mount some Speedfire broomstick. I mean don’t they reason, don’t they think of things before they actually go and buy these 6 foot tall bicycles. Why is it that India is cursed by these 6 foot cycles, that makes the life of a Indian cyclist and all other road user’s miserable, and why is it, that the average Indian is so besotted by it. Who shall come and rescue Indians from this plight. Harry Potter?….
3) When is Harry Potter actually going to discover Britney Spears. I won’t say she is magical. God Forbid! But seeing that every teenager in Britain, and elsewhere can’t seem to spend two minutes without being shown a Britney commercial, which involves 30 seconds of seeing Briteny do quite a few odd things to herself with the aid of a Coke/Pepsi bottle, and a ten minute assertion by Coke/Pepsi, that Britney is coming closer to you, and the eventual promise that by drinking lots of coke/pepsi you could eventually be the bottle with which Britney does odd things to herself with, I mean, it seems quite impossible that Harry Potter could have missed out. Where is he anyway. Magical Land? Rowling, aren’t you interested in sexually liberating your boy wizard….
Meanwhile Harry Potter, we here in India need you very badly. Our long heritage of being a nation full of mystics, seers, sword swallowers, and ouiled nail dancers, has been eroded by a deeply vituperative program of rationalness, though as a resistance effort we have not given up our practice of producing inebirated signal posts. Come Master Potter, and save India from the curse of the long tall bicycles, and we promise you that TI will reward you rich and handsomely by liberating you from the monastic influences of Rowling, and eventually helping you achieve your full potential by becoming the Pepsi bottle favoured by Britney Spears.
June 10th, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
Quote of the Day
I suppose that during my marriage, my wife in a rather symbolic gesture, would walk through the fire, rather than around it. Means to say something I think.
June 7th, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments