The remaining five

Okay, so here are the remaining five, typed in from a public wifi at a busy train station (Work related travel, what can one do?). And to satisfy Falstaff, I'm including a couple of classical pieces that are (to me) big turn ons. In no particular order again:

1. Besame Mucho
Its sung by everybody and their grandmother. And that includes an extremely drunken me, in a karaoke bar in NYC, only to be booed of by the crowd. Sigh. The world has no appreciation for talent.
Anyway, I prefer the original spanish song by Luis Miguel, but you are free to like any version - the beatles, frank sinatra, dean martin, mangatraam paanwaala - whatever. All of them are beautiful in their own way. Except for the one by Swedish death metal band Necrophobic. Relax, just kidding. There is no such version.

2. Bolero, Maurice Ravel
Surprised again? It's all about the hypnotic tempo and the build-up. Originally intended by Ravel to be staged as a ballet, this has become an orchestral piece over the years. I love the way the melody passes from instrument to instrument, gradually adding up to the crescendo in a way that is almost reminiscent of a frenzied lovemaking session.

3. Baby its cold outside, Esther Williams & Ricardo Montalban/Bing Crosby/Dean Martin.
I know there is a version by Rod Stewart. But I don't seriously expect any of you to be Rod Stewart fans, and I pretty much hate his guts. Hence I'm not mentioning him here. Wait. I just did! Whatever.
This song was originally written and recorded for the 1949 movie, "Neptune's Daughter", i find the playfulness very sensual. The movie is a really nice comedy. And gosh do her lips look delicious!
" i really i cant stay
(but baby its cold outside)
ive got to go away
(but baby its cold outside)"

4. Prelude and liebestod, "Tristan and Isolde", Wagner
Tristan and Isolde was the quintessential middle age romantic story, but as an opera it was considered revolutionary for Wagners use of lietmotifs. This piece (liebestod = 'love-death'), is romantic, soft and warm, in an extended foreplay-like way. And, it is incredibly long, which, again, reinforces that analogy.

5. "I put a spell on you", Nina Simone/CCR
I have been unable to decide which version of this song is more sensual, so I have included both.

"I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine
You’re mine"

The one thing that strikes me about this song is the single minded obsession with the loved one it embodies, an obsession that most people except for die-hard romantics are incapable of. But, again, play this song and you have magic.

I have been eating chips and salsa all night...

Another list

I have a much stronger emotional to response to music than I believe is normal. There are musical pieces that will drive me to despair in the happiest of moods, and others that elevate me when I'm miserable. Music elicits every concievable reaction from me - from sorrow to outright laughter. It makes me contemplative, it makes me disdainful - in some ways it is almost like a remote control to my emotional state, putting me in charge of something that is otherwise beyond my control.

The other day, someone asked me which musical pieces I found sensual. I could come up with only a few on the spur of the moment, because it takes time to come up with well thought out list. So anyway, here are the first five. The next five coming up in a few days. The list does not include any Indian music, for now. I'll come up with another list for Indian music.


1. "Tear Drop", Massive Attack:

A song with a hypnotic and extremely sensual beat, that starts off with the somewhat puzzling and at the same time erotic lyrics

"Love, Love is a verb,
Love is a doing word,
Feathers on my breath.
Gentle impulsion,
Shakes me makes me higher,
Feathers on my breath"

Massive Attack is a british modern rock group that fuse together elements of modern rock and commercial pop - powerpop if you may. 'Tear Drop' came out with their widely acclaimed album Mezzanine (1998).If you've watched the video ever, you'll remember this song - it featured a fetus singing. Also my favorite Massive Attack song.

2. "Sara", Fleetwood Mac.

Fleetwood Mac have been around since forever (1967-current), and they have, rather successfully, covered the ground from pop to rock to blues. It is difficult to classify "Sara". I actually have some unpleasant memories of this song - the first time i heard this song was at a party where I was one of the few single people around, and when this song started, i loved it. But pretty soon, I realised that the song had caused all the couples around to snuggle up, leaving me clutching my drink and staring uncomfortably at the ceiling.

"Drowning,
In the Sea of Love
Where everyone
would love to drown"

As sensual numbers go, this is way up there. There are several versions of this song floating around. The best is the original 7 minute version from the album 'Tusk' (1979). The same version features in the Greatest Hits collections of Fleetwood Mac. The live versions are good, but not quite there.

3. "Miracles", Jefferson Airplane/Starship.

I have always considered Jefferson Airplane to be amongst the more mellow of the early druggie rock groups. "Miracles" from the 1975 album 'Red Octopus' probably symbolises this mellowness. The song is a rather explicit and somewhat longish piece, that essentially starts off with foreplay and ends with a climax. The kind of song that *will* turn anybody on.

" I feel like swirling and dancin'
Whenever you're walking with me
You ripple like a river when I touch you
When I pluck your body like a string "


4. "Bewitched", Ella Fitzgerald
Written by hit musical duo Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, this song was in the 1940 musical 'Pal Joey'. Ella's rendition of the song is an incredibly erotic piece of vocal jazz. Her warm voice and the alliterative rhyming that characterizes the Rodgers and Hart style make for a great combination.

"I'm wild again. Beguiled again.
A simpering, whimpering child again.
Bewitched.
Bothered and Bewildered.
Am I"

5. "Kashmir", Led Zeppelin.
I'm not going to go into introducing you to Kashmir, since almost everybody has heard it.
And I am sure you are surprised to see it in this list.
But think about it. Think of the hypnotic and suggestive beat. The way it gets progressively frenzied, the way it builds up. The almost orgasmic "Ooh-yeah, Ooh yeah" towards the end. Kashmir is (and trust me on this one) one of the greatest songs that you can play while you are at 'it'.

Five more coming up tomorrow, and that will be followed by another list consisting entirely of Indian music.

No sympathy for the devil

This post originally started as a comment on Falstaff's blog. And precisely when I hit the submit button (after duly entering in an inordinately long word for the sake of verification) blogger chose to go down, and this was left unsaid.

While I agree that the Rolling Stones was one of the greatest rock bands ever, I am a bit leery of nostalgic characterizations of all bands from that generation as revolutionary. As a rock and roll band, the Stones were pretty mainstream, and my belief is that bands like the Stones had it easy by piggybacking along the backs of a social movement that started during the euphoric years when the post war generation grew up. As a band, I do not think their music was all that inspirational.

The history of rock and roll (and of music in general) has been of breakaway movements that got assimilated into the mainstream, and typically bands that chose to so sell out are the ones that saw commercial success and are remembered with nostalgia. Those that 'stayed true' (such as VU in the '60s, or Sonic Youth from the '80s onwards) remain quite obscure, apart from a small core of fans that truly appreciate what they were worth. It was these bands that had the greatest degree of influence of what was to come. The Velvet Underground was the inspiration for the punk and new wave movements in the seventies and early eighties. Sonic Youth has influenced almost every genre of alternative rock (which, arguably, has become quite 'mainstream') over the last twenty years, while still remaining relatively obscure. Or we could take the example of the Pixies, who were the precursors of grunge and heavily inspired bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the likes. It is the latter that have had a lot of commercial success and will be remembered as symbolizing that genre of music years from now.

The closest analogy to the Stones that comes to my mind is that of Nirvana, which having been heavily influenced by the alternative scene of the time, went on to become one of the most popular rock bands of our times. Nirvana will be remembered with nostalgia, but they will never have the kind of influence that bands like SY and the Pixies will have on subsequent cultural movements in music.

Pictures that are worth a thousand numbers

Years ago when I held a *real* job, I had to deal with a MS application that I hated with a passion. Widely used by corporate types, bankers, consultants and techies alike, it has become ubiquitous in the *real* world. Yes I am referring to powerpoint, a piece of software that, to me, is the strongest piece of evidence that Bill Gates plans to take over the world through mind control -by making us stupid and by diminishing our mental abilities till we are capable of digesting only pre-processed information fed to our feeble brains in the form of pictures, charts and five bullet point slides.

So you can understand that much happiness happened when I discovered powerpoint is rarely used in my current professional community. I thought, and rather self importantly too, that it had something to do with the (supposedly) intellectual nature of my profession. After all, I reasoned, if intellect is a significant determinant of your success, you are hardly likely to be interested in reducing complex analyses to bite-sized bits of information.

Recently, something occured that challenged this notion of mine, and has led me to believe that *ahem* information asymmetry, rather that intellectual pride, could be the reason for not seeing too much powerpointing around here.

It all started because some research of mine involved a lot of collaborative interaction with a corporate entity. This required me to discuss the findings with both individuals from the entity (lets call them, without any pejorative intent, the 'duhs') and my colleagues (the 'blahs') in two separate presentations.

I prepared two distinct documents for the meetings. The first one, done as all respectable blah documents are done, was prepared using LaTex. It looked something like the schematic to the left. All the intricacies of both the formulation and the analysis laid bare open for the sake of blah peer review!

I spent a few hours and Latexed like i had never Latexed before, discovering new .sty files and packages and writing new \define statements with impunity, all the while boldly going where few blahs had gone before. I was happy with myself at the end of it.

The other document was meant for the duhs. It looked something like this image here to the right, and i need say nothing more than that a picture is worth a thousand words (and that phrase applies here twice, if you get my drift.)

Needless to say, there was a mixup, and it was copies of this document that were sent across to the blahs. On the day of the presentation, I arrived, armed with the original document, and started the talk, when I noticed disappointed looks from the audience.

"Your handouts don't match your slides", a senior blah in the audience complained.

Realizing the error, I started apologizing furiously, when I was interrupted with a, "Don't apologize, we'd rather have the handouts than what you are presenting", from another senior blah.

"How exactly *did* you do this?"

"Er... Powerpoint", I said meekly.

"You can *do* all these things in Powerpoint? I didnt know it was so powerful. It looks very impressive. What do all of you think?"-he looked around quizzically.

I looked around and realized that all the blahs in the room was nodding their heads. I could barely suppress a groan.

A Room with a View

Those of you who know what we do for a living (and are in similar situations in life) will be pleased to note that we recently moved offices to a room with a window. For the moment let us abuse our notation a little bit and loosely use that term for a smallish hole in the wall that lets you see outside. Gone are the days when we had to look at a clock to figure out if it was day or night. Yes sirree, we know by the light that streams in through our window.

My window (said in the same tone as 'My precious') is triangular - a right angled triangle with a convex hypoteneuse. Convex - oh, how i love that word. It brings to mind convex graphs and convex sets and other such words. I occasionally use them to show how real-analytically-proficient i am.

It opens onto a view of another building - a building with red walls that happens to be a library. There isnt too much of a view of anything else - if you really strain, you can make out what appears to be the sky. And you can catch glimpses of a path between our two buildings. Not that open skies and such things have any use for us. Countless nights spent in the cell-like environments of the big room aka the bat-cave aka the fountain of scholarship have made us allergic to open skies and sunny days. Sunny days, especially, for they make others happy, and, by the law of conservation of happiness, contribute to our misery.

The view is nice. Libraries can be interesting places. I get to see other people because my window opens on to a library. I used to know people once. There was something exciting about that, but I cannot put my finger on what it was.

Most of the time, the people in the library have their noses buried in their books. But occasionally something really interesting happens. Like the other day, I saw a girl talking into her cellphone. And the most exciting thing that has happened in my life in a long long time - I saw someone smoking through an open window in the library. That does not happen too often.

My window makes me happy. And no, you may not have it.

And the time is..

Communication

I am talking to you about poetry
and you say
when do we eat.
The worst of it is
I’m hungry too.

~ AliciaPartnoy

This poem is part of the poetry in motion series on the New York subway. You will see it rather frequently, and having had the opportunity to ask people what they felt about this poem, I have realised that it is like a Rorschach test of sensibilities. Different people react differently to this.

Friend J hates the concept of being in a relationship. He has spent the last few years moving in and out of short-term flings that never last more than a month. He thought that the poem showed how domestication kills romance, "the sort of smugness that causes people to become fundamentally disinteresting after they spend too much time with each other"

Another friend, who belongs to that annoying club of people who are madly in love and gush and coo about it thinks of it as an incredibly romantic poem.
"It describes a situation where two people become so much a part of each other that one person's desires induce similar desires in the other person, the kind of relationship that all of us secretly aspire to", were her exact words.

I, on the other hand, think that this poem is about the power of the culinary over the poetic. Self-deprecatory because it places food before poetry, it is about the triumph of food over other forms of human expressions. But then I am obsessed with food to the point that I have almost gone to jail for stalking it.

There are, of course, other possible points of view. More general ones, in a manner of speaking. I asked friend W, a beer drinking,'gidday-mate' wishing buddy from Oz about it while travelling on the subway, the other day.

"That's gay stuff mate, pomes and what not", was the only thing he said.

Update: This is what Falstaff has to say:

"Personally, I think it's about the poem as hunger, the poem as need. Marianne Moore famously said 'these things are important not because some high-flown interpretation can be put upon them, but because they are useful'. That, I think is the point of the poem - that true poetry isn't about intellectual discussion, it's about the immediacy of wanting something, about a need inside us crying out be fulfilled. Denise Levertov describes it well: "living in the garden and being hungry and eating the fruit"."

Nihilistic demonstrations

I live in an incredibly messy room. I always have. Back in the days when i was getting a real education, as opposed to a pretend one, i was renowned for having the messiest room at WIMWI (Well known institute of management in western India). This probably reflects the fact that I am a Nihilist at heart, as opposed to those pseudo-intellectuals who live well organized lives in spick and span apartments, but claim that life has no meaning.

Many people are confused about what messy means. The other day, I was having a conversation with this girl - the proverbial "Your place or my place" conversation, and I was somewhat insistent that I would go over to her place. She found this a bit odd, so I had to express my apprehensions about her coming to my rather unkempt dwelling, and subsequently fleeing in digust.

"Oh, Big Deal. I have books lying around on the floor too and I haven't done my laundry for a couple of weeks. And I haven't cleaned my room in a couple of months", she said.

Her statement only made me think of her as a cleanliness freak. For when I say messy, this is what I mean.

1. You keep your valuables under a pile of dirty laundry in a corner of the room.

2. You don't quite remember how that pile got there. The details are lost in antiquity.

3. The Rooh-Afza that a friend spills on your floor (an entire half-bottle of it) is never cleaned. (don't ask me what the Rooh-Afza was doing there - it was an alcohol related incident. We were trying to make interesting cocktails). Eventually it dries, and gathers a coating of dust and body hair, becoming positively plush in the process. You end up with a homemade rug.

4. The occasional dead mouse or dead cockroach turns up in your room, having ingested food that has been lying around and gone toxic by virtue of having been there.

5. There is a bowl of yogurt by your bedside. There is a garden of fungus in it. You watch it with fascination everyday, waiting for the day it will evolve a pair of legs and scamper away.

6. You accidentally brush the layer of dust on your desk and find keys that you have been looking for a long time.

7. You have never cleaned your sheets. Rogue regimes get in touch with you because of your expertise in developing biological weapons. (I was, of course, humbled in this endeavor by the great LM, who did the same thing with underwear.)

8. A pigeon builds a nest on top of your shelf.

9. The pigeon lays eggs, but leaves, disgusted with your room.

10. The nest and the eggs are still there, a year after the event.

Needless to say, I'm going to have a HazMat team over. Just in case she insists it be my place.

"the spirit of freedom"?

I am on a flight from Delhi to Mumbai, having attended a rather dear friend's wedding - tired, bored, depressed and somewhat lonely. Two successive weddings, two more friends who will never hang out with me without making statements like, "I'm sorry I have to go. My wife is having a bad day." Or, for that matter, without talking about the chest of drawers they plan to buy. I feel strangely empty - a feeling that something has been missing from my life.

A girl walks into the plane, and in what could be a sequence from that late eighties 'lakme moisturizer ad', she looks around. the seat next to me is vacant, and it turns out that it is her's. what is notable about the girl is the big guitar she's lugged into the plane. (the jury may note that a guitar is kind of hard to miss). since there is no space in the overhead bin right above, it takes a considerable amount of time and effort on the part of the cabin crew to find a suitable abode for the damned instrument. after making small talk about guitar intricacies (since one of us seventeen plays the instrument somewhat), it turns out that we have mutual acquaintances.

"I just saw rang de basanti", she suddenly declares. "You should watch it"
"I will. I have been hearing lots about it too. So tell me, what do you think of the movie?"
the plane taxies to the end of the runway and accelerates.
"It's about the spirit of freedom."
"Muh?"
"Hard to explain it. Look outside. Look at how everything blends together when you travel at high speed. And then you flyyyyyyyyyy! That's what it's like."

Epiphany. A moment when everything falls in place. I am rather moved by her observation. This girl clearly has hit on something that has been missing from my life for a long time. Turning around, I look deep into her eyes and catch a glimpse of her soul - that's how dilated her pupils are. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she's as high as a cloud. She's hit on the blessed weed.

bagel bagel

a street full of people, scurrying around. is sheher mein har shaks pareshaan sa kyon hai, the song plays. i miss my mp3 player now.

it snowed a a few days back. the largest snowstorm in the history of New York, they tell me. Not that it matters too much. the snowmelt leaves telltale puddles everywhere on the street. i see glimpses of myself in them.

he sees me approach and immediately picks up a freshly-baked bagel. its funny how sometimes strangers seem to know you far better than people you have known for years. in it goes, into the bagel-slicer, the guillotine. swooosh. hacked apart for my eating pleasure. he picks up the lopped off head and proceeds to lavish butter on it, humming a random ditty as he does. golden butter that doesn't stand a chance. it submits itself unconditionally. melting against the hot surface and becoming one, permeating every part of the baked delicacy. obliterating its own existence and blending into another's. if only people were so unconditional.

i stand at the street corner, picking it up by the edges. butter trickling down my thumb, reminding me of what i'm about to savor. one last shimmer as it disappears into oblivion.

a taxicab roars by, a wet and muddy old man muttering nasties behind it. i smile.

some adbhaice on garlls

Long ago in the hallowed portals of a certain hostel of a certain IIT, dwelt an unremarkable little man called bongu. his name belies the part of india that he came from, but a post describing the remarkable qualities of his ilk does not belong here. bongu-da was a pretty average man, albeit with something in his credentials that few IITians have - an ex-garllphrend. in the process that resulted in her being an ex, she was the dumper and he was the dumpee. however, since bongu-da was one of the few who had any exposure to the female of the species, all of us turned to him in matters concerning them.

"Hum tumko ek adbhaice deta hai", bongu-da told us once, sequentially sipping on chai from a glass and puffing on a 'chhota gold-flake'. "Iph you laaike a garll, nebher be nice to har. (no, not you, Har) It never pays"

For long we followed his advice. If a girl smiled, we scowled, hoping to create an impression. If she changed hairstyles we went and told her it looked weird. If she wore a nice dress, we asked her if she had bought it at a used-clothes sale. Eventually we realized the folly of our ways and learnt to be a decent human being (do i hear sniggers?). Whether or not it has made a difference is another thing altogether, and, in order to maintain the focus of this post, I will not dwell upon it.

Recently, a mail sent to someone i know, purportedly asking her out, was brought to my notice. In the interests of propriety, i am not going to include the original mail here. I could have tried to capture the spirit of the mail but any recreation would have been a shadow of the original. It should suffice to say here that the person sending the mail seemed to be a follower of bongu.

Drawing inspiration from the mail, and wishing to push the frontiers of human knowledge a wee bit further, we conducted a little survey - a sting operation, so to speak, and sent emails to thirty female bloggers. There are different flavors of not-so-niceness here. The responses follow in the next post.

1. Mr. Hindi medium (not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that).

Dear Ms. XYZ,
Myself, ABC. I am reading your blog. You are living in (insert city)? I am very much wanting to meet you. I am (insert degree here) in (insert topic here) and am working in (insert company here). But I am not liking that you are talking about s3*. woman should not be open about things like this. It is not our culture. When is your earliest convenience, so that we can meet?
Your's sincerely,
ABC.

2. I'm so cool (but actually desperate)

Hey XYZ:
What do the next few days look like! was wondering if we could meet.. I don't particularly care about this, but i made a new year resolution to speak my mind, and i would like to catch up with ya. i wanna know what ya think. i'm not a crazy man. heh heh heh. talk to ya laterzz.
~ABC

3. The compulsive counsellor

XYZ,
I went through your blog. Rather concerned about you. I think you have some severe psychological issues. Email me back here if you want someone who understands.
~ABC

4. wren and martin ki naajaayaz aulaad

Dear XYZ,
Although I might concede that you have an interesting web-log and that your thoughts may be considered somewhat intelligent, you will have to admit that it is ridden with grammatical mistakes of every manner. Take your spelling, for instance - (insert typo here) should have been spelt (insert correct spelling). In addition to that, the fact that your sentence construction is often flawed is of much concern to me.
Nevertheless, I would be quite interested in being acquainted with you, and, since we share the same city, I propose that we arrange a meeting. Please let me know of a suitable time.
Regards,
ABC.

Lastly, an email that was nice, but full of annoying sms-speak.

5. Mr. Luv4u

XYZ,
i like u coz i think our frequencies match. i know what u feel like. if u want to make a friend, call me at xxxxxxxxxx or sms me pleeeeeez coz i will always b there 4 u.
ABC

I will reveal some of the responses I got, but before that, do comment on how you would respond to these mails, if you ever got them. I'm sure male bloggers out there get their share of annoying emails too, so please jump in. and smart-ass brownie points are there for the taking.

God-damned Vessels

"It's a vessel", the voice at the other end of the transatlantic call said.
It was a south indian acquaintance of mine. I was on my way back to the US and he wanted me to carry something for him. He had seemed a bit embarrassed to ask and the revelation had come about after some needless hemming and hawing.
"What vessel?" I asked.
"A pressure cooker vessel."
"Dude, I'm sorry, I don't have space to carry a vessel".
"No it's very small. It'll just slip into a corner somewhere."
"Um, how big is it?"
"About one inch by one inch"
I was a bit puzzled, and fast losing patience.
"Are you sure? What do you use it for?"
"For a pressure cooker"
"I know that", I said, annoyed. "I know the damn thing is a pressure cooker vessel, so it has to be used for a pressure cooker! What the hell do you cook in it?"
"You don't cook anything in it"
Muh?
It was his turn to be exasperated.
"It's a vessel! Vessel Vessel Vessel!! It goes on top. It's heavy. The steam lifts it up. After the vessel blows thrice, the rice is done... steam engines have vessels.. some people can vessel tunes!"

Anyway, in honor of my dear mallu friend's pressure cooker vessel, and having been reminded of 80's television in India by another blogger, with her post about Mr. Yogi, here are three pressure cooker advertisements from the 80's, in ascending order of my liking.

3. At third place is the Marlex pressure cooker ad. This was a fifteen second jingle that was usually repeated twice to fit the 30 second advertisement slots that were available on DD. The ad consisted of a pic of a typical 80's Indian housewife-type (think Lalitaji from the Surf advertisements). She would be holding the cooker. A couple of nondescript food items were on one side, magically suspended in mid air. No, really. It was a magical cooker.

At the top it said "Marlex Pressure Cookers". At the bottom it said, "ISI approved", with a funny looking ISI logo. The jingle went something like:

"Marlex Pressure Cooker, khana jaldi pakaaye kaisi seetee bajaaye. Marlex. Marlex Pressure cooker". Repeat.

Translation: Marlex pressure cooker, cooks curry in a hurry, blows vessel don't worry. Marlex. Marlex Pressure Cooker.

Heh heh. *Looks around sheepishly*. Anyway, it was the simplicity of the ad that made it so perfect. To this day, I can vessel the tune.


2. Hawkins' Pressure Cookers also had an ad that relied primarily on a jingle to carry it through. There was some screen based action (if anything done by Neena Gupta on screen can be called that). The jingle went something like:

Hawkins ki seetee baji, khushboo hi khushboo udee, mazedaar lazaddaar khana hai taiyaar. Murg Musallum, Mutter Pulao, Maa ki daal, this is the part that i randomly hum, Dum Alooooo!!"

Translation: On second thought, no translation. Managing expectations and all that.
Update: See Megha's comment for the entire thing.

1. But of course the most notable pressure cooker ad was for Prestige pressure cookers. Husband and wife enter store, husband looking slightly diffident. This was a theme used a lot in Condom ads in that era. I have no idea why they applied it here. Or maybe i do.

Throughout the ad, the wife stands around looking dumbly. Maybe they did not even show her in the ad. But no, we shall not go into gender biases and such-like.

Husband: Pressure Cooker Khareedna hai.
Shop-guy: (who for some reason, looked a lot like the shopkeeper from the Lalitaji advertisement.) Woh to theek hai. Par pehle yeh bataaiye, ki aap apni biwi se kitna pyaar karte hai.
H: Kya matlab hai aap ka?
S-G: Matlab hai, Matlab hai. Agar aap inhe pyaar nahin karte hai, to koi bhi pressure cooker chal jaayega. Magar aap agar inse pyaar karte hai, to aapko Prestige Pressure Cooker khareedna chahiye.

Husband pyaar-se dekhofies biwi.

H: To Prestige hi dijiye.
S-G: Jo biwi se kare pyaar, woh prestige se kaise karey in car?

Okay, so question: What is the moral of this story? It is this..


What to do? We are like that only!

In the fair city by the sea..

The insanity is back in the motherland these days, and busy with family and friends. It's been somewhat of an experience overload, and hence the delay in corresponding with all of you, my dear listeners.
To the north of the drive along the Worli Sea Face, home to Bombay's (yes, Bombay and not Mumbai) rich and famous, lies the little known and even less visited village of Koliwada. In what can only be attributed to history and the peculiarity of Indian bureaucracy, this is not yet part of the city. It's a calm and peaceful place, inhabited by the fishermen, the original inhabitants of the seven islands (or nine, as my newfound knowledge would have it). There is a local government, a village market and narrow lanes between houses that remind you more of fishing villages along the Konkan coast, than the urban sprawl of Bombay.
By a peculiar twist of circumstance, i am here, the day after my flight lands from New York, visiting a temple. I am not a religious person, and most of all, I am against ritual of all manner. But I have never been to this place before, and I am curious. A middle aged gentleman in a nicely cut kurta and pyjama, the head of the village - a stereotype defying, extremely articulate man, accompanies us.
The temple is adjacent to the fort of Worli, from which the fishermen sought to defend themselves against the portuguese. It lies in ruins now, and its history mostly unknown - except for this gentleman here, whose ancestors have lived here for centuries.
"The idols were found in the twelfth century by our king and installed in a corner of the fort wall", he says, "But over time, they were lost and remained only in legend"
"The were found in the twelfth century?"
"Yes, out in the sea. Nobody knows where they came from. Perhaps this place has more history than even we fishermen know".
"So what happened?"
"They were neglected and got covered in grime, and became featureless stones. Then, this year, a part of the wall collapsed during the rains. The layers of grime broke open and revealed the idols inside. So we decided to build this temple"
The band waiting outside the temple suddenly comes alive - drums, trumpets and all. A rush of activity signals that something is happening. I turn around and look at him quizically.
"The heads of the other villages have come. Its their day today"
A gaggle of women in green saris bursts into the temple and lines up along the walls. Noisy and chatty, all of them with flowers in their hair. Their happiness makes me a little envious.
"It's been going on for centuries. Every year this day, the heads of the nine villages that later became Bombay come together in a procession and visit us. We keep the tradition alive."
He notices the skeptical look on my face and says:
"What would i be, without my past? Nobody. In our lifetime, we do things and those memories stay us. Why should we not extend the same logic to traditions? Rituals, traditions - just ways of keeping the memories of our forefathers alive."
He nods his head as he says this and loses himself in thought. I choose not to disturb him.

Later that night, as I drive down marine drive to recreate personal memories at Not Just Jazz by the Bay, I think about what he said. I am tempted to agree.

The question..

The crew of the USS enterprise gets stranded on an alien planet and is captured by an evil king who lives in a medieval castle. He imprisons them all, agreeing to release them if they suceed at a game he wants to play with them. The conditions of the game are as follows:
1. He will, at any random time, choose a random person from the crew and bring the person to a chamber that has two switches, one red and one blue. The person is forced to choose a switch and then change its position. Such visits may, or course, be repeated.
2. All the crew members are kept in solitary confinement, and are not allowed to communicate, except for one time when they are allowed to decide upon their strategy.
3. The starting positions of the switches are unknown.
4. Everyone is released when any one of the crew members tells the guards that everyone else has visited the chamber.
5. The crew members are unaware of the passage of time, that is, they cannot count days or anything like that.
Come up with a strategy for the prisoners' release. Hint: Look at my previous post. Its all there.

Free!

I lay curled up in the fetal position, in a windowless dungeon that lay deep in the bowels of the medieval castle. This was a place unknown to light, a place where loneliness was your only friend. Somewhere outside lay a whole world, where days changed to nights and nights changed to days. But here, time had reneged on its duty in the war against nothingness and had lost all meaning. Here, more than anywhere else, did the meaning of meaninglessness become more apparent.

The clanging of the heavy iron ring on the door of the dungeon told me that they had come for me, again. Barely supported by muscles atrophied from non-use, I stood up, trembling. They cuffed my wrists and shackled my ankles, and thus in chains, I was dragged to the chamber that had come to define my suffering. I knew what would come next.

My first few times had been unlike this - they were more.. hopeful. There would be the steady pounding in my chest as i neared the chamber, apprehension building up. Would today be the day - the day when I would commit the one act that would lead to my eventual escape from this hell? Every one of those visits to the chamber had proven futile.

Because of the *rules*. The stupid g-d-damned rules that all twenty three of us had come up with before we were sent to our own personal hell. Frustrating rules that killed a man even as he obeyed them. Yet, in them, lay redemption. Following the rules was not *an* option, it was the only option if i ever wanted to be free.

And all the same time, to hope against hope that they would follow the rules, and that *he* would not make a mistake..

Of late, i had grown numb to these visits. I no longer even dreaded them. They were the only punctuation marks in my life. As the guards threw me in to the chamber, I expected to see the small red switch on the right hand side of the room in the off -postion, like it always was. I expected to sigh and head to the other wall - the side of the blue switch. I would flip the switch. I would go knock on the door. They would come to get me, shackle me again and throw me back into my cell, where I would lay whimpering in defeat.

But something was different that fateful day. A little lamp glowed above the small red switch. The red switch was on! I could have fainted with joy as i scrambed across, weak kneed. And I did the one thing that I had been waiting to do, the only thing that meant anything for me.

I switched it off.

epilogue: Freedom came eventually, of course. How could it not? The inescapable laws of mathematics were on my side. The very laws that, during the few lucid moments I had in those days, told me that I would be free, and that was a fact.

[This post might *actually* make sense to some of you. The only thing I can say to the others by way of explanation is that it is an answer to a question. The author gratefully acknowledges the one who posed the question and gave the author the idea for the answer. To those who do not know the question, let me know.]

the other point of view

the R train runs shuttle late at night. it connects upper brooklyn with lower brooklyn. as i stood waiting at the station, it announced its arrival by a rumbling in the rails and a distant squealing of brakes. the doors opened, and i got in. there was the usual warning to "stand clear of the closing doors please". A ding-dong sound announced that the doors were closing- a sound that, if you happen to be running down the stairs to catch the train, sounds a lot like fate saying "f**k-you".

The car was empty except for an old homeless man who kept giving me knowing glances. As he got off at the next station he said, "I know you saw him. Know that you are miserable because you want to find out what this is all about". I got off the station, and crunched back through the packed two day old snow, contemplative, worried when the cellphone rang, and I picked it up.

A musical "Hi" greeted me.
"So, I hear you met someone in the subway.."
"Who are you? How do you know who I met?"
"Lets just say i represent *him* - a guardian angel, if you may"
"Never knew such things existed."
"Now you do."

"He told you about his plans, did he not? Told you that your path could only lead to him. Such a fool."
"He has a point, you know.."
She laughed. It sounded like the tinkling of little bells.
"I expected you to be smarter than that. that outline is not exactly lucid."
"In what way?"
"Curiosity is not opposed to fear. Curiosity arises from consequence, the consequence of not knowing, not finding meaning. Curiosity is the fear of this consequence. He is mistaken. That is why, around here, we are not worried"
"I think i see your point."

As I walked along the street towards the place I call home, I saw the joyously lit christmas trees in the houses of my neighbours, and the flashing "Merry Christmases" and the "Happy new years" in their windows. They served to somewhat brighten up the gloom.

But I had an objection.

"That still does not address his point. He is convinced that the curious mind in quest for meaning will be led to the conclusion that there is no meaning, and all consequence is arbitrary. And if all consequence is arbitrary, including the consequence of not finding purpose, then surely there is nothing to fear. And as per the contract you folks have with him, that leads me to him."

As i said this, I turned the key in my lock and entered my gloomy apartment. I dumped my bag in a corner, tore off my winter layers and got into my bedclothes as she continued..

"Ah, that is an argument he always makes. But first let me tell you what the two basic feelings are. Everything else is explained as a reaction to these. They are physical pain and meaninglessness. Man is in every way equipped to avoid the former, but the second one is harder to deal with. Not all hope is lost, though. In fact, that is why we are here - me and *him*. By the way, I hope you are in bed now. I will put you to sleep."

"Physical pain and pointlessness - pleasure and purpose, interesting counterpoints". I closed my tired eyes, and the angel whispered a lullaby.

"Sleep in peace tonight", she crooned, as I started drifting off to sleep.
"Who are you?", I asked, with the final dregs of consciousness that I could muster.
"You still don't know?"
"No"

"I am the meaning of your life"

A subway story

I work late nights. It's less distracting, and the gloominess of a new york night suits my taste a lot more than the garishness of sunshine. A consequence of this is that I spend a lot of time late at nights at subway stations, waiting for trains running off-peak schedules. It can be an interesting place to be at night, primarily so for the people you run into.

Take the other day, for instance, when I sat at a station in upper Brooklyn waiting for the R-train that would take me home. It was like any other day. My mp3 player was out of charge and I was getting rather bored, so I looked around, pondering at the pointlessness of it all. Apart from the MTA workers who were changing trash-bags, the only other person around stood at the far end of the platform - a pleasantly portly man of indeterminate age, in a hat, round-frames and a well-cut three-piece suit that looked rather out of place there. I thought it rather strange. What followed was even stranger. He noticed that i was looking around, and walked over.

"Do you mind if i sit here, young man?", he asked in an oddly soothing voice - the accent part BBC and part network english.
"Sure"
Making himself comfortable on the adjacent seat, he pulled out a silver pocket watch and frowned.
"Never on time, these people. I must have a word with them sometime."
"So", he turned around, "what do you do for a living?"
Quite an uncharacteristic question in this city, but the sincere crow's feet at the corners of his eyes were rather reassuring.
"I study"
"Well, so do i! I study people. You might say I am a.. what do they call it?"
"A psychologist?", I ventured.
"Yes! A psychologist. But not exactly, since I am in the spiritual business"
"A priest?", I asked.
"In a manner of speaking. But priests and godmen are little but minions working for Religion & Co. , wouldn't you say? I have much more, dare I say it, *extensive* interests in the business".
With that, he bent over and whispered conspirationally, "Lets say, for the sake of the analogy, that I am a very influential partner"

I was too confused to say anything when he pointed an index finger upwards and asked me, "So tell me, do you believe in *Him*?"
"Mostly agnostic. I cannot find rational justifications for why he should exist. He may or may not and either way i do not think it directly affects me."
"Have you never sinned?"
"That depends on how you define it, right?"
He laughed. "Let me tell you that he does exist. Both of us do."

Then it hit me.
"I thought you looked different. Not so.. friendly."
"Ah, you mean the horns and forked tail? I still do it occasionally. It was a clever gig, but lately I have diversified into another line of business. You know exactly why the costume has to be there if i had to harvest my fair share, right?"
"Because sin cannot exist without fear?"
"And what does *fear* need in order to exist?"
"Consequence"
"Precisely."

I grew curious. "What is the nature of this diversification?"

"Good question. Not only the question, but also the reason that makes you ask it. Let me first tell you about the agreement i had with *him*. Leaving aside the fine print, the basic idea was that those who feared consequence would be *his* and those who did not would be mine. The whole religion thing was just a way of implementing it."
"I see"
He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and continued,"Then I had a better idea. It would allow me to have greater reach, while still remaining true to our agreement. I realised its potential long ago, but for very many years, i could not implement it. For most of history, man was just too busy just trying to stay alive. But lately things have changed, and it's been rather easy".
"Most of all," he chuckled, "this line does not involve Halloween costumes and visions of fire and brimstone and imagined reincarnations as lower life forms."

An approaching train rumbled in the express tunnel, three blasts of the horn indicating it was a service train.

"Ah", he stood up. "Its time."
"Wait, I don't understand", and followed him to the edge of the platform, as he leaned over the edge and peered into the tunnel.
"Its easy, son. We - me and *him* that is - built the edifice of religion around one of the basest of human emotions - fear. But there is another emotion that is equally fundamental, and, for my purposes, more potent, because it does not involve *him*. Fear is important for keeping religion going, but without this other thing, we would not have been able to sell the concept of it in the first place."

The train rolled in - a service train pulling open wagons meant to carry trashbags. It stopped for a brief while and the workers threw bags into the wagons.

He climbed into a wagon and continued, "My new line would just need thinking, questioning minds. And the more men found time for it, the bigger would be my harvest. You see, this thing that I talk about leads most people to the realization that consequence is an arbitrary concept and hence not to be feared. And as per our contract, they are mine."

The train gave another blast on the horn and started moving. "If you still don't know what I am talking about, recall how you felt life was when you first saw me".

"Meaningless?"
"And what brought you that conclusion?", he said, receding farther and farther away.
"The quest for purpose."
"And what drives that quest?", he shouted as he disappeared into the bowels of the underground.

"Curiosity", I mouthed silently and smiled.

On torture..

if you have been catching up with current affairs over the last couple of weeks, you would be aware of the stand-off between Senator John Mccain and the Bush administration over the torture of detainees by US government entities. McCain spent five years being tortured in rat-infested vietnamese prisons and he knows a thing or two about torture. Which is why, in this case, we have reasons to listen to him. And before you get worried about where this post his headed, let me tell you this is not a political rant. You see, I know a thing or two about torture too.

Surprised? Don't be. For you see, I regularly torture frankfurters. Not the people, but the sausages. Here's the how to of it in a few simple steps:

1. The first thing you want to do when you feel like torturing frankfurters is to get hold of them. Frankfurters are notoriously hard to capture. At the first sign of danger, their ears perk up and they hide. Fortunately modern technology has developed a way to keep them sedated in the meat section of supermarkets. Approach them quietly and carefully. You don't want them to awaken. When you are close enough, grab them quickly, and hold on to them tight.

2. Even after you have laid your hands on them, there is still the tricky part of getting them out of the custody of the supermarket guys. You will have to resort to bribery at the check-in counter. The bribe usually goes under the name of "Retail Price", so that supermarkets can keep their accounts clean and not be accused of abetting the torture of innocent sausages.

3. When you get them to your place, lock them up immediately in your fridge. The other day I forgot to do this, and I found them later, cowering under my kitchen table. I would have missed them completely had it not been for the fact that I am such a pro at this game.

4. There are several methods of extracting information from them. Some people prefer to cut them up and otherwise mutilate them. I like to do it whole, either boiling them alive or grilling. Show no mercy. Only then will you get the answers you seek.

5. preheat a pan, pour a little oil on it, and show the frankfurter the meaning of a proper grilling. Alternately let them know what it means to land in hot water. Be careful. They have a mean bite and if you don't watch out, they will jump out and scamper away. If you want to increase your pleasure, make the frankfurter's mates watch it.

6. Sometimes a frankfurter will die while you are at it. Since we want to be humane, and since we are morally superior to them, we respect their dead. The best thing to do is to give them a dignified burial. Out of respect for frankfurter traditions, lay them on a soft hot dog roll and, in accordance with their rituals, cover them with mustard, relish and ketchup. Let them rest in pieces in your stomach.

7. Even if a frankfurter dies, don't let it bother you. There's the other frankfurters, they will surely know. All frankfurters are in on the big secret, so a little collateral damage is acceptable. If all the frankfurters you have in your custody die one by one, you can always head out to the supermarket to capture more. Don't worry, some day, they will reveal the big secret. Till then, in the interest of national security, it is our job, as conscientious citizens, to keep trying.

Heh. Not for nothing is this site called mental deviation.

doing g-d's work..

So I went through a bout of the *cough cough* and the *sniffle sniffle* last week, because of which I missed my regular post. Apologies hence and a promise, mes amis, that I will make up for it. on to regular programming.

I hate happy people. Happiness is an unnatural state. If God wanted us to be happy, he would have filled the world with sunshine, hot women and reshmi kebabs. (replace 'woman' with 'man' if you are a woman or are gay-not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that)

Take that simple question: "How was your day?" I mean, come on. Surely *something* is always wrong: Maybe you got constipated, maybe your boss yelled at you, maybe you haven't gotten to nail that hot chick (women: substitute, substitute) who sits across the aisle from you at work. I hate it that social mores require us to answer that question with a "Not bad". Whatever happened to honesty?

People like me have an important role to play in a hypocritical society like this. I belong to that little-known band of people dedicated to carrying out God's *true* intent: we are the happiness-destroyers. I don't want to toot my own trumpet here, (heh, 'TOOT my own trumpet', don't you just *love* the sound of that phrase? :)), but I am a pro at making people miserable. Here's a sample conversation that happened between me and an acquaintance called P, a fellow graduate student, who like me, left a comfortable life to pursue intellectual ambitions. This was a few days ago, on the way to the subway station.

"How's life?", I asked her.
"O-kay", she replied, eyeing me suspiciously.
"Surely its not Okay"
"No it is. Actually my day was quite good. I got some work done today."
"So?"
"So, it means I've fulfiled my purpose for the day, and I have the right to feel happy about myself"

Oh, sweet. A home run.

"Reaaaally?", I asked her, "You are old and fat and ugly. Nobody really likes you, and what you do is pointless. After you die, you will have made no difference to the world. To top it all, you left a cushy job with a chauffeur driven car to be in this hell-hole, and now you scrounge around for free food in graduate seminars. What makes you think you have the right to feel happy about yourself?"

I would have thought people would be grateful for having been shown that big picture perspective. Sadly it is not true. P doesnt talk to me any more. Some people just love to live in denial.

its a thankless job, this one, i tell you.