remembering rsj

This blog is all about the nonsensical. We have talked about troupes of dancers seducing mongooses, tricks you can do with a kielbasa, and spitting cobras turning up on power-point slides. We have sung ditties from 80's indian television commercials (with translations to boot!), and we have described strange nightmares full of howling dogs and hummingbirds. We have even prescribed optimal bender strategies. The point is .. er... not there. So, where was I going with this? Ah, yes. Music. Wow, talk about logical prose.

You know what it is like when you suddenly rediscover something you used to love but had forgotten about? In a recent conversation on music from the nineties, the name Agni came up in the context of indian college rock. Since I used to be a fan, I ended up digging out a copy of Agni's first album "Wind dance with fire" (1994?). As I relaxed in my chair, slightly doped out from cough medicine (I've come down with a minor bout of the 'flu), the music brought back memories of smoke-haze filled rock concerts, of hours spent jamming with extremely drunk mates - of cool college rock band names like Urja (which stood for the names of the four founders) and "An ode to Urja"- and of a quaint little periodical called the "Rock Street Journal" that was published out of (of all the places in the world), Allahabad.

I have always liked Indian rock. Listen to some of the good indian bands - the aforementioned Agni, Orange Street, Krosswindz, Indus Creed (formerly Rock Machine), Pentagram, and of course, Parikrama - There are some really great original compositions there - far far better than some of famous names on the Indie rock scene in the US - and yet, they never have had *any* success outside of India. (For some strange reason, Pakistani rock bands seem to have done better.) I have often wondered how an Aussie band like The Mark of Cain, or for that matter, Jet, make it big in America, while Indian rock is almost never talked about. There are a couple of possible explanations - i don't know whether any or all of them are true.

The first is the curse of the familiar. There are thousands of rock-acts here in the U.S. - most of them never get noticed even if they produce great music - so why should an Indian band be respected. That of course, does not explain the success of Aussie rock. In addition, the concept of "indian" music is so strongly associated with either a sitar-playing ravi shankar, or kitschy bollywood crap in the west, that most of my american friends have a hard time believing that India actually has a thriving college rock scene.

The second is the range of topics covered. While a lot of music here is full of pimply angst, there is a considerable body which cover more pressing political and social issues (not implying pimply angst is trivial, but still.) This is possibly made worse by indian bands, though not always, when they heavily resort to culturally non-transplantable Indian themes - song titles that reference mythological figures and all that. Don't get me wrong - it is highly appreciable artistically speaking, but it does not make for good cross-over material.

But I think there is a third- and more fundamental reason. It has something to with conditioning. Growing up in india, it is hard not to be influenced by Indian Classical music and its bastard child - Hindi Movie music. Indian music tends to be exclusively melody based - attempts at harmony being limited to a tanpura playing a constant drone. The vocalist (and even Indian instrumental music is fundamentally *vocal* music - all indian classical instruments are evaluated on the basis of their ability to emulate the human voice) sets the pace and the rhythm, and the percussionist merely follows on. This influences all of us - musicians and listeners alike. Consequently, a lot of indian rock - even the heaviest stuff - has an emphasis on melody - a certain discipline while ascending and descending the scale, that is not entirely appreciated by a western audience - but appeals to an ear that is conditioned to it. Many of my American buddies, while appreciating Indian fusion music, don't quite get the point of it. Perhaps, something like this is at work in case of Indian rock too.

There should be some kind of cultural award for coming up with insights like these. We could call it the Heh-heh award for gyaan-dispensing, and its first winner would be Heh-heh. Or maybe not. There are loads of desi-bloggers who seem to have taken it up as a full-time profession.

happy indi-bloggy to me

Oh, and one of the things that got missed out in the last few days was that I got nominated for indi-blog of the year at the indibloggies. (Thanks, Nitin)

Now, not to disparage the judgment of the jury and all that, but hey, all the other people on that list are heavy-weights like falstaff, Amit Varma, and Manish Vij.

I expect great things to come about because of this.

1. Resume value: ("You blog? Oh wow, *just* what we were looking for! When can you join?")
2. Bragging to friends at the bar ("Dude, your blog got nominated for the indibloggies. You da man!")
3. Impressing girls ("*fluttering eyelashes* I've always had a thing for indibloggies nominees!")
   
4. Making parents proud ("Aaj tumne humaari barson ki iccha poori kar dee! Ab yeh boodhi aanken chain se so sakti hain!" "Aisa mat bolo, maa!" "Bas ab ek acchi si ladki dhoond ke ghar basaa lo" (bollywood dramatization. the real-life heh-heh parents are pretty unexcitable. i would be lucky if i got a blink.))
5. Biographies ("In the January of 2007, Heh Heh was nominated for the indibloggies. It was to be a turning point in his life.")
6. World peace ("Now that Heh Heh has been nominated for the indibloggies, tensions between Iran and the US should ease")
7. Viva la revolución (¡Heh Heh derrota cerdos del capitalismo!)

Anyway, thanks. I'm obviously not going to ask you to vote for me. :)

ps: As you can see, I upgraded my template. It involved losing all the changes made to my earlier template and I have had to start from scratch. It is still work in progress. The look will get better, I promise. The principal change, of course, is the addition on the new widget over to the right, where I'll put up lists of songs I am listening to. Watch out, they might be the one thing that will most frequently be updated.

an old friend

At the international terminal at Bombay airport, once you have gone through the arduous process of getting your bags screened, checking them in and going through emigration clearance, you come to an escalator that takes you to a holding area down below. Across from the escalator is the airport bar, which serves fine and expensive foreign liquor at fine and expensive foreign prices. And since i love making the pretentious wait-staff uncomfortable, every time i drop by i ask for a Gilbey's green label (motto: "smooth as gravel"). When they tell me they only serve scotch whiskey, i mock-recoil in horror, whine and complain, shake my head, and condescend to asking for a laphroaig.

So i was at the airport bar, having performed this annual ritual, when i noticed the guy sitting across from me. He seemed familiar but i could not place him. Then i noticed him surreptitiously pour his drink into a plastic bottle (too bad it would probably not clear security now, what with the ban on liquids and all that), I realized i was looking at generic desi uncle.

Generic desi uncle (and we shall start calling him gdu from now on) and I go back a long way. I have been blessed with his company almost every single time i have flown either to or from desh. He has been my personal bane on all long haul flights across the atlantic, even if i was just visiting london. He is my explanation for why the ancient hindus discouraged the practice of travelling across the seas. Sometimes he changes faces, and minor personal details - one time he was a diamond exporter based out of Amsterdam, the other time he had an "import-export" business (you are free to draw your conclusions). Sometimes he runs a body-shopping firm, although of late he has started venturing into the outsourcing business. But for the most part, I could swear it was the same guy.

GDU is wise in the ways of air-travel. Normally, he holds a British or an American passport, but there was this once when he claimed to be a citizen of Kenya, having been born there. Almost invariably though, he has a thick indian accent. He also has a fascinating story or two to tell. It involves either him or his forefathers leaving the motherland and establishing themselves on foreign soil - East Africa, the UK, the Gulf, America - starting off with nothing, making tons of money in some kind of old world venture. His visit to india is almost invariably about "business". You ask him exactly what his business is, and he comes with answers that you again don't understand. What does the diamond business have to do with legal outsourcing, for instance?

GDU has a thing for alcohol. Like all self-respecting desis he *loves* scotch, although of late i have noticed him develop a taste for red-wine. Before the days when security checks made it difficult, he would always have a bottle tucked away into his hand-baggage, which he would promptly retrieve soon as the seat-belts' sign switched off, and proceed to finish. He also loves to harangue the cabin crew when they come around with the drinks. He will *always* demand more alcohol than they are willing to serve. Occasionally he will also argue with them about the fact that his seat is uncomfortable, or that its too cold or that he did not get the special order of food that he had requested ("Jain-veg"). Polite answers like the fact that he should have ordered 72 hours in advance only serve to increase his agitation. More often than not, he will refuse to let the person in the seat ahead of him recline his/her seat-back.

His love for cellphones knows no bounds. The moment a plane touches down, he flips out his cellphone and calls someone, usually to talk about some 'deal'. At take-off, you can find him using the phone over repeated entreaties from the cabin crew to turn it off. Usually he turns it off only when things are beginning to turn nasty.

A brief digression on obnoxiousness. it is funny only as long as its intentional and is being done by a friend. for instance, someone i know went into the exec class of Jet with a fresh green coconut in his hand-baggage and demanded that the cabin crew cut it open (and as testimony to Jet's quality of service, they *actually* tried, but failed for lack of a suitable implement to do it on board). it was superbly obnoxious, but since it was done on a dare, it was funny. (another friend chose to trump that by changing shirts in the middle of the flight, and powdering his armpits - that, perhaps, was *too* obnoxious.) I have myself thrown a tantrum for chocolate once, but that was only to entertain, horrify and embarass a friend.

Obnoxiousness of the GDU kind is hard to deal with. Which is why I have been trying to throw him off my track for an eternity. I have tried changing airlines. I have flown off-season. I have made connections in cities to which I was sure GDU's global business empire did not extend.

And yet, every time i board a plane, he is always there, with his beer-belly and bloodshot eyes.

when the beer taxi does not take you home..

*groan*
my head hurts. this has to be the worst hangover of the century. it might have something to do with the two liters of beer, several shots of tequila, a bottle of red, and several rum and cokes that were consumed, in that order over a period of three hours yesterday.
to those of you who made my evening special, thanks.
you know who you are.

mera bharat mahan

i'm posting this from inside my plane. apparently the mumbai airport wifi is good enough.
wow.
color me impressed.

notes from b'bay

There is something about NYC's superficial, hyper-excited, antiseptic club-scene that puts me off, so I am quite comfortable spending weekends at home there. But Bombay is different. When I am here, a certain people-loving part of me acts up, and gets troubled if I'm not doing 'something cool' over weekends- something that happens much more often on recent trips to India, since the fellowship has broken apart.

I was complaining about this to a friend who never updates her blog, and she decided that she must do something about my lack of life. And so I ended up at the Alan Parsons concert, with people I only vaguely knew. The passes were free and I had the pleasure of being picked up from home, which was good.

*

Sometimes, the realization that you are growing old strikes hard, and in strange ways. At the concert, we decided it wasn't worth the trouble jockeying our way in to the front of the crowd, and stayed at the rear fringes. I caught a distinct whiff of the blessed weed. This in itself was not so surprising. What surprised me was it was coming not from some college kid doping his way through a concert, but from the uncle and aunty standing ahead of me. I remarked about this to my new found friends, who had the courtesy of pointing out that 'uncle and aunty' were probably only a few years older than us.

It turned out that i knew uncle. He was, in my former life, a counterpart on another trading desk.

*

India is booming, in case you didn't already know. Everybody I know talks about how its a long term thing, and how i should totally come back. A friend who is now a big-shot consultant, having said that he was *not* going to sell me on the India story, ended up gushing like a teenage girl at a bryan adams concert. (see, even my pop-culture refs are dated.) Statements like "we are a lucky generation because we are getting to see millions being lifted out of poverty" were made. Terms like "broad-based growth", "the skills shortage" and "the knowledge premium" are thrown about. In the India of today, it would seem, there are no pessimists.

I mostly agree about their assessment, though. But I also know there will be a correction the moment I decide to move back. My market-timing ability is zero that way.

Sometimes, i think of returning. Then i get stuck in traffic in bandra for an hour and a half, and dream of a log-cabin in the middle of nowhere.

*

After the concert, we decided to grab dinner at Spice Tree.

As I made my way to the loos, someone called out ">My Name<". As i turned around, i found myself face to face with rant herself, who had coincidentally come to the same place. She yelled at me for not having called.

The other folks were waiting for some friend of theirs to turn up along with his wife of two weeks. He turned out to be a former colleague, and reacted with a "Hey, didn't you work with XYZ?"

His wife turned out to be someone I knew several years ago as a close friend's college sweetheart. She mumbled a quiet "How have you been?", even as the others wondered how we knew each other.

It only lent further credence to my hypothesis that all Indian yuppies know each other.

scratch a rock, and a legend springs

In a small room tucked within the stone walls, a cat lies curled up on the stone tiled floor. Three kittens play about her. One of them is fascinated by the twitching tip of her tail, while another investigates an ant crawling along the edges of a stone tile. The scene reminds me of the lines - "A mongrel bitch has found a place/for herself and her puppies /in the heart of the ruin /May be she likes a temple better this way" from Kolatkar's Jejuri, which is in a way fitting, since this is the purportedly original house of the same god, several hundred miles to the south.

The third kitten, meanwhile, has taken a considerable degree of interest in a pot of khichdi cooking on a slow wooden fire. This annoys the scientist turned astrologer mother fanning the flames, seeing as the pot is meant as ritual offering for the gods. She stamps her feet, but this has little effect on the kitten, which proceeds to sniff at the fire out of curiosity. It burns its tiny snout, and retreats to its mother, yowling in pain.

Meanwhile, I step out and sniff the cool morning air.

The sun is just peeking out from behind the clump of peepal trees topping of the ridge that lies to one side of the temple. Behind the rear wall, and across the largish temple water-tank with half its steps missing, is a dilapidated structure with a number of arches. For a moment I imagine it full of tired pilgrims seeking shelter for the night, but the vision quickly passes.

Its only occasional inhabitants these days are the monkeys - hundreds of them populate a large fig tree by the tank. I step closer to photograph the arches bathed in the soft orange glow of the rising sun. The monkeys do not take kindly to this incursion on their sacred grounds, and respond by making a loud hooting and screeching commotion. Chastened, I withdraw.

Like the hulking remains of a fort some distance away, this place has its own mythology. Here was the ancient town of Prempur where Shiva, as is his way of dealing with all things evil, slayed a demon called Malla who was tormenting the townsfolk. Here he forged a sword (a khand) and felled the demon with one stroke, and convinced by the villagers to stay on, took up residence at the temple they built for him. The town itself got “swallowed up by the earth” later, presumably because its inhabitants sinned, with the result that this place is now in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not a religious person - I don't believe in God - and even if there is one, I see no reason why he should have anything to do with the lives of insignificant beings such as us. And yet, I find the stories and myths of religion fascinating. Timeless, in a way, they inspire me in a way not unlike mountains or rivers, or the ocean - witnesses to millenia - rising above the mundane. On second thoughts, perhaps I *am* religious.

The grouchy father is having an exchange with the priest on the modalities of a ceremony in which I will apparently be playing a lead role – something called a maharudrabhishek. The priest’s clan have been caretakers here for generations, which means that we possibly share a kinship dating back to the 16^th century, which is when my ancestors left, to escape persecution and seek asylum (and opportunity) in the Hindu-friendly Marathi-speaking lands to the north. There is certainly a resemblance between him and the portraits of my ancestors from seven or eight generations ago that used to hang from the walls of the house.

Or I could be mistaken.

As the ceremony commences, I get on top of the platform, shirtless. A dog enters the inner sanctum and lies down on its stomach facing the idol, forepaws extended and crossed under his chin, looking like any other devotee of the god. As I rather ineptly bathe the idol in milk and holy water, the priest chants hymns and the inner sanctum slowly fills up with the first worshipers of the morning. They are careful not to disturb the dog for fear on incurring his wrath.

The nizams and sultans of the deccan tried not to mess too much with the local deities, though. Perhaps, it is fitting, at this point, to tell you the story of the Adilshah of Bijapur who was stung by a swarm of wasps when he desecrated the original Mailar temple by slaughtering a cow on its premises. Needless to say, he repented, and built the much larger temple where I stand. This action of his brought him great success in his campaigns against the mughals. Thereafter, the temple enjoyed royal patronage and is still sacred to the local Muslims. The old temple can be seen in the distance, across a field strewn with ruins.

In these parts, every mound of rubble has a story of its own.

da mudderland beckons

i'm going to be out of this country and back in my favorite city by the sea for the next couple of weeks. blogging might be restricted.

this trip promises to be one where i get subjected to other people's discoveries - the scientist mother has recently discovered astrology and the grouchy father has recently rediscovered his talents as a hindustani classical vocalist.

there will be visits to the married brother, who has discovered big-screen tvs, and a four-day outing with the extended clan, who have discovered ancestral ruins from the 15th century.

if i get lucky, i might even get some hiking done in the sahyadris.

meanwhile, since one can only have so much of astrology, music, gadgets, and relatives, i would be happy to catch up with some of you - known and unknown (to me) readers alike. drop me a line at geek(dot)fin(at)gmail(dot)com, if you are going to be in bombay over the next two and a half weeks.

addendum to list of comics

Here's a couple more strange 'uns.

The tao of geek : It features geeks and talks about, amongst other things, grad school, non-replicating artificial intelligences, and unemployment - all of which are to my mind, one and the same. It's along the same lines as Phdcomics, just a lot more twisted.

And while we are still on it, you might want to check out "The doppler effect", based on a story by friend and one time drinking buddy fadereu, who also blogs here [1]. Though a bit dated (it was written around the time of the gujarat riots), it's dark, interesting and thought provoking.

[1] It might not be apparent, but both my blog and his blog share the same designer.

Three comics from the far side

I seem to be doing everything in threes today. And i am also posting a lot, but that is probably because i am terribly bored. Some of this is regurgitation, but anyway here goes

1. Fleep

Who could not love a series with a name like Fleep? Imagine that you wake up in phone booth encased in concrete. You have three unrecognizable coins, some dental floss and what appears to be a dictionary in two languages you do not understand. What do you do? The answer revealed here. Written by geek writer Jason Shiga, also the author of the comic series "Double Happiness", and the choose your own adventure comic "Meanwhile.."( featuring a multi-verse plot), Fleep is a hutke story. Ismey action hai, romance hai, suspense bhi hai.

2. Nine planets without intelligent life

The plot of this series involves the distant future where humans have become extinct. Robots populate the solar system, and as the second episode reveals "see little reason not to continue what [the humans] were doing". Two robots, Chris and Ben discover they are about to become obsolete and set out to travel the solar system, and experience some culture. The series is replete with great quotes ("The weird thing about culture is that you can chase it as fast as you can and it still speeds past you at the same rate.") and warnings for human readers ("Human readers should not feel inadequate if they do not find themselves aroused by the following scene")

3. Toothpaste for dinner

If you like the kind of non-sense doodles i sketch here, you should go check out toothpaste for dinner. It's a hilarious series written by a guy called drew based out of Ohio. Check out Andrew Sullivan as "Not my president". As a bonus you could check out his wife natalie's doodles too for stuff like "Slob Activism: I've had mustard on this t-shirt for three days".

another random memory

amongst the many rituals that take place at IIMA is something called the talent nite (t-nite for short.) it is ostensibly a cultural contest (music, skits and the like) between various sections of the freshie class, but in truth it is an excuse for newly graduated alumni to go back to campus and indulge in behavior they could never have while they were there.

and so it was that a bunch of us, including A, U, S, Falstaff, and bunch of other folks, turned up at Ahmedabad in the august of 2001, a few months after we had graduated. we were young, starry-eyed, dreamy and we all wanted to get drunk.

the show starts late in the evening and goes on till early morning. there's a prize involved. back in '99 when we were freshies, we put in immense effort to make our thing a success. i banged the drums completely sozzled (it was a conspiracy hatched by seniors from another section to get me drunk), and pappu belted out 'Lut gaye' while A, goddess of the senior year, tried to distract him by dirty dancing a couple of inches away from him. there are three things you should realize from what i just said. you should realize that on T-nite, the demarcation between stage and audience breaks down early on in the alcohol soaked evening. you should also realize that there is a lot of depravity involved. but the most important lesson in there is that it sucks to be the drummer.

so, that night in 2001, the booze flowed in the dorms. early on, i gulped down a concoction of mango juice and contessa rum (there is another story behind that drink), and had a couple of joints. Then I ventured forth to explore the harappan ruins that the IIMA campus always turns into for me whenever i am high.

on the way to the show, i ran into Falstaff, who was already considerably hammered, and was being persuaded by fool-jhadu to down a large coffee mug full of neat Bacardi. i believe i raised my right eyebrow disapprovingly, as is my habit when drunk, and hurried on, because the show had begun.

I recall three significant things that happened that night.

U, a friend who was highly respected for his calm and generally, er, respectable nature got into a fist fight. for those of you who don't know U, this is significant. this is a guy who, by then, had been dating the same girl for five years (he is now married to her), and was so unflappable that B, in a moment of frustration, had described him as a "laash since the day he landed at IIMA". what is even more significant is that U got into a fight because the freshie girls refused to dance for him (well, not *him* in particular, it was more of a "we won't put up a show for these bhediyaas" thing, but still). U, not liking this attitude, stormed the stage in protest and was thrown off it by one of the freshie guys. they came to blows. incapacitated by alcohol, i lay in my seat and found it incredibly funny. i believe statements like "do you know who i am?" and "i'll see you when you come up for placements", were thrown about.

The second thing i remember concerns Falstaff, who took off on an alcohol-fueled flight. If my memory serves me right, he also got violent about something that i am not entirely sure about. i do remember seeing him abusing a few people and then passing out on the floor in front of the stage. at this point, S (who features here) very considerately decided that Falstaff should be removed from the auditorium, lest he be trampled upon. so a few of us got off our drunken asses and dragged him out. the general idea was to lay him down on the grass outside, but once outside, someone came up with the brilliant idea of putting him on top of a table (apparently, sleeping on grass can give you pneumonia or some shit), and so there lay falstaff, on top of a table in the middle of the RJ lawns.

The third thing i remember (but would like to forget), was cozying up to a certain miss L. Although now respectably married, L had at the time the reputation of a trollop (i remember S saying "she's had more sex that you will ever have in your entire life!"). Consequently, passing out in her lap was not exactly reputation-enhancing for me, but that is precisely what happened. Fortunately, i was rescued by SG, a junior who had also been at iit with me, and was taken to the cafeteria where U was sulking and nursing a bruised eye. on the way out, i noticed that falstaff had rolled off his table and was now lying in the grass. it must have been a hard fall.

early the next day morning, we sat on empty palm oil tins at mangalbhai the chai-wallah's little shop. U was still grouchy from his encounter with the freshie's fists. falstaff sat with one of the lenses of his glasses shattered from his encounter with the ground. and i was hungover and being made fun of for my encounter with L. we reminisced for a while about our days as students, and then caught flights to our respective cities. there was work to do, and we were going to be late.

i used to be wiser

I started writing a journal when i first went to college, back in 1995. It started off as a way to deal with homesickness and all the new experiences. While in college, there were occasional times of misery, but i was aware they would pass and that i would fondly reflect upon those times one day- and for that, i am thankful. Originally it was written in a leather-bound notebook. Some time, about seven years ago, i painstakingly transcribed it all onto my computer - initially in the form of doc files.

I haven't really been writing journal entries for the last couple of years. It has more to to with the severe lack of any interesting happenings in my life than any thing else, but the old journal is a good record of times that involved the self-coined terms "experience overload" and "instant happiness".

Recently, i was up to some figurative spring -cleaning (look at the weather outside) - backing up my files and so on. So i flipped open the journal (figuratively), and went through it.

They say age brings wisdom and all that, but i think i have gone downhill over the years. Most of my hours these days are spent listening to music that only i care about, figuring out the next meal, and working on bullshit research that nobody ever cares about. But if i were to believe the record, i was a lot more profound several years ago. Check this out, an entry made in Nov. 1998. I have no idea what prompted it, but i seem to have referenced it again three years later when I was going through a personal crisis.

One of the curses of being human is to forever lead a life of paranoia: Just when things are better than they could possibly be, we get the feeling that something is about to go wrong, but we cannot put a finger on exactly what it is. And then life does its usual act of turning things upside down. Many of us get tempted into believing in fate. The cold unforgiving voice in my head, on the other hand, says: its all got to do with the decisions YOU made, things YOU chose.

Life eventually teaches us that the outcomes of our choices are not under our control. Some choices just turn out wrong.

I am not a fatalist, though i do believe in the concept of "luck". Fatalism means that the course of our lives is charted out by a "higher" power that makes our choices meaningless. Luck (as in X is "lucky" and Y is "unlucky"), on the other hand is simply a statement about past experience. It tells you nothing about the future, which continues to be determined by a combination of ability, effort and, to a large extent completely uncontrollable events.

We have to reconcile ourselves with the fact that our lives are not fully determined by us. The lack of determinism is *not* because of divine intervention. It is due to sheer randomness. And hence, faced with setbacks, we must move on.

I'm not sure i get what i was saying, or even why i said it. But it sure sounds deep, and to the present-day-me, somewhat comforting.

come over to the dork side

i was a bad kid in school. not "mischievious but makes up for it by doing well academically", because that makes you popular. i was plain-bad. mediocre as far as grades went, and not particularly liked by either the other kids, or by teachers. although i played a lot (basketball and athletics) and hung out with some of the sporty sorts, it was a tenuous affiliation at best, because i never really identified with them. to tell the truth, i was a dork.

there are no real dorks in indian schools, the kind you find in schools in America. social awkwardness and a discomfort with all things non-geek are essential requirements for being a dork. in india, kids who put up science projects in school exhibitions and memorize the capitals of the world by heart are much more likely to be academically superb teacher's pets, those supremely confident literary types who win debates and elocutions and such-like, and in the process, score all the school awards. they are overachieving freaks, not dorks. real dorks are not popular.

i loved reading science fiction. i had read almost all of Asimov by the time i was 12, i knew my sagans from my arthur c clarkes. Later i consumed the dune series, star wars, all of david eddings and terry pratchett and robert jordan. the latest on this list is the stargate series, for which i have developed a newfound addiction.

To add to my dorky kid cred, i was terrified of public speaking. The mother tried to convince to enter into some elocution shit as a kid, and i froze so badly on stage that someone had to come and physically remove me. i was also very, *very* awkward with girls. (S, the class goddess and now a friends wife, once had to tell me she was not going to eat me up. she'd asked me for the time, and i got so nervous i couldn't read my watch right.)

You can be a dork too. Social awkwardness is essential, but it can easily be faked. A liking for sci-fi cannot be faked, although it will take you a long way in becoming a dork. But *knowledge* of sci-fi can be faked. Go through this list and see how you measure up. Answers in a few days. if you care, you can drop me a mail at geek.fin@gmail.com with your answers.

1. Where do the terms goa'uld and tok'ra come from? Props if you know the difference between the two.

2. Complete these lines:

The stars, like dust, encircle me
And bathe me, with their light
As though all space and time i see,
In one __ __ __ ___

3. House Atriedes is building an army using a secret technique unknown to us, a technique involving ______.

4. I am Queen Amidala, of the _____. (easy one)

5. Who wrote the play "lairënde lómëva lórë"? (this one is easy to reverse engineer)

6. "The wheel weaves as the wheel ____"

7. Who said, "Was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?"

8. When someone succumbs to groupthink, he's been "assimilated by the ____"

9. Connect symphonic rock, stephen king and "the good, the bad, and the ugly".

10. Who says "beam me up, scotty"? (think carefully)

Bonus non-sci-fi yet dorky question:
Who was the drummer for Rush? Dream Theater?? (KM: *Don't* judge me)

An alternative holiday music list

december is an annoying and depressing month. as if the fact that the sun sets by the time i wake up in not enough, stores and delis in are full of the tra-la-las and la-di-das and the hallelujahs of irritatingly chirpy christmas music.

it is an especially trying time if you, like me, believe that having to listen to Handel's Messiah even once is one time too much. but worry not, for there is a whole world of not-so-cheesy christmas music out there. Here's a list of some of my favorites, along with a few *defining* lines from these songs.

more suggestions are, of course, welcome.

1. "Merry fuckin' christmas" from South Park

Hey there Mr Hindu, Merry Fuckin' Christmas
Drink eggnog and eat some beef
and pass it to the missus
In case you haven't noticed
It's Jesus' birthday
So get off your heathen Hindu ass
And fucking celebrate.

2. "Jesus' brother bob" by The Arrogant Worms

I have to pay the ferry
To cross the Galilee
But not my brother
No not him
He walks across for free.

3. "Twelve Days of christmas" by Boymongoose, an indian-australian band from Brisbane

On the sixth day of christmas, my true love gave to me
Six IT graduates,
Five Indian Games,
Four Hare Krishnas,
Three Butter chickens,
Two Nosy in-laws
and a totally insufficient dowry.

4. "Santa doesnt cop out on dope" by Sonic Youth, indie-gods.

All year long he's busy making toys
For all the little girls and little boys
He puts them in his sled and gives his whip a crack
On Donder, on Blitzen, but never on smack
Cuz Santa doesn't cop out on dope!
Has he ever even tried it? Well ya know
The answer's no!
So little kiddies, here's my point
Just leave him cookies, and save your joint

5. "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues, featuring a rather attractive and crystal-voiced Kristy MacColl (wait for the ad to finish)

You scumbag you maggot
you cheap lousy faggot
happy christmas your arse
i pray God its our last

Also, these have to be the nuttiest TV ads i have ever seen. Check them out.

a classic minderbender

there i two thinks i dont normally do on this blog.

a. i don't blog drunk.
b. i've forgotten what it was.

i'm going to resort to my book of cliches and say that there is a first time for everything. so here's me, writing a post, accompanied by a glass of macallan 18 year old cask strength with one ice cube to turn it just a tad bit cloudy and condense those aromatics (thanks S, for the bottle, in case you are reading this). coltrane plays in the background since no self respecting bender can be without soothing and warm jazz. perhaps, when the alcohol has dissipated from my bloodstream, i will not even recall writing this post.

whoever told you it was not a good idea to drink copious quantities of alcohol by yourself over an extended period of time, was wrong. a few's dos and don'ts, though. don't drink shitty alcohol, treat your tastebuds and your liver with the respect they deserve. i prefer a good single malt. make sure you have lots of water (don't mix it with the malt, you philistine) and are stocked up on good non-acidic food - to be had during and in the aftermath. also, keep an alka-seltzer ready, in case things get out of hand. tell a friend you are doing this (hello, B). take it easy, don't force yourself. exercise control. the idea is not to get drunk, but to create a mellow haze and marinate in those thoughts you have been keeping suppressed because they interfere with your functioning.

this bender officially started in the afternoon. my last significant task for the year done, i followed it up with a few rounds beers at the pub, got home, and poured myself a stiff drink. when day turned to night, i drew down the curtains, put on soft lighting, and put my favorite bender playlist on. i have been drinking without break since, but i'm not impaired yet, although i might just go back to sleep to pick up the tread when i wake up in the morning. ah, yes. here's b.

b. i don't write "the year in review" posts.

the chinese had a curse that went "May you live in interesting times". it has become some what of a western catchphrase - it has lost its negative connotaion and is generally thought of as a blessing. trust the goras to seriously bastardize the 'wisdom' of the east in this manner.

if you think about it (and since i'm high, i think this is a very profound thought) 'interesting' is merely a descriptive word. 'interesting' people are fun to be with - they also teach you lots of stuff, about yourself and the world. they are also messed up. that is also the case with interesting times, like the year i just had.

in all the mind-numbingly monotonous years of my quarterlife, this one stands out for the strange combination of love, futility, hopelessness and the good news that it brought. first the good news. it was an incredibly productive year for me. i thoroughly enjoyed the work. my inner maharashtrian stayed low, so i did not have to deal with his laziness and constant whining. it isn't a happy feeling having him around here, since the most he wants to do, like many maharashtrians, is to live in a flat in pune and take his wife to the cinema on saturdays on his bajaj scooter. the wife rides pillion and the kid stands up front. we want much more than that - and on that front, the year delivered.

i travelled, i hiked a lot ,and checked alaska off my map. it was my 41st US state, in a list that had stagnated at 40 for over a year. i fell in love with the place and made plans to buy some land and have a log cabin there, and was promptly laughed at by my more pragmatic friends. some day, it might happen. practicality isn't one of my strong points. i also renewed my ties with pommieland.

i did experience love. i also experienced hopelessness. more importantly, i learnt that no matter how strong feelings are, they can sometimes not be enough, and when your instinct tells you that things are unworkable and that you should let go, you let go. Remember that sometimes things do not work for no fathomable reason - not everything is under your control, some questions do not have answers and that the choice not to carry baggage is one that is easily made. Also, know that closure is a made-up word invented by some TV friendly psychotherapist with too many hyper-romantic delusional patients.

I made some new friends, and they're all the good sorts. i'm binary about people. i give people i like a lot of leeway and people i don't like none. And once in a while it is good to discover someone who can teach you a thing or two, while being totally cool. three dear friends are on their way to parenthood, and i am very happy for them. yeah, and you are welcome make me babysit your kids when they are a bit older because you 'tired parents want to go vacation in europe'.

it was a year of achievement, a little growing up and not nearly enough alcohol. and *that* is why i am on a bender.

the house

The house straddled an entire block and faced a park to its north. It was bounded by streets on all four sides. over to the right, across one of the streets, was a giant well, used by the municipal corporation to supplement the town's water supply. It was more a water tank and less of a well, originally built by my great-grandfather when the properties beyond the street were also his. They had been sold off long before I was born, and now served as accomodation for about thirty households. The days of my childhood summers were punctuated by the coming and going of water tankers as they filled up at a small pumping station located at the edge of the well. For entirely unexplainable reasons, this fascinated me, and I spent countless hours sitting by the window closest to the well. Two generations of the clan, including my father, had learnt to swim in that tank. I am told they used old car tyre tubes as flotation aids.

My great-grandfather was a barrister who went on to become judge of the high court. An anglophile, and later in life a born-again orthodox brahmin, he built a house to emulate the mansions of mother england, right there in the dusty plains of India- replete with a big fireplace in the central hall to ward off winter temperatures that went down to a supposedly freezing 6 degrees Celsius. When you entered the main hall, having passed under the mughal style arches of the front verandah, and the big front door that could be fastened shut with big iron bolts much like the door to a castle, the first thing you noticed were the trophies on the walls - chital and a barasingha, from his and my grandfather's hunts. It was an elegantly furnished room, full of handcrafted wooden recliners, a big octagonal central table, and an old brass telephone.

Above it was the upstairs hall, its walls covered with portraits of seven generations of forefathers, more trophies and two antique guns. As a kid, I was spooked by the upstairs hall, and never went there unaccompanied. Family stories about my long dead great-grandmother who paid visits to the family there only made it worse.

Behind the main hall, and beyond the stairs that led upstairs and to the basement (another eerie place - it was unlit and had a vault with the family jewels), was another verandah that had a swing in it - another favorite place for me to pass time. And then there was the central courtyward at the back with a small well in it, flanked on two sides by the east wing and the west wing of the house. The west wing had the dining hall and the kitchens on the first floor, and bedrooms on the second. The east wing had bedrooms on both floors. Since my great-grandfather had eleven children and he planned it as a home for all generations to come, the house had 35 bedrooms.

His plans never worked out - he himself stayed in a government house in another city even after the house was built, and all his brothers and all but one of his children (my grandfather) flew the nest and settled in other places, and most of those bedrooms were occupied only for a brief period in the 1930's. By the time i was born, my grandfather had let out the rooms that had independent access to the central courtyard. The others were locked up and left to gather cobwebs. For me, it was fascinating to have G, the head servant of the house open up those rooms one by one and explore them - many of them had never really been cleared out when their original occupants had left - the furniture was shrouded up, and if you pulled off the shrouds, you would see, through clouds of dust, stuff that had been essentially untouched since the thirties.

I remember finding a set of tablas in those rooms once, but nobody could recall whom they belonged to. Even today I like to imagine that the ghosts of my forefathers emerge from their portraits in the upstairs hall, and get together in those rooms in the dead of the night, and reclining on the beautiful wooden beds, have private music recitals, all the while shaking their heads at the things that kids of my generation are up to.

Another exciting discovery was that of a balcony that could be accessed from one of the second floor bedrooms - a balcony that I had never seen from the outside. How could I have seen it? It was on the giant well side of the house and we kids weren't allowed to play on that side because of all the tanker traffic. Anyway, discovering that balcony made the nine year old me realize what columbus must have felt like.

In the long row of rooms that fringed the south end of the courtyard lived the fifteen or so servants that were needed to keep the house in order. A tour of these rooms revealed interesting things. Here was the gardener's room, full of old gardening equipment - there, the cook's apartments, containing a big stone mill used for grinding wheat - a 'chakki' so huge that it must have taken superhuman strength to operate.

The house remained the birthplace of two generations of children in the family (although i was born in a maternity home, i was taken there immediately upon my birth, and true to family custom, spent my first six months there). But in many ways, it never served its purpose. My great-grandfather expired while still living in a house provided by the government, my great-grandmother in a hospital far away from home. My grandfather and grandmother themselves spent their last years in a cramped (by their standards) Bombay apartment.

The sad thing about ancestral houses is that nobody has any real use for them these days. There is a risk of squatters taking over unoccupied property, and large pieces of real estate in the prime area of a fast growing tier 2 city are in great demand. Old houses are also expensive to maintain. And when their owners live hundreds and thousands of miles from them and are unable to visit them more than once every couple of years, (and in my case, well over eight), they are usually disposed off. In most cases, they are replaced by big boxy commercial complexes.

The house will no longer be in a few months. All I can hope for is to salvage some of the furniture, and most of the memories.

this post does not make sense

I found a mouse in my closet. I thumped him against the wall and he died.
In case you are wondering about how i knew he was a he, male mice have large 'nads. Anyone can tell.
I also discovered that i make a couple of appearances (four, to be precise) in a book a friend has written.
In the wider scheme of things, i wonder which is cause and which is effect.

Geeks, poets and fink ployd

One of the things that i have been wondering about, and I'm a deeply inquisitive sort of a person that way, is pink floyd. you know, the english rock band. specifically, I have been thinking about why the hell they were so loved, some twenty years after they stopped producing good music, by those of us belonging to a certain subculture on engineering campuses back in the homeland. We listened to them all the time, and every doper worth his salt found deep meanings and hidden messages in their music. (I even found colors! Guitar riffs that were streams of blue and taps on the snare that were red splashes. But that was usually on a bad weed trips. I had lots of those. What to do, I was like that only.)

We idolized the bands of the classic and psych rock era - floyd, led zep, deep purple (who i swear no present-day college kid in the western world has heard of ). Drawing a little bit upon other genres, throw in some iron-maiden, a bit of tull and a bit of dire straits, and yeah 'free bird' by lynyrd skynyrd, and you get a fairly good idea of what a 90's indian college geek was listening to as he drew on his spliff.

The poets (and here i use the term to include all non-engineering types), on the other hand, having shared a pitcher of beer bought with pooled cash at the Razzberry Rhinoceros, were shaking their booties to "Backstreet's back, alright!"

I know, I know. Respectable poets were all about Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell, and good ol' jazz. There might even have been some in that community who obsessed over floyd, although i suspect those were just geeks too afraid to break out of their poetic skins. And I must stress that all such people are friends of mine. (Falstaff, heres your cue to comment). But as a general rule, kids who went to city colleges with a healthy sex ratio (both in terms of gender and number of times gotten laid) were much more into pop-culture than the average geek was.

This divergence between geek and poet preferences is interesting, but it is not a new phenomenon in itself. If i read the situation right, it has been this way since the seventies. During a conversation with someone who went to the same campus i did, only two decades earlier, I realized that he had heard the same music back in the seventies (which was then current) that I did in the late nineties. He was part of a small amateur band, and their repertoire turned out to be rather similar to what the little outfit that I was a drummer for played. It is easy to see how this came about. Druggie music came to india in the late sixties, and engineering campuses, because of their mostly residential nature, were good places for the blooming of a subculture that revolved around psychedelic substances. Once the process started, druggie geeks just remained in their own insulated campuses and played the same things over and over again - each generation passing it on to the next one. Meanwhile, the outside world, which has *always* been about the hip and the showy and the new, moved on. So terry jacks , who was popular in city colleges back in the 70's was trashed and the boyzones and westlifes of the world took over poet hearts. It was all very disturbing.

Sometimes I have a vision of college-going poets in 70's india holding hands in a circle and singing 'we had joy we had fun, we had seasons in the sun', gushing and sighing and hugging each other. Meanwhile the geeks on their isolated campus in bumblefuck, eastern india, buy cheap g*nja from a thatch-roofed shack and sit by a rarely used railway line to commune with their chill*ms, 'interstellar overdrive' playing in their heads, much like their successors two decades later.

a sandwich for epicures

the next time you decide to drop by at the friendly neighborhood deli for a sandwich, here's a suggestion for what is arguably the best sandwich in the world, especially so because it was concocted by me.

it consists of hot pastrami, melted provolone, lettuce, tomato, onions, regular mayo, and (here's the special ingredient) lots of hot sauce. You may ask the guy behind the counter to use any hot sauce he has, but I have found that Sriracha works best.

Oh, and dont forget to order it on a toasted plain bagel. All other forms of bread are inferior to toasted plain bagels. Toasted plain bagels rock, they are the best. Okay, enough said about plain toasted bagels. (Did I mention that I *love* plain toasted bagels?)

when you eat it and discover, as I did, what is possible the best combination of flavors in the world - the butter like texture that pastrami gets after bring grilled, the sublime combination of lettuce tomato and onions, the taste of mayo lurking out there just beyond sight, and the occasional stab of Sriracha- do spare a thought for us.

We will appreciate it, consequently, by the law of karma, good things will happen to you - you will get the raise you were looking for, you will hook up with the girl (guy, if you happen to be a girl or are gay-not-that-there-is-anything-wrong-with-that) you have always wanted to hook up with and other such things. Forget god - its all about cause and effect. Do good and good shall be done unto you.

Right. And I know that it is a bit weird when a recipe for a great tasting sandwich turns into an exposition of the law of karma. What else did you expect when you came here?

weee-heeee

Every once in a while, when a blogger runs out of stuff to blog about, he puts up a list of random searches that lead to his blog. i've avoided doing it so far, but maybe now is the time.

Some searches that lead to your blog are completely understandable. You cannot get away with posting silly posts about random early 90's movies like "Jaan tere naam" and not have losers who come searching for bolly-trash. The realization that the said losers are not totally unlike you being disheartening, you quickly upgrade them from the status of losers to that of fellowmen.

It is also completely understandable when people flood to your blog looking for advice on which pressure cooker to buy. After all, your blog is in the top ten results for "Marlex pressure cooker" and is the only one peice of text on the internet that includes the line "Hawkins ki seetee baji" (I have Megha to thank for that one.) And owing to the courtesy of other commenters, you have people searching for "Lekin chup chupke milne se" turning up at your blog.

Things get a bit disturbing when you come to know that there are people out there who are curious to know "Rohit Roy age". I mean, why? Unless you are a twisted individual who wants to marry rohit roy and have his babies, why would you care about how old he is? And more importantly ( a somewhat moot question since i have already cast aspersions on this rohit roy fellow) who the hell *is* Rohit Roy?

You start feeling a little better when you discover that you are amongst the top results for the musical "Beguiled Again". But it is mitigated by Finnish folk who come to your blog because it is the number one result for "cuck eki". I dont know what that means in Finn, or Finnish, or Finnski, or whatever the hell their language is called, but it sure sounds like a bad thing to do.

When your blog turns up in the top ten google results for "I hate happy people", it is time to sit up and re-evaluate your outlook about life. And then, one day, you discover that you are the only person on the interwebs to have ever expressed that "Happiness is an unnatural state", and you do not know if you should be proud or you should go see a shrink.

Oh, and regarding that last bit, I can totally imagine the not so distant future when the world has *finally* gone to the dogs, and has reached a social equilibrium where everybody is miserable (as is certain to happen). I wonder if they will look back, and revere a certain wise man who first postulated the fundamental truth that governs their crappy lives.