Memories...

I was cleaning my room and found my old answer scripts. I always made it a point to preserve them, especially the English ones. After the initial splash of nostalgia came the agony. Going through those answer scripts I realized how the teachers meticulously took advantage of our naivety and our gullibility became our vice.

Can you imagine the amount of B.S they fed us while at school? And some of us were indoctrinated so effectively that we continue to believe some of that crap till date.

Remember those essays on the merits and demerits of the Television. I’m sure all of you wrote those essays, and more often than not wrote the same points albeit in a different style. Allow me to butcher them one by one.

TV lets us know what’s happening around the globe. The news and the Discovery channel along with other informative channels like the history channel and NatGeo increase our knowledge base.

Honestly, in the sixth standard most of us weren’t even attracted to the opposite sex, leave alone consider the use of knowledge as a probable weapon in wooing them. At this age, for the majority of us the daily happenings of the political scenario of Palestine didn’t interest us much (I’m not sure how many of us are even interested today). Nor did we really care about the extent to which the Alps beautified Switzerland. And the only reason we might watch the Animal Planet would’ve been because we found the sounds they made funny. We were too busy playing with our friends or joining some classes which would enhance our inborn traits.

We should watch TV with caution because we may get hooked on to it. It also causes harm to our eyes.

Okay, now who the hell started this one? It’s the BIGGEST hoax of our time. Watching too much TV from up close will make you myopic or astigmatic or something like that. Let me clear you of your dilemma, IT DOESN’T HAPPEN! It’s been scientifically proven that kids who are subjected to strain work (to the eyes) such as reading, TV, Computers are at a much higher risk of getting spectacles. However this effect takes place only when their eyes are developing, a process that ceases after 6-7 years of age. So this means that at 11 years of age, you can stay up all night with a packet of chip(s) and commit sins.

Leave the habit, don’t be ignorant!

TV makes us couch potatoes.

So does sitting on a chair from 9 AM to 3 PM with minimum break time and staring at a black rectangle (which might have become green and made of fiber at some places). But we can’t reduce the time at school now, can we? Oh now don’t give me crap saying that there are “games” periods, those are like twice in a week. Are you kidding me?

Somehow using TV for entertainment purposes was considered as a sin according to higher authorities. As if watching Friends was like taking a mural of a deity and smashing it to pieces and two movies back to back was a feat achieved only by the spoilt and delinquent.

Conclusion: The emphasis on writing an idealistic (idealistic according to the society by large) answer scripts (faultily termed as flawless) supercedes the thinking power. Though the teachers at the beginning of any writing activity say that try to be original and creative, they seldom mean it. This is because many of them truly believe in all those aforementioned points. Also students seldom feel rebellious when it comes to writing an essay and would much rather go with the general perceptions of things. So let me go ahead and blame the system, for its always easier to lay the blame on something else, right?

I've been contributing to quite a few other. The links to these blogs is on the right side.

See I've been a sweetheart and pointed it out too(With blood red color).

Do check them out when your're free(and you know what means don't ya)

Let there be rock DOS

The lights came in every hue and looked down upon us. Showering their light contemptuously at the millions of onlookers among which there was I. The place felt like a Rastafarian party. It reminded me of the good old days of ‘Hare Rama Hare Krsna’ being ad-libbed by saffron clad and long haired hippies promoting world peace and legalization of Hashish. There was a cloud of smoke in my vicinity and what more, it seemed to be perpetual. As one cloud would move on, another would strategically take its place. It wasn’t all tobacco, there was a lot of weed too, guess that was the saving grace. And then this stick wearing a dress apparates and he’s wet and is wearing this gigantic hat and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ It’s (He’s) the epitome of glam rock. Steven Tyler.

And almost instantly he gets to work. The previous night Siddharth and me were listening to all Aerosmith songs(a pathetic attempt), so that on the D Day we wouldn’t look like schmucks head banging to stuff we didn’t know while the crowd chanted the song in unison, almost mocking us.

And then the song started. And I didn’t know it. I turned around to see Sid, with empty eyes, as though hinting to him the ignominy of being a fallen pseudo-fan. Sonam didn’t care much. She was too busy balancing herself on her toes, trying to get a glimpse of the onstage act, or so I though.

And then it happened again, the next song too! No clue whatsoever! Zilch! Yet I regained my confidence and started jumping up and down screaming, hooting and well trying to get a hint of the chorus. Boy was I looking like a jackass. My huge overgrown body screaming for me to cease the relentless motion. Telling me that I wasn’t meant for this sort of physical activity. Begging me to stop. And the weed.

And the weed

And the weed

It just kept coming from all directions, as though I was a sort of beacon and it surrounded me.

Tyler sang “Crazy”. Ah finally something familiar. Oh so familiar. The large screens started playing the video and almost everyone’s gaze fell to the young and carefree Alicia Silverstone (who features in the video).

Suddenly my ears get to hear the incoherent vocals from spaghetti clad damsel who is riding a man’s shoulder as though in a rodeo bar. Intoxicated probably because what she was singing didn’t make much sense.

Another thing I noticed during the concert was that Steven Taylor isn’t afraid of his sexuality. I understand the whole glam rock set up, but come on…

then there's this....

Oh come on, get a room!

After that Joe Perry announces that the true reason he’d come to India weren’t the elephants or the spices, its Kamasutra. He wanted to thank the nation of a billion where the Kamasutra took its birth and ironically people were forbidden to speak about it as though it doesn’t exist. I mean come on! A country of a billion people, somebody must be seriously getting laid!

Honestly, that is just freaky. Its like a cave! I have never seem a man with a mouth so wide!

Well, the concert was short, or so it seemed, apparently they sang a dozen songs. In between they decided to bring a couple of chairs and chill there.

Tyler was obsessed with saying ‘Namaste’, I think someone told him that it was the Indian equivalent of “Rock on dude!”, coz that’s the zeal with which he kept announcing it. The crowd was maniacal. Millions of yuppies head banging and swaying. I’d say it was a nice experience.

Let there be Rock- UNO

This entry has been due for a really long time and procrastination has been sweet

“Aerosmith are coming to India!”

“Really?”

“Hmm...That’s great. So it’s probably going to be Bangalore”

“Where else?”

“I’m so going to that concert. Yeah! Woo! It’s going to be one kickass concert. I'll be rocking and screaming all night! It’ll probably (main act) start at midnight and go on all night. I will go wild. Wild! I tell ya!”

I comforted myself with the thought of witnessing a rock act in real life atlast. I wouldn't remain a lowly concert virgin anymore. Something to look forward to in the holidays. Now, when someone would ask me the most cliched question that one could be asked during vacations:

Hey Sup/wassup/wazza/whats up? amongst others

And they'd tell me how they have been reading, sleeping, watching TV, going on and on about how they're getting to eat good food as though they'd just been enduring a Somalian summer, I'd have something in my arsenal to top it all.

I WENT FOR THE FUCKING CONCERT, YEAAAAAH!
I reached Bangalore on the 25th, whose dwellers still haven't lifted their head from shame ever since its name was changed to a much less extravagant Bengalooru. The past week had been hectic. Road trips had taken its toll on me. First Vellore, then Mysore, then Ooty and then Coimbatore. Our driver, knowing fairly well that we’d had no idea about the roadways of the glorious state of Tamil Nadu kept on asking us which route to take at each detour (obviously suggesting his preference as well). I guess it was his way of showing that we were inferior, far inferior as far as the topography went. Now that was obviously true, yet parents being the species they are just have to be extremely opinionated on everything. I guess they were trying to instill the habit of self imposed authority in me despite knowing very well that the man behind the wheel was quite the master of puppets here. I still can’t forget the amount of dust that was generated as our mean escape machine (non AC that too) hurtled down the highway, which in fact seemed like a never ending construction site, just that there didn’t seem to be much construction going on. I could feel a second layer of dust accumulate evenly on my face.

Finally I reached Bangalore, with a paralyzed buttock, a battered back and apparently the entire South India covering my face. The concert was a sort of salvation for which I had endured hell (which took a detour from Salem).

Siddharth, Sonam and Me reached the venue. Palace Grounds, Bangalore. The rock haven. We had decided to go about an hour late so that we wouldn’t have to witness the opening act by Galeej Gurus. What greeted me instead was the longest standing queue I had ever laid my eyes on, and quite a dynamic queue it was, with people coming in and joining. It was quite easy to get carried away and label every woman standing there as a whore.

Siddharth led us past the wall of human flesh, and we followed like prisoners of war towards the entry zone. After being frisked on numerous occasions (by now being totally convinced that this was a method of segregating the straight from the gay) by men of all sorts I finally reached the grounds.

I will never forget that sight. If there was ever a near perfect representation of the Poisson distribution that Mr. BKM so vividly tried to explain to us in Prob Stat class, this was it. Each spectator fused into the one standing around him/her to form what was the most massive silhouette I had ever witnessed.

The stage was concert-esque. It might sound blatantly hypocritical considering that this was my first actual concert, for I would not consider head banging to Daler Mehndi as a little lad while everyone around me were yelping “Oye!” and “Purr!” as one. The lights went off.

The shrills were earsplitting. From the corner of my eyes I could already see a bra strap fall off a shoulder (much to the ignorance of the Madame I suppose). The night had just begun.

Aerosmith was in the house

To be continued…

Digging the Past

One of Jolies earliest movies. Hackers!
The first time I saw it, my reaction:
Whathaaa!
Followed by a roaring laughter!

Mother’s day is celebrated throughout the world. On this day children present gifts to their Momma’s/Maatashri’s/Mum’s/Amma’s, it can be looked upon as a payback for all that milk they sucked when they were infants.

Its origin varies from nation to nation.

Some believe that Ancient Greeks sparked off the tradition for they had a festival called Mother Worship to honour Cybele, a great mother of the Greek gods.

In USA, the tradition emerged due to something totally different that what many may expect. There was this woman, Ann Jarvis. A young married cleanliness freak, she wanted to promote sanitation (probably back then they were perpetually covered with dust). During the Civil War she organized the Women’s Work Days, and this legion of her would go around and clean whatever they could find. This trend eventually caught on in 45 states, before hitting the entire nation.

Today is Father’s day

No rich history here. It was just made to complement the Mother’s day, for the sake of secularism I suppose.

Are IIT toppers models?

IIT-JEE!
For many, it spells terror, anxiety and even the ones who dismiss the competition(because they beat it) rather saying that it was fun or interesting would agree that it did give them goose bumps, at least as the days inched closer.

Today the IIT industry has become a huge investment ground with new coaching academies springing up in every nook and corner. There are areas entirely dedicated to the IIT coaching industry and the whole neighborhood thrives on it. The roads are covered with pamphlets and brochures of various coaching institutes.

It’s almost taken for granted that to get into IIT, you have to have coaching. And in many places (AP being the foremost here), it starts from an early age. Sometime it is even before the kid has reached puberty.

Every year, the IIT-JEE topper becomes a national celebrity. His photo comes on the front page of every news paper. He gives countless interviews to various media agencies. And thus the drama starts.

It’s a known fact that many toppers accept money from institutes that haven’t been affiliated to, just so that they can advertise for them. Now the question that needs to be answered is that is this right? This has been talked about on various blogs. Vivek addresses the problem on his blog.

What he's basically asking is that are JEE toppers models for any academy that can be hired? We might say that it seems ethically wrong. At least that’s what our gut feeling says at first instinct.
But then he also says what about a Dhoni who says that a 7 UP made him the brilliant cricketer that he is now, or Roberto Carlos attributing his football skills to the sports-drink Gatorade?
Aren’t these people lying too? So then why should the education industry be singled out? It’s a business after all. The coaching institutes are factories that need ranks because only then will they get more and more students and there never seems to be a plethora of them for newer buildings (branches) keep springing up.


In JEE
2005 2004 Priya Gupta of Delhi secured AIR 2. She was overwhelmed. Smart she was and had joined FIITJEE, a prestigious IITJEE training institute with branches all over India. However a rival institute in the mean time offered jobs to those teachers at FIITJEE who had trained Ms Gupta. When the results were declared, the rival institute claimed that they too were responsible for her success since those teachers now belong to them.

Are IITJEE toppers models?

The problem here according to me is that, since these IITJEE toppers are normal guys and girls next door, their word is taken more seriously than say a Milind Soman advertising for Nivea cold cream or the sorts.
Also in the case of celebrities like actors and sportsperson, the public has seen them grow from rookies to superstars where as in the case of an IIT topper only the final outcome is presented.
Another problem is after tenth grade the student is rather gullible and well in most cases so are his/her parents and doesn’t know which institution to join, seeing AIR hailing from a particular institution will make him/her want to join it.
Another major reason why it feels wrong is because in the case of a sports-person, celebrity you know that its like a lottery, as in only 15 people make it to the squad, or only 3-4 movies are successful each year, the point I am trying to make is that, whether Sachin drinks Boost to improve his performance or smells Agarwal incense sticks, it doesn’t matter to the common because he doesn’t want to be a cricket. But as opposed to becoming a cricketer or an actor, IIT is very much reachable, with 12000 people being called this year (including all the lists, Ok I've included reservation seats, that’s not the context here).

Do ponder over it…

Life in Metro

I saw Life in a Metro Yesterday.

I had heard from friends who had seen the movie that it was worth watching. But I didn't want to watch it because I was afraid I already knew the plot. I mean come on how hard could it be to guess? The name of the movie is Metro. Obviously the movie had to thrive on sex and more sex. Sex in the elevator, sex in the car, sex on the rooftop and sex with multiple men. And obviously this isn't the exhaustive list.(Thats impossible!). There would have to be a lot of stress, because once you earn so much and don't sleep(sleeping for rest not pleasure, pun NOT intended) work-related mostly and well the stress would lead to huge differences between the couples(mostly married ones) and this would again lead to more stress and they'd find solace in ..well...sex. With another person obviously. Some how Indians never get into drugs. It's either women or Booze(or both). At least that's what they show on the golden screen. Drugs are mostly forbidden territory, a taboo not worth chasing. But drinking bottles of poison, consuming unfathomable number of tablets(they never mention what those are, they are either really small like homeothepic medicene or really large ones, like rat poison) and newly introduced into the list, courtesy of Life in a Metro: Phenyl.
And the movie would also have few item numbers thrown in between(ok so I was wrong about this one) and because the director wouldn't want gay activists butting in, ergo a dash of homosexuality would have to be thrown in albeit it would HAVE to be something like how it was projected in Page 3. You know, being caught in the act, betraying a beautiful innocent girl in the process.(Co-incidentally it happens to be Miss Sen here as well, are they hinting something here?)
As it turned out, the movie was somewhat on those line but the director or rather the script-writer made one thing very clear: YOU CANNOT BE HAPPY IN A CITY.
Well even if you are, its short-lived. Because someone will fall short of breath or semen(though not necessarily in that order). Every two minutes feelings keep developing. And I keep insisting that it's the music that does this is. Its been stereotyped. Make a girl laugh, say something while looking her in the eye(with some really sentimental music playing in the background) and eventually all the moments will flash in her head and she'll leave her current hubby/boyfriend/fuck-buddy and come after you, running(either on a railway platform, road, beach etc).
This is fine.
But then something happens. Its almost as though the script-writer is contradicting his earlier gospel and goes against the stereotype and makes one of the couple accept the truth. Family is important. You can't leave your hubby(even if hes been having the best sex of his life for the last two years and you have been getting NOTHING AT ALL). I guess that's to show that its a man's world and that women have to endure everything(which isn't necessarily true, though as it turns out in most cases they have to).
One of the greatest gifts given to women is their power to weep. Seriously you have to be a real bastard if you don't sympathise with a woman who is crying, and to add to that the background score, its a fool proof combo. For directors, this is a steal if they capitalise on it. So even if a girl knows that she is sleeping with the man who
1. Is married with a kid
2.Is her boss
3.Will give her perks in return
she feels that maybe someday after relentless hours of fucking she'll change his feelings towards her(whore) to something else(love of his life).

The worst part is that she is successful in doing so, but by that time someone else has come into her life because you can only love someone who takes care of you when you being the douche bag that you are drinks a bottle of phenyl because your boss who was initially humping you just to let out his stress won't love you.
So well conscience comes into play and as usual messes everything up.

Also, the director very clearly wanted to show one simple fact. Old people can't have sex. They can sleep in the same bad and even have a live-in relationship but can't fornicate. Nay! That is unthinkable. But that's discrimination don't you think? Everyone around them is getting some and they have to kill the poor old lady(played beautifully by Nafisa Ali) before she gets any with her boyfriend(Dharmender, oh yes it was quite a treat watching him as well. Everytime he's day "I love you" in his "Main tera khoon peejaonga" tone, I just couldnt help sniggering).

Eventually they had to end the movie, so they showed that everyone is happy the way they are, as in the respective people they were with(or without) and that the hulla gulla should stop. It was almost like a stay-order had been passed and no more fooling around was allowed.Otherwise, if the story was to continue, we'd end up having 7 factorial relationships(read elementary permutation and combination on how).

The music was good, really good. They got these bangladeshi and kashmiri dudes to sing. They blended it into the movie by actually casting them as full time singers in the movie. At any given high or low, they'd appear with their band baja(and guitar/banjo) and start singing. Kudos to them!

Partly fictional, partly real

During a conversation:
'I'm going to miss you a lot' said I
'Oh come on, why think about whats going to happen? Besides you can't change it, so might as well get over it' was her retort.
'Was it easy for you to come up with that line?' I asked

She didn't reply.

During another conversation:
'....and well, that's about it. You're leaving tomorrow. It's going to be tough, one whole month.' I said
Here I was pouring out my feelings to her, telling her how much I am going to miss her and she was nonchalant about the whole affair. I felt almost a rage build up inside me and wanted to scream at her face
'How can you be so opaque?' is what I wanted to lash out at her, but somehow refrained from doing so.
And we carried on with our regular conversation and I continued to make her laugh but deep down melancholia was slowly settling in.

The next day, I was all groggy eyed when I logged online and realised that an offline message was waiting for me.

Damn, I’m going to miss talking to you so much. I’m already dreading it. I’m going to miss the way you talk, the analogies you draw, the way you make fun of everything, the way you make me laugh, the way you irritate me, the way you get worried about me…everything.

I just stared at the screen for a few minutes.

All you chai lovers, this is how tea is made! This is a small tea factory called well...The Tea Factory, in Ooty. They took us for a tour arond the factory. So here's the deal:




In the first step, the tea leaves are heated and all the moisture is removed from them. Once dried, they are pulverised and made to dust.
This dust goes on a conveyor belt and is further dried
I guess this just smoothens it and well spreads it evenly and enters the googy.

The googy is a rotating hollow cylinder, entering which the tea gets its granulated shape that we're so used to seeing.
What goes it has to come out.
Here its placed in large trays and raked till the color changes to brown
These are now transfered to the fermentation chamber

After they are fermented, sorting takes place.

And well thats about it.

Looking at the factory, I pondered over how less an initial cost these machines would take and that setting up a tea factory isnt all that difficult. The machines are simple mechanical ones(which I confirmed) and well process as such doesnt require much labour too(unless done on a very large scale). The returns are huge as compared to the low initial investment. But yea, you gotta be next to a tea farm, this tea factory grows its own tea.

When Orkut results in Death

We hear about it so often, yet unless it happens to us, we dont tend to take it seriously. Be it having unprotected sex, drinking water which isnt clean or meeting people after getting to know them from chatrooms/social networking sites.
Its hard to figure out a person's intentions when he is online because he can seem to appear anyone he wants to be.
You can state that your passions are Hiking, Bungee Jumping and Rocket Science and that you've got the perfect figure(despite any of that being true). But the power of an avatar or lack of face to face conversations can also help 'psycho's' hide their identity quite effectively.
Recently a girl and guy got to know each other through Orkut, became really close pals, wrote each other sweet testimonials and the works. The guy was already married. They fell in love and met...

Find out what happened next...

Its quite easy to blame all this on fate and take the easy way out, but come on! Be sensible.
This is the guys profile:
(You can still see the girls testimonial I think)
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=348385650417627297

And this is the girl's:
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=11725203022944506305

A Tout le monde
Be careful on any social networking site or any of the chatrooms. I know it sounds like I am sermonising here, but its been happening to so many people and its so easy to fall in the trap.

You lie so much that you believe yourself

-Metallica

My days in Bangalore have been quite relaxing and I think I have exceeded my sleep quota(if ever there was one) by a massive margin. Finally the D-day has almost arrived and its tomorrow. Sonam, a close pal from BITS has also come to head bang(though I dont kinow how much of that can be done with Steven Tyler singing) with us fellow rockers and spent the entire day with us. A substantial part of it went watching the movie "Shootout at Lokhandwala" and well...what can I say I was impressed.

The movie is from the White Feather production house, which was co-founded by Sanjay Dutt. The movie says that it was based on true rumours and that it was. Closely connected to the Mumbai Blasts and Dawood Ibrahim and other superstar tags, the movie was rather entertaining. Just one thing, there seemed to be no twist in the tale. Its like, fine , agreed, its cool and all, killing dozens of people and wasting excessive amounts of bullets but there is no twist. But my oh my was I excited.

I realised its probably because of the background music.

Damn, they hype it up so much. Everytime, Vivek Oberoi starts smoking a cigerette or pops a cap in someone's head(thats nigger for shooting someone down), this really cool music starts playing in the background, without which the act would seem..quite bland. And then there is this choir that starts giving backing vocals and its like, oh my god, killing people is like so cool, even though you know what they are doing actually happened and its outright illegal and wrong.
The movie quite clearly tells you the repercussions of being an outlaw and more importantly, messing around with higher powers(such as larger dons living in dubai) can really screw matters and end up with you getting killed. You're much better off being a sycophant.
The incidents are apparently mostly real( I verified that by wiki-ing and googleing for over 2-3 hours). The career graph of Maya Dolas, the notorious gangster played by Vivek Oberoi can be plotted and is something like this

Co-incidentally this is also the Stress vs Strain Graph of a untypically brittle material as shown on Wikipedia.
The movie has a nice tempo and there is not a single moment when you feel bored, just that the director has a wonderful way of pissing the audience by sneaking in two item numbers without any meaning and which are totally irrelevant to the plot thus giving the movie its aesthetic value. Also, Tushar Kapoor must be the funniest hit-man ever. The director has really tried to make him look like a macho-man, but has miserably failed much to my amusement.

However, after wiki-ing about the Lokhandwala shootout, I stumbled upon ULHASNAGAR. Its apparently a major gangster town and its sarcastically said(though has known to be true) that there are killings in this town on every tuesday. Surprisingly the literacy rate of this town is 80%(according to the 2001 census), when the national average was only 60%.

Though I've never been hooked onto the technical world and well gadgets werent really my objects of desire, but in the last few weeks, I've frequented the webpages of WIRED.com than ever before.
Was doing some random googling some days back and found this interesting article.

After reading it and a little bit of wiki-ing on comcast, this is what I find out

"Comcast has a policy of terminating broadband customers who allegedly use excessive bandwidth. Comcast has declined to disclose a numerical bandwidth limit, arguing that the limit is variable on a monthly basis and dependent on the capacity of specific cable nodes. Comcast claims this policy only affects users whose bandwidth consumption is among the top one percent of high-speed internet customers."

Top 1%????
Thats top 1% of the second largest ISP in the USA. Though Comcast officials claim thats 0.01%.
And sometimes comcast bills you excessively for porn that you never ordered, there have been instances where people have been billed for nearly 1500$ for porn, sporting the Indian mentality, thats about 75000 rupees, now thats a lotta porn, A LOT! And they give you a bill, where the porn ordered is one after the other within a gap of 5 seconds.

By the way, there have been recent updates on the Comcast Issue that the article above talks about, read it here at
http://comcastissue.blogspot.com/
Its highly amusing.

One look at the consumerist website and you'd get to find out that there are thousands others like Frank and Elizabeth.