Easy Bedtime Reading

Lingo Kid

2008-05-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

Saw this video on the YouTube India homepage.

Unbelievable this guy is.

So much untapped potential.

A bitter IPL

2008-05-03T00:14:00.000-07:00

So the media is raving about the IPL, and how its revolutionising cricket and giving youngsters new opportunities to be discovered and realise their dreams and other such. I can't argue with that. Inasmuch as cricket wasn't a mainstream option as a career in the past, this is positioning sport in a new light in India... and that's fantastic. But behind all of this, something dark lurks... and is killing the cricket experience.

The cricket watching experience for one has gone downhill, and reached new troughs. I will probably never buy a Vodafone package because the annoyingly familiar tune of the girl and the dog has cut short replays and pieces of commentary in mid-sentence far too many times. In the past I've been a rabid Canon lover, but if I could, I'd fire the marketing team at Powershot for ruining the brand by having it pop up in the middle of the screen so you can't see the fielder's face.

Then there's the issue of the commentary, which again seems to have taken a nosedive. There's little value-add in anything that's said - no facts, no analyses, nothing intelligent, mostly platitudes.

Most of all, there's something missing in terms of emotional attachment. I couldn't care less whether the Deccan Chargers beat the Delhi Daredevils. Its like watching a video game that someone else is playing. A couple of guys fight it out - there's bursts of rapid action, and then you go to dinner. You don't discuss it for days afterwards... you don't relive the moments and talk about what went right or wrong.

At the end of the day... I think its too much cricket. Cricket used to be special and desperately awaited... and now its becoming a commodity.

The man of the house

2008-02-23T03:10:00.000-08:00

If we can have housewives, why not house-husbands?

In this age of equality of the sexes, where the corporate landscape is littered with the achievements of women, why aren't the guys more actively reconsidering a new kick-back existence where they stay at home, shun the workplace, tutor the kids, blog every now and then (like me), and make dinner?

The idea isn't new, really. If you think about it, the dream of the man and the woman exchanging places has been around for a while. The theme of movies and books. "I wish you could, even for one day... see what I have to put up with!". I remember reading Turnabout by Thorne Smith, from my granddad's bookshelf where a husband and wife wake up one day and find themselves in each other's bodies. I didn't get past 50 pages. Regardless, I think the idea has wings.

Many years ago, I went on a trek in the Himalayas. Somewhere up there, there's a village called Malana (popl. 150), which claims to be its own independent country with its own rules. There's only one restaurant the 'foreigners' are allowed into - the rest of the village is off-limits to outsiders. The only other thing I remember about it is that the women were out collecting firewood and tending to the cattle, while the men sat around the village square, smoking pipes and playing cards... and looking out to see whether one of us touched something we weren't allowed to (there's a fine if you do). There must be something in this social order.

Back in the everyday world... if I find enough evidence of this concept gaining traction, enough like minds out there, I'm going to start a company that caters to the house-husband community. In the beginning, I'll probably sell home exercise kits, DIY video game rooms and tips on beating the stock market from your armchair. With wave 2 of funding, I'll probably open a few playschools for the kids, with attached TV-rooms & reclining chairs for the guys. Thereafter, the possibilities are endless.

I've even thought of a name for my company - I'm going to call it Homeopathi.

Hairlines

2008-02-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

A few lines, then, on hair.

For the economy class, its the free booze. For the chosen few in first class, they now give you free massages on board. On some trans-Atlantic routes, they'll let you sign up to 30 minute slots to ease the stiffness-in-legs caused by the hardness of the flat beds. So you can work the muscle-kinks out between Reykjavik and random ice-floe. And elsewhere, they're also saying that you can now get married on certain Virgin America flights. Passengers may carry-on one laptop bag, and one wedding gift.

Amidst all of this, I'm wondering why no one has thought to offer haircuts on planes. The world's first h-airline. Tremendous potential if you ask me. Opportunity cost zero for the busy business traveller - time otherwise idle. Gossip opportunities for the ladies. Or a chance to get to know the girl in 34A. And a greater likelihood that people will pay a few bucks for this, rather than that pearl necklace in the High Life magazine.

I suppose there are a few teething troubles to sort out - like whether the FAA will allow scissors near people's throats etc. And what one does with all that hair on the floor. But elegant solutions can be devised.

Until that happens, the closest next step I've seen so far is a hair salon at SFO airport to kill the waiting-time. But I haven't had much luck there either. Once it was closed because it was 6pm. The next time I was there earlier, but it was closed because it was Sunday. Essentially, a service only useful to those who fly during working hours.

Kinda like a restaurant I knew in Malleswaram that used to close for lunch.

Pregnant pauses

2008-01-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

Life is different when you are pregnant. Or when your wife is.

Middle Eastern restaurants are suddenly demoted because feta cheese is off limits. You start looking at other peoples' pram models rather than them, when you're out on the street. And, when you call the parents, they always uniformly seem that much more cheerful.

Advice is, of course, in plenty. From Here to Paternity is a must-read for all guys. Ideal loo-time reading without complicated terms and scary disaster scenarios.

On the other hand, Your Pregnancy Bible, has this cautionary message on the subject of travelling by car during pregnancy:

Not wearing [seat] restraints clearly poses a greater risk; studies show that the leading cause of fetal death in traffic accidents is the death of the mother.

Who knew.

Return of the Bun

2008-01-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

Jesus took 3 days.

Bun-Omlette has taken somewhat longer.

But it is, nevertheless, back. Leaner and meaner, with new stories from new lands.

Mind it.

SpaceshipTwo

2007-02-24T17:38:00.000-08:00

Visited the London Science Museum today, and saw a simulation of Virgin Galactic's SpaceshipTwo.

Touted the world's first 'spaceline', Virgin Galactic seems all set to seriously skew the frequency of mankind's visits to space. While in the 45 years since Yuri Gagarin blasted off, only 450 people in the world have visited space, Virgin plans to increase this number to 50,000 in the next 10 years.

In the museum, there's a large screen film clip that explains how SpaceshipTwo will work, and what space-tourists will get to do as early as next year. The vision is something else. (Although Richard Branson looks like Chewbacca, the man is a genius). The spaceship, with room for 6 passengers is taken up to fifty thousand feet by a carrier airplane, and then detached. Rocket motors then fire up and blast the pod into space, literally faster than a bullet. A minute later, you're weighless and floating in space. The ride lets passengers unbuckle, float around the cabin and look out into space, before dropping back down to earth.

There are some neat engineering touches. Once you're in space, the seats retract to give passengers maximum room to float around in, and because there's no up and down in zero gravity, there are windows on all sides, on the sides, the roof and the floor of the pod. And then - to prevent excessive heat on re-entry in a cost-effective way, the ship merely controls the speed of descent using a shuttle-cock like design that slows the ship down. Once its back in the atmosphere, it can then land like a normal plane.

There was a Q&A session with one of the men working on the project. While the adults in the audience asked questions like "How much does it cost?" and "Will the passengers undergo training before the actual flight?", the kids' had more fundamental concerns like "How can I become a pilot on this?" and "Why do we need to go to space?".

How much does it cost? Two hundred thousand dollars a head, at this point. Merely the average bonus that a Canary Wharf investment banker makes every year.

The Intelligence of a City

2007-02-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

"The larger and more colorful a city is, there more places there are to hide one's guilt and sin; the more crowded it is, the more people there are to hide behind. A city's intellect ought to be measured not by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years. By this logic, doubtless, Istanbul is the world's most intelligent city. "

- From My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk

Nyama Choma Tayari

2007-01-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

(The story in pictures.)
(Part 1: Why did the guinea-fowl cross the road?)
(Part 2: "Roja, roja")
(Part 3: The Maasai)

Two days, and many animals later, we begin our return. The same road down as up. And in the interim the rains have intensified. All incoming road traffic to the Mara has now been shut. But now we're in, we have to wade our way out. An hour in, and the slush reappears in force. A long line of 30 cars ahead of us, and this time the road is so washed out that no one seems to be able to make it across. We wait. Finally - a massive tractor arrives. And one by one, with giant serrated wheels and effortless ease it pulls each car across the messiest portions of the road. It doesn't get better for about an hour after, but eventually, after some incredible skill on Steve's part we reach tarred road again.

So we're home and dry. Or so we think. We leave Narok behind and are cruising. Back in civilization, we see villages, houses, hand-crank-petrol-stations, and many many restaurants that all advertise in big bold letters - Nyama Choma Tayari - roast meat ready. And then suddenly, we turn a hill, and see a huge traffic jam before us. An accident with a large 18-wheeler sugar-carrying truck, that has skidded and essentially blocked the entire road. The only road, as you will recall, that connects us to Nairobi.

An hour passes - it begins to rain. People get out of their cars and mill around the truck - which is impossible to move in any direction because its perfectly wedged between a mud wall and a chasm of sorts. A couple of policemen come by, but look around idly and leave the scene. We begin to get anxious, because the word on the street is now that this could take a day to clear! A few enterprising locals have already begun to fire up a portable gas stove, and set up a makeshift omelette stand. Others, who have been carrying chickens in their luggage (true fact!) begin to contemplate their futures as nyama choma. Then, finally - a master plan. We walk over to the other side of the truck, and somewhere among the long line of vehicles, there is a matatu - a local bus primarily used by native Kenyans - filled with people who want to go to Narok. So we strike a deal, and exchange passengers.

After 10 hours, we finally make it back to Nairobi. My aunt, uncle and cousin have lived in Nairobi for 15 years and never been on a matatu. Until now. Our trip, in all its glory, is summed up nicely by Vikram - "Welcome to Africa!".

The Maasai

2007-01-29T13:29:00.000-08:00

(The story in pictures.)
(Part 1: Why did the guinea-fowl cross the road?)
(Part 2: "Roja, roja")

A group of Maasai were at our hotel. They were going to show us what a Maasai dance is all about. To sum up - there are dances for many occasions, but all of them involve monotonic chanting, and jumping up and down. Really high. Really really high - these guys have genetically derived springs in their feet. As per custom, the higher you can jump, the more likely you are to get a bride. So the motivation is there.

Maasai live in groups of huts, with some sort of a chief, who has some five or six wives, all of whom live in the group of huts. Within the huts, the Maasai also keep their cows. Traditional belief dictates that all the cows in the world belong to the Maasai. So the scene is roughly - hut, man, woman, child, cow. These days they also carry mobile phones and drink champagne, as we discovered.

Part 4: Nyama Choma Tayari

"Roja, roja"

2007-01-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

(The story in pictures.)
(Part 1: Why did the guinea-fowl cross the road?)

What of the animals, then? In short, yes, we saw them all - lions and cheetahs with their cubs, a rare leopard sighting, elephants, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, wildebeest and guinea-fowl that did cross the road. Sighting animals in the Mara is done as follows. You strike out from the hotel in a random direction - usually your guide will have some local inside knowledge gleaned over tea with the other drivers on where the animals might be. The terrain will look the same to you, but the guides have some strange homing instinct that tells them where the animals are lurking. Sure enough, ten minutes out, he will say 'look there in the bushes' and where there had earlier been only green foliage, there will now be some yellow movement, soon to reveal a lioness. Inside the car, there will be a rapid scramble for cameras, and a few hundred clicks. The lioness will look at you disdainfully and carry on doing whatever it is she was doing. In most cases, you won't be alone for long. Other drivers know, through force of habit, that a stationary car means there's an animal around. So they will flock towards you, and quickly a hundred clicks will become a thousand. If there are more than 10 cars, and they don't move for 15 minutes, you can be sure they're waiting for a kill.

Seeing a kill is apparently the pinnacle of the Mara experience. Hundreds of tourists flock here everyday hoping that a zebra or a giraffe will wander by a lion and turn into dinner. Only a small handful actually see it happen. Besides the fact that animals don't hunt everyday (they eat the carcasses over a few days), if you don't have a 4x4, you're confined to the main paths, and that means that you're cut off from activity in the interiors of the bush. Nevertheless, waiting for it to potentially happen is an experience in itself. In our case, there were a pride of lions and a solitary giraffe.

How it happenned. Drivers, it turns out, are equipped with more than homing instinct. They also have a radio. As you ride along therefore, there will be the incessant static of other drivers reporting sightings, or not. While most of this is unintelligible, every now and then, your driver will say 'Roja roja' and then lapse into local dialect once more. Two hours into the experience, I realized there were saying Roger Roger. And then, some time later, our driver was saying Roja roja much more frequently and with much more excitement. Then we careened down a road at breakneck speed, to come to rest by about 20 other vehicles and the aforementioned pride of lions. There was a giraffe in the distance, and a lion was making its way towards it gradually. Halfway there, however, it gave up and sat back down. For half an hour, we willed them to get in closer vicinity, but the giraffe eventually wandered out of sight, and the lion showed no signs of getting up again. There were a mild stirring of interest as the rest of the pride got up and began to move in the same direction. But they were only regrouping for another nap in a new spot.

To cheer us up on the way back, Steve regaled us with stories. One was grim, about Safari Walk experiences that some hotels offer - a chance to walk in the bush with a Maasai tribesman and see animals up close and personal. Apparently, some weeks earlier, a newly married couple were out doing this, and were abandoned by their Maasai guide when they came upon a solitary elephant. "Maasai are not scared of any animal, even lion... but they are scared of elephant". The couple apparently didn't make it. Steve clearly didn't recommend the Safari Walk. His second story was lighter - and is about the wildebeest. The wildebeest is apparently so stupid that, in the process of running from a lion, it will suddenly forget it is being chased, stop running and begin chewing grass. The end.

Part 3: The Maasai

Why did the guinea-fowl cross the road?

2007-01-29T11:45:00.000-08:00

(The story in pictures.)

There is only one road that connects Nairobi to the Maasai Mara National Park. To get to the Mara, you typically have a local travel agency set you up with an all-terrain safari vehicle of sorts, and a driver-slash-guide who knows the lay of the land. Our driver was Steve. Our vehicle, it turned out, wasn't really all-terrain.

The first half of the ride was uneventful. We passed the Great Rift Valley, stopped by a lookout point and took photos, ate chivda and drank Tiger beer. The clouds overhead didn't bode well, but all was fine until Narok, a customary fuel point en-route - (where drivers will also take you to a rest-stop-cum-roadside-market where foreigners who have no concept of local prices will gladly pay dollar prices for native African artifacts). Here we met Njao, another driver who was on his way back from the Mara, and who confirmed the rumours of washed out roads and stranded vehicles of all sorts. His own van, as we could readily see stood mud-caked at the petrol-station, with its innards all exposed because it was stuck out in the rain the previous evening, and been submerged to such an extent that the seats were all soaked. Rain at this time of year (southern hemisphere, hence summer) is uncommon, and certainly not this heavily. There were reports that the road to the Mara was treacherous in parts, but having made reservations and having no alternative we drove on anyway.

An hour out of Narok, the road turned to slush, and Steve turned into a boatman, expertly steering our vehicle across sliding stretches of mud. Those of you who have had cars skid across ice will have a rough idea of what I'm talking about. Then, a short while later, we came to a stretch that was entirely unpassable. Ten, or so, other vehicles lay dormant at various points in the slush, unable to move because the wheels had no traction. Locals crowded around, arriving in large numbers from the surrounding countryside, helping push some vehicles and pull others. We got out, and walked around, waiting our turn in line, commenting on others' unfortunate attempts, and strategizing.

The trick, it turns out, is speed and steadiness. You stick the car in second, get a healthy run up, and once you hit the centre, you don't stop. Regardless of how the road dips, or the vehicle swerves, you keep the wheels turning and let momentum keep you going. Some acrobatics later, one of our cars made it through. The other, however, didn't.

Kenya has some seven or eight key tribes, and loyalty to the tribes run deep. Steve, (and David, of the vehicle-that-didn't-make-it) are both Kikuyu, and speak their own dialect. The local Maasai, easily identifiable by their characteristic red garb, speak another. Luckily enough, they both speak Swahili. An hour later, after we had tried pushing to no avail, and gotten ourselves all muddy, we invoked these linguistic talents. Some monetary negotiation later, a band of Maasai trooped up and helped push our vehicle free.

And so, a short ride later, we arrived at the gates of the Mara.

Part 2: "Roja, roja"

Cymru

2006-12-07T02:17:00.000-08:00

For those of you who aren't aware of it... Cymru (aka Cmyry aka Gmyru) means 'Wales'. In Welsh.

This means that as you drive out of London and head west, you will at some point start seeing signs in a different language, with many more y's and d's than you're accustomed to. Cardiff will become Caerdydd. And you will see new and strange words like mawr and gwasanaethau and araf. If you stay long enough, you will begin to understand what the elves are saying in Lord of the Rings.

There is a cartoon museum in London. And in this museum, there is an extremely funny sketch of Tolkien at his typewriter. In panel 1, he stares at his typewriter looking for inspiration. In panel 2, he cries out in frustration and slams his hand down on the keys. In panel 3, he sees Mgmmrw randomly printed on the paper in front of him. In panel 4, he sits up in delight and carries on - Mgwwrw lived in the forest of Ryddrfwn...

I would have taken a photo of it, but it wasn't allowed. The heddlu would have come after me.

'ssssuuup

2006-11-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

Baggy pants, swagger, pencil moustache, mushroom-cut hairstyle, one earring, silver chain around neck, rap beat on an MP3 mobile phone...

Not quite what you're thinking though. Not the hood in LA or Chicago, but rather... a group of Indian-Brit teenagers in a suburb of London. The Anglo-subcontinentals, it seems, are the 'brothers' of the UK.

In a remarkable replication of cross-cultural behaviour, groups of teenage guys at a local outdoor fair whistle after a couple of desi sistahs in torn jeans, who tell them to f-off in no uncertain terms. Rival gangs eye each other suspiciously, as they huddle somber and unsmiling over samosas and a can of beer. On the London Underground, a couple of guys lounge across four seats and treat the compartment to a bit of enforced communal music.

I suppose, if you think about it, the attitude, the defiance and posturing falls out of a subconscious and trans-atlantic need of groups of minorities to belong, to stand out, to make people sit up and take notice.

Maybe there's a reason why rap and bhangra intertwine so nicely.

Nomenclature

2006-11-18T10:01:00.002-08:00

Who, or what, inspires parents when they name their kids these days?

According to the London Metro... in the UK there are 288 Madonnas and some 1200 Tigers. Respectable so far.

But then... there are apparently 36 kids called Arsenal. (These parents have, it seems, overlooked the fact that Timothy will become Tim, and Robert will become Rob, and so on).

Counting down... there are six young boys named Gandalf.

Two young boys called Superman.

One Reebok, and one Adidas (sex indeterminate).

Universal understanding

2006-10-29T03:42:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there was no Internet, and no easy instant-translation tool that allowed you to copy-paste "que sorpresa, tienes un castellano muy buen!", click "Translate" and get back "that surprise, you have Castilian a very good one!"

So our auto-translations aren't quite there yet, but they're getting better and better. On the positive end of things... one day sometime soon, I'll be able to type out Waassuup into my IM, and the other person will see Bonjour or Que pasa? or Yeanappa? on their screen, and I'll have many more pen-friends than I do now.

On the other hand, looking at events around us, Douglas Adams' predictions (re the Babelfish, as below) seem to be hitting too close to home for comfort:
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

While before only a handful of interpreters held the key to conversations between people, between nations... now the Pope can say something about the Prophet in Latin, and have a machine somewhere crunch this into Arabic on a million computers fairly quickly. Before, this handful of interpreters could only translate so many conversations a month, so most people remained blissfully isolated to the vagaries of others' opinions in other parts of the world. But not any more. Alas.

Scene not heard

2006-10-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight's meeting point - Waterloo station. Time - 7pm. BYOI.

Closing on 7pm, the station is crowded with people... but most aren't aware of anything out of the ordinary. They gaze blankly into the arched walls of the Tube in the manner of those wending their way homewards after another day at the office.

But others look around secretly, surreptitiously. At 7pm the explosion hits. Fifty or so people along the length of the platform suddenly and simultaneously... start dancing! To the music on their iPods.

There's silence all around, but the party is in full swing. Five minutes later... a train on the Jubilee Line. When it leaves, the party is over, and there are no speakers to dismantle, no paper plates to clear away.

Welcome to the latest trend on the London social scene - mobile clubbing.

Crowe

2006-09-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

Martin, Jeff, Russell.

Cricketer, cricketer, actor.

Brother, brother, cousin.

True fact.

Must-watch

2006-09-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

There is a scene in Ocean's Twelve, which is funnier than anything I've heard in recent times. The monologue by Robbie Coltrane (aka Hagrid) runs roughly thus:

"

When I was a kid, I saw my aunt kill a spider with a tea cosy.

Years later, I realized that it wasn't really a spider...

... it was my uncle Harold.

"

If you haven't seen this scene, please do so.

If you have seen it, and agree that this is incredibly funny, please comment appropriately.

If you are scratching your head and wondering what this is all about, then you have my sympathies for not having made it to the upper strata of the human evolution chain.

The Evolved Theory of Evolution

2006-09-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

What if the Gaia theories are true? What if the whole world - plants, rocks, pigs and all - were really all part of one giant living organism? What if all that we did - all our walking and runing and working and driving around in shiny cars - was driven by the evolving subconscious need of this larger ecosystem-entity? Might this then provide alternate explanations of occurences around us?

An alternate explanation then. Consider... the increased numbers of gays and homosexuals we seem to see in society around us in recent years, as compared to history, to prior generations. Consider also... a finite world with finite resources... and an increasingly growing population competing for these resources. What more elegant way of restoring a balance that making mankind less likely to procreate?

When You Gotta Go...

2006-07-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Indian cities (many of them anyway) have long endured the proclivities of people to pee in public. Various alleyways and quiet colonial-building-exteriors have been victim to the urges of the multitudes, and measures to curb this phenomenon have come and gone. Much water has flowed, in a manner of speaking, over the years.

Governments have tried building public toilets, with little success. Building owners have placed watchmen on guard, with some success. Others, as evidenced by the picture below (taken on a recent trip I made home!) have tried strong moral deterrents:

The most effective and ingenious method that I've heard of though, is one that a hotel in Shivajinagar has devised. They've tiled the exteriors of all their walls with gods' pictures! When all else fails the Lord, it is said, will come through.

Tuangou

2006-07-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

Tuangou (twân-goo): Chinese Internet consumer phenomenon spreading like wildfire

July 16, 1.50pm, Beijing – Shopkeepers smoke pipes in happy contentment. They smile at each other benevolently, and eat tofu and rice. Peace reigns.

2pm, Beijing – Fifty Chinese men and women, who have never seen each other before, suddenly materialize at a local electronics store. They’ve been dying to buy new DVD players and music systems and other such, but have held off until this moment. Now they proceed to rapidly fill their shopping baskets.

2.20pm, Beijing – Fifty Chinese men, women and DVD players descend upon the checkout counter, and the patrons demand a 30% discount as a reward for buying en-masse. The shopkeeper lowers his pipe and cries blue murder. Fifty wallets threaten to leave the store. The shopkeeper relents and caves in. Half a loaf is better than no bread.

2.30pm, Beijing – Exeunt severally.

--

Prelude: July 15. In a gleaming glass building with talking elevators and neon lights, Haowen Bu logs on to www.51tuangou.com and adds his name to the DVD-Player list. He is number 39, right below Li Cheng. He does not know Li Cheng, and doesn’t really want to. All he wants is a discount – and he will get it.

This is tuangou.

End of lesson.

Zeitgeist athava Samayada Bhootha

2006-06-26T07:13:00.000-07:00

By the side of a winding, pot-holed, one-way road near Victoria Layout, where buses and cars and scooters and bullock-carts snake their way to their daily bread, there is a stretch of unused land, where suspiciously bright green weeds and foliage abound. Separating this lushness from the road is a wall. And upon this, the history of generations lies hidden.

The wall will tell you of yesterday’s inauguration of the Bangalore Metro by the Prime Minister. ‘Hearty Welcome to Hon’ble Manmohan Singhji – Respectful MLAs and Worshipful Mayor’. Walk a few steps... peel away a few months… and there’s a more worn poster, a local potboiler... "Starring Rajesh... Lust on the Orient Express". Agatha Christie’s legacy to the Kannada world. And so on. If you peel back the layers, you’ll find other hidden gems. Protest notices, Bangalore heroines, more political welcomes. Dating back even to the 80s! ("Bangalore welcomes Shri Rajiv Gandhi on the auspicious... [tattered text]... pooja has been arranged.")

The wall itself is mostly chipped, broken in parts, held together largely by the collective glue of two decades of posters.

Ford Ka advert

2006-06-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

A bird, and a car. Click to play video.

Friday

2006-06-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

Friday evening. The end of a rough week. Email deadlines. Other such.

In post-prandial lethargy, we wandered out of the Underground and into Covent Garden. And there, amidst the last of the stalls shutting down for the day... a man with a guitar and a mike... alone in the middle of the square.

He played. We sat. He played on. A small circle of listeners now. Pink Floyd. The Who. Strings plucked into the night. A nearby pub was doing good business. More listeners, more mugs. In another world and time, in the dusty grounds of a college campus, a rock show had just ended and scaffolding and amps were being taken down. A few stragglers lingered in the moonlight, and somebody in a black T-shirt and torn jeans struck up a tune, in the general vicinity of the Humanities and Sciences Block. Passers-by stopped and sang along, out of tune and enthusiastic. Other reclined on the grass.

In the background, the barman was signalling last drinks but no one noticed.

A Story in Present Tense

2006-04-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

Keep your hands off me.

You refuse to leave us alone... we, who only want to live in rustic peace... but you come for us from afar, with greed and destruction in your eyes.

In my mind, I see my fallen comrades, five of them, writhing, burning before my eyes, unable to bear the heat... all to satisfy your cravings. I see their remains, their disfigurations, a battlefield in ruins.

Why am I the last one standing? Luck perhaps... maybe you pick and choose at random. Or maybe you start at one end and decide to work your way down. Or maybe you are taking out the little guys quickly and leaving bigger ones like me for the end, for a bit of sport.

But I am a fighter. Today, I avenge my neighbours, and you are in for a surprise. Come at last to me, with your instruments of destruction. My insides are a sickly liquid yellow, but I too have a weapon... one that will choke your nostrils, your sense of smell, and leave you gasping.

You have to make do with coffee and bacon this morning, I’m afraid.

One for the Josephites

2006-04-17T01:52:00.000-07:00

(This post will mean little to all but the students of St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School, Bangalore.)

I just discovered that Saints Andrew, David, George and Patrick are respectively the patron-saints of Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland.

Who knew.

The Pressure-Cooker Theory

2006-03-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

Is pressure bad? If situations arise that sometimes bite you in the rear, is this a bad thing? The answer, ladies and gents, lies in The Pressure Cooker theory.

The key, it turns out, has to do with pace and dosage. Go hungry for 5 days and you die. Do it for 1 and you come out stronger. Falling off a 100-foot building is bad, but falling off a tree isn’t as bad. The more interesting question to consider though is... should you fall off the tree? Wouldn’t life be happier for all concerned if you didn’t have to nurse a sore behind at all? My take, for what its worth, is that you should fall off, and the quicker you do so, the better.

This plays out at different levels. You go through life not doing certain things because others will laugh at you and you’ll be hurt. Then again, its perhaps better to go ahead and screw it up as soon as you possibly can, so you can figure things out quicker... but this is rarely the advice that people give you.

There are other macro-examples. I was at a book fair recently, and heard a panel of four eminent print-publishers rant against the take-over of their space by new digital upstarts. They exchanged anecdotes about how book digitization was bound to fail, and how they would have nothing to do with it, and went away happy. The tree was not theirs to climb. (As a matter of fact, everyone today seems to be worried about their space being invaded by others... Arcelor fears being taken-over, the American government worries about the Muslim world, and the Muslim world worries about their culture being destroyed by a cartoon.)

All I’m saying is... it may be that you will never have to climb… it may be that life on the ground will be smooth… but you should perhaps still climb and fall as soon as possible anyway. Then tomorrow you’ll know how to hold on, or how to fall lightly and walk away.

Which brings me back to the Pressure Cooker theory. No-pressure at all is fine but boring. Too much too quick and you explode. In between, with small doses of discomfort, you morph nicely.

(You then get eaten with potatoes, but that's another story.)

Rewind

2006-02-18T09:36:00.000-08:00

Its remarkable that only nine years ago, final year students at IIT were the only students in the entire country to have email accounts.

The routine: cycle to the computer centre, leave your footwear at the entrance, and power up a monochrome unix terminal with a sense of importance. Type ‘mail’ and the terminal would spew out a screen full of bright-green lines of text. And you would then breathlessly scan the green maze for some evidence of the words “Dear xxx, Congratulations on your admission to the University of Tuscaloosa” or some such. More often though, you would wade through and discover that the admissions committee regretted that it had to deny admission to many fine applicants such as yourself.

In either eventuality you would pack up quickly, wear someone else’s chappals and head to Tarams for a cup of s p tea.

Looking around today at the cell-phone-carrying auto-drivers and the proliferation of ATMs, it seems hard to believe that only nine years ago, I had never used a credit card.

The Spanish Connection

2006-02-04T08:35:00.000-08:00

I recently went to a birthday party composed of a largely Spaniard crowd. Then, somewhere along the way, in the middle of a tortilla, it struck me that the Spanish must have colonized India at some point in the past. They kept saying 'Bale, bale' - in vaguely Bhangra-esque distortions - at regular intervals. At other times, they would exclaim 'Mira, mira'. Then, someone would ask about someone else's holiday in Balencia, and that person would say it was Bery Good, Bery Good. Suspiciously Bengali.

Historians might struggle to prove this, but I think there's a connection somewhere.

Half a pint of mild and bitter

2006-01-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

I have uncovered the key to naming an English pub.

If you wake up one morning and decide to move to London to open a pub, here is an easy primer. Simply choose from one of four templates.

(1) The [famous English person]: Although The Prince Edward, The Queen Elizabeth, The Shakespeare and The Victoria are taken, England is full of famous people and you will doubtless find someone else.

(2) The [x] and [y]: x and y can be anything, but are most often animals. For example, The Rat and Parrot, and The Fox and Hound are well respected. Sometimes plants and low-lifes can be used as well (The Slug and the Lettuce).

(3) The [unique animal]: If you cannot come up with two inspiring animals to satisfy the above condition, you can pick one, but you must have an adjective to describe it. The Black Lion and The Elusive Camel attract many visitors, as does The Dun Cow.

(4) [Body parts]: If all else fails, someone's arms or head will suffice. You only have to look at The King's Arms, The King's Head, Churchill Arms or The Duke's Head to see the truth of this statement.

This advice is freely given, but liquid donations will be gratefully accepted.

Pea-soup

2006-01-24T12:23:00.000-08:00

Bill Bryson has set a train of thought in motion, through his analogies of "If you imagine the Earth to be the size of a pea... " and so on. (Ref: 'A Short History of Nearly Everything')

So it turns out scientists have worked out that the average probable distance between us and another intelligent civilization is about 200 light-years.

To put this in perspective, if we had at our disposal the fastest spaceship currently available, it would take us 12 years to reach Pluto... and 3 million years to reach the next intelligent life form!

Its a sobering thought that one of these days, a couple of guys in top-secret locations will flip a switch and blow us up, and ET will have twice as far to go.

In the beginning

2006-01-22T14:13:00.000-08:00

Entering the blogging world for the first time is tough.

The opening of this account took 90 minutes - not 5 as the start page suggested. Choosing a user name that sounded cool took 30 minutes, choosing a url address that sounded cool took another 30, then the system said the cool address was taken, so the next 3 iterations took another 30.

Nevertheless, bun-omlette is now ready for consumption.