Welcome To The Machine

I haven't posted anything that is not incredibly self indulgent and cryptic in ages. So here goes

Nine movies I've watched recently that I strongly recommend:

(In no particular order)

1) Withnail and I- British. Brilliant. And very funny. Comedy with a touch of black. Smells of the sixties. Watch it with Bacchus in your bed.

2) Andrei Rublev- Andrei Tarkovsky. Need I say more? If I have to, then it might help you to know that the Soviets wanted it banned and pulled it out of the Cannes in the last minute.

3) Hamlet(Olivier)- Shakespeare, but more Sophoclean than usual. Watch out for the sweeping, flowing camera shots.

4)The Rocky Horror Picture Show- Watched it in theatre, with a heckler, a small number of male strippers, a small number of female strippers, and a large number of them in between. This is the only way to watch it. Watch it if you want to feel sexually disoriented.

5)Grbavica - Post war Bosnian film screened at the St Louis Film Festival(SLIFF). Smart film. Worth a watch. May never enjoy a wide release.

6)Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench- A must watch for Jazz fans. Screened at SLIFF.Shot in high contrast black and white. Part documentary part musical. Searing trumpets, mindless sax and senseless violins, to borrow a quote.

7) A Serious Man- Incredibly Yiddish. Incredibly misanthropic. Retelling of the story of Job. I wouldn't recommend it for members outside the Coen Brotherhood. Almost Woody Allenesque in its depiction of the central character.

8)500 Days of Summer- Cynical Romantic Comedy. If that makes sense to you.

9) It Might Get Loud- Jimmy Page is adorable. Huge music geek. Watch it kids, to see how a real musician works.

Pilgrim's Shadow

2009-11-24T14:16:00.000-08:00

Must I let my lost weekend,
if I shall from Lennon borrow,
on life's stretched canvas bleaken,
a sense of sweet tomorrow?

Now amidst my winter days,
that are neither possess'd
by rhyme nor season,
I lie troubled by treason

O! if speak I must of one lass,
sink in it must the fact,
that all things must pass,
even letdown's painful protract.

Relax! It happens!
smell the coffee, turn to work,
for comfort and delightful distraction,
pain is pain's panacea!

Among facts forgotten,
when life leaves it's rag threadbare,
is that it in the nature of good times,
to appear further away than they actually are

Kaminey

2009-08-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

On this day, 15/08/2009 (yes I still prefer writing it this way), I watched Kaminey with a bunch of friends in a theatre in the other side of St Louis. Followed up by Taxidriver minus the first twenty minutes in my side of town at Tivoli.

Exactly 62 years after Salman Rushdie gave birth to Salim Sinai and his evil twin in 1981, Vishal Bharadwaj has come up with his own story of twins. Here again, we have a story of Mumbaikars who are not Mumbaikars, and brothers who are not brothers.

The movie opens like all good gangster movies should, with words dark and brooding. We have Charlie who hedges bets on losing horses and sports a lisp, and Guddu, who works for an NGO stammers his way through life. And a whole lot of other characters and convolutions in a very Ritchie-esque plot.

And Sweety of course. With a name like that you expect her to a Punjabi or an American stripper, of which she was neither. But what begins as a barely palpable sense of disappointment at her not being a stripper soon disappears, for she is easily one of the most interesting characters in the movie.

Charlie hopes to be a bookie one day. But thanks to one bad tip, he loses a few years worth of savings. Bharadwaj goes all Fellini on this one, with escapist dream sequences into what is essentially a rather grim realistic film. I omit plot details, and discuss only broader matters here. But there are spoilers everywhere. It is impossible to discuss style templates without them.

Guddu has just knocked up Sweety. Not a problem. Except that Guddu holds very Republican views. Again no problem. Except that Sweety is the daughter of the big bad ugly guy. Bharadwaj couldn't resist including flashes of 80's hindi cinema I guess. So they get hitched.

Lock , Stock and several smoking barrels later, the twin's fates conflate into one, like all twin's fates in good cinema should. Two very noble pursuits interest the twins. One each. Guddu wants to save his woman for which he needs money, and Charlie wants money so that he can have his women.

The entire idea of having racehorses as a central motif is highly reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. But I may be alone in this belief , for the similarities end here. Kaminey makes use of a fairly straightforward linear narrative structure,except for small flashbacks , although the core of the script seemed to provide plenty of opportunities to do otherwise.

The film screams Godard with every frame. Atleast in spirit. Jumpcuts are employed in the central action-chase sequence, but not in the Brechtian way that Godard initially intended. Here it is done largely for storytelling purposes, and it works quite effectively. Kaminey even goes to the extent of implementing Godard's famous quote" All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun" into action. In fact, Bharadwaj goes one step further and gives the girl the gun. At this point, I , as an esteemed member of the 'majority of the male audience' club, was hoping that she was leather clad and sitting on a Harley Davidson. But it has become a habit of late, for filmmakers to disappoint the male majority. Sigh.

Every frame is an experiment in the film. Watch out for the interesting use of mirrors in the sequence where Sweety and Guddu argue over their futures, and for the very psychedelic Dhan te nan.Mentor Bharadwaj betters protege Anurag Kashyap 's Dev D in this respect.
The dialogues gave me a hard time trying to wipe a small smile off my face. I was also helped by the subtitles, which also had their own transliterative unintentional humourous side effects.

I was disappointed by the fact that Bharadwaj chose to develop the twin's characters in the latter half of the film. He should not be making mistakes like these after successfully adapting two of Shakespeare's plays.

Shahid Kapoor is impressive in the film. But only just. But pretty good by Bollywood standards, Maybe acting does run in the genes.The music is pretty impressive too. But nothing less can be expected of Bharadwaj, after Maqbool and Omkara.

The ending can be interpreted in at least two ways. One is the conventional 80's hindi movie -Ram Gopal Varma mutation ending, which I guess is how most people have interpreted it.
The other is more unconventional and significantly more politically incorrect. There are whole sequences with Charlie and the Bengali gangster engaged in playful physical fights and rolls, which kind of had an homoerotic undertone. And Charlie's actions seem very strongly motivated by the gangster's death. This is the part where I step on several toes, but the whole concept of Charlie having a lisp, which is very standard and unfortunate gay stereotype, also suggested that he was a repressed homosexual. However this may have not been intentional on the part of the director.

Here is the good part. The end can be interpreted as a post death dream of Charlie. He dreams of being a successful bookie, married to a woman. This to me looked like Charlie's homosexual guilt coming through, because the addition of a female character in the end seemed rather contrived, suggesting that he hoped to be straight, in a highly homophobic society. This interpretation highlights the films redemptive qualities, whereas it is very difficult to think highly of the film.

The film however as a whole, is still probably nowhere close to Vishal Bharadwaj's most impressive in recent times. By trying to tell his story, Vishal Bharadwaj celebrates the 62nd birthday of Salim Sinai, and in his visuals and songs, celebrates the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. In this story of twins, he combines Charlie and Guddu, typical hindi with European cinema, and chalk with cheese.

Unfortunately you find yourself taking a big bite off a chalk pizza at times.

Sentenced- The Darkness of Mere Being

2009-02-21T00:52:00.000-08:00

After such a long time, a gap so long that all the sand of the Elliots cannot suffice for reckoning the days that filled it in its hourglass ways, long enough to contain the collapse of veritable corporations long cherished for trustworthiness, long enough to drag others along with it causing a fleeting flutter of despair just palpable in the horizon, it felt wonderful, alone in the midst of company, to walk into a dingy theater reeking of stagness, Bacchus bidden and 2 pints filled, to watch the last picture show, to fall in half in love with a amateur production, to watch dusty Old Delhi conflate into New York lights, urging me to take a not so biblical bite into the big apple, the city so nice and twice baptised , to experience sleep induced collapses of memory, spirit induced sketchiness in narration, to fall for an ordinary woman, who stole a glance too many, whose hair in curls creep just so as to gently fall on her shoulders and graze it, a woman fathered by a man hairy-armed and country-named, a man new to international fame, a man-ape who could have so easily been in the production himself-itself, to let light be, even if ephemerally, to kill the many-moon aged darkness of my mere being.

My life and these times

2008-12-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

Drained we all are.
A Talebian Nightmare has percolated through our forests,; scytheless determined relentless; foreboding a Saarang prolonged placement season; leaving several of our futures nebulous; Pundits(Pandits?) made false promises refuse to seep through; dying companies in their twilight years hire ambitiously; over optimistically; non existent silver linings are spotted, talked about, and exploited.
Blessings we count; including impostors; stories of the destruction of the American Dream are constantly retold; including some private ones; woven into graduate study woes.
it is in times like these that you wonder if Pandora really opened the box an second time.
Did she? Was it all made up?
Can you hope that she did?
Can you hope for hope?

The Power and The Irony!

2008-08-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

" Write a wise saying and your name will live forever."
- Anonymous

Am I the only one who finds this funny?

No longer a Vegetarian

2008-08-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

" After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs. "

- Woody Allen in Annie Hall

I have left no word unspoken.

Smoke on the Water

2008-07-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

I was in an alchemist's workshop. Or so I think. There were 7 of us.

7 is a special number in alchemy. Very much.

There was music in the room that night and revolution in the air.

Down and out. It was like those good ol times again. You know. We were one big happy joint family.

I closed my eyes. My favorite mistake.

It was then that the albatrosses of Echoes embarked on their final ascent. And for the first time in 7 years, I took a swim.

And for the first time ever, there was no water around.

The cold ethereal waters that surrounded were taking me up. The sun then momentarily broke through ocean's shifting layers imposing its transience, warping its form, yet leaving the tell tale signs of its presence above.

The undercurrents pushed me around playfully. I was its newest toy. Then it screamed!

" Feed your head! Feed your head Feed your Head!"

Then a strange calm came crashing down.

Silence . I was nodding throughout. But not in agreement.

It was then that a push became a shove. A current became a vortex.

The coldest of sweats broke out. My shirt fluttered. The anemometers of my mind were reading 100 km/hr.

I was in the eye of a fucking storm.

"I have tasted the maggots in mind of the universe......"

Pills wore a look of wonderment. Pills our own Kid Charlemagne.

He checked his anemometer. His was still on 30, as they fight over the last bit. Never mind the stung fingers.

I tossed my shirt out. The hell with it. Bedraggled it went ahead to wet Busty's table.

I was still stuck in the whirlpool.

I opened my mouth seconds before realizing that it was way too dry for speech.

" If anything happens I am not responsible for it..."
" Stop saying that...its making it will make it worse..."

The voices flickered somewhere else. I was there, yet I was not.

I extracted laughter from a few by asking how I could get down. That apparently went against what he was fighting for over the past three years.

Then the release came. Sweet nasal and bilious. The lone biscuit still lying caked in my mouth.

" Dont look down...look up"

Too weak to rebel, I did. Only to see a perfect pair of horns. On top of his head. The ones of a Surti cow. Shit! Shit!

" Dont look down da..."

I couldnt look up. And I couldnt tell him that. I was on survivor mode. How do I live for the next 5 mins? I tried to concentrate on the notes and the beats and rearrange them in my head. For some strange reason Mersenne made a cameo appearance in my mind.

It was like the women of 8.5. Only the scariest of dreams chose to haunt me.

My mind had lost its most well fought battle.

"No matter what we get out of this, I know I know I'll never forget. .."

And thus I scripted, within those four walls, a small chapter in my bildungsroman.

Thirty Haunting Cruises.

2008-06-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

I will always remember the first time I saw you.
At the first fleeting moment.You glowing-orange ephemeral prescence. The smell of your hair.

Why do you hurt me so? Why do you treat the other guys the same way you treat me. Didnt I hold you in your dying moment. Even when you were at your caustic best.Didnt I bear your cruel sting?

Come with me.Lets relive those moments. Let us enjoy those stolen glances and the whispered secrets. Let us be partners in crime once again. Tomorrow will never know. Tomorrow will never find out.

Let us enjoy the privacy that only a badly made movie in a run down theatre can provide. Whispers exchanged in the stillness of the flickering screen and the lost conversations of the characters.
I want to drown myself in somebody else's worries. Because mine seem too heavy to carry.

Remember the time we swam to the surface. Towards the moonlight.Of how it gave us hope. The light at the end of an almost infinte tunnel. Of how I held your hand when you were wearing a gaze of distant wonderment.And a green top?Of how we washed away our worries together. Werent we looking at the same stars then, hoping the same hopes?

Tomorrow has no room for us. Yesterday only gives me big sacks to carry. Please be my today. I need it.
Flash a smile. Please let me know youre happy. Even if youre only going to be happy with him. The one who Arachne poked with her needle as she wove her master plan.

I feel like crying. Now that youre gone. But I cant shed these tears, for I will surely need them later, as it seems so painfully obvious today.

I miss the strange European sophisticate presence that you emanate. Your eyes the scan the room with cold detachment.

You will always have a place in my dreams.However I cannot offer you a place in my reality. Unless you want to be mine alone.
I want my reality, to keep my sanity.

I miss your cooking .I miss you. The dark descriptor of a kettle.
Our time has come and gone. I wish you well. Au Revoir.

We will always have Surat.

Maximum City

2008-06-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is ,I hope, what will turn out to be a 4 part series. Lots depends on enthu of course. They are not in chronological order. They work just the way memory works. By strength of association to current runnings in the mind. They will, several years from now, find themselves pushed into dusty bookshelves in the archives of my mind. I need these memories well dusted. For so many reasons.

The Lost Conversations Of Churchgate.

On the overcast evening of the 21st I found myself in Churchgate. After much research. After imposing my hindi on several random shopkeepers in Colaba. I was looking for used books. They dealt in no such thing. In a tone that clearly displayed their distaste for kept books, they directed me to Fountain, Churchgate. They bought and sold the new stuff. To firangs.

A good number of dukanwalas in Colaba were making money off the average firang's sure-to-be shortlived obsession with India.
With the bidding price of nearly everything sold there following a convergence pattern, strangely reminiscent of the bisection method.He says hundred I ll say fifty.

Churchgate. Six neat shops. Welcoming you with the comforting smell of the yellowed page.
Stacks of unsold books acting as abutments. The first among the shopkeepers hid behind his corpulence, a big stack of Reader's Digests. Trying to sell the cheap thrills of Mills and Boon and Shobha De.
From what I could garner(sample), this was the hangout for the erudite Mumbaikar. Couldnt see how De had a place there at all. But that could have been just a bad statistical sample.

A female walks in.But before that be warned. You shall from this point onwards carry the burden of my hindi. I am not called shortage for nothing. This is of course in the second shop.
" Aapke ke paas Albert Camus hai kya?"
"The outsider hain". I was surprised to see him use the more accurate translation of the french title.
"Mein pad chuka hoon". In my vague attempt at cheerful badinage with a fellow existentialist, I told her you ll get most of the stuff as e-books. Quite easily. For free.She told me she prefered books. And then rested her hands on the Indian fiction section.
Ya existentialist females don't exist. Thats true. And I am glad that it is.

I go ahead and ask the dukan wala.." On the road hai kya?". This is in keeping with my strong insistence on buying On the Road off the road. He said" Kerouac nahin hai mere paas. Kaal aayega." This jolted me. This school dropout knew his business. Mumbai does that to you.

i throw in a few more names. The Electric Kool Aid Acid test. Fear and Loathing. Not there.

Suddenly , like it has happened to me a million times before , my mind goes blank.My mind and its incredible ability to take sabbatical only during crucial moments. Hopeless.

In my moment of desperation, I call Sandeep. At rs 1.5 a minute. Thank You Vodafone.
Sandeep's mind faltering just like mine." I cant recommend books under pressure da" he says. Or something to that effect.
" Have you heard of John Steinste...(not clear)".
" John who?"
" John Stein....(nc)"
"Eh?"
"Of Mice and Men da"
" Oh Steinbeck!" I told him. That brought down a barrage of names in my head. I thanked him.
The dukawalla, who had been hearing everything with rapt attention, added" Grapes of wrath chaiye?" I nodded. I asked him" Faulkner hai aapke pass".

Faulkner.

Faulkner stirred something in him. His eyes lit up. He hadnt sold a faulkner for ages. Fuck grammar. He was obviously excited. He gave me As I lay dying. Good. Then there was the Dostovesky section. I spent quite some time there and bought nothing. He knew his market well. He immediately offered me a book by Woody Allen., because I spent a considerable length of time staring at The Idiot.

Just then a flock of birds walk in. Oozing class. Possessing none of the bawdiness of the average diamond polishing-skoda driving-party hopping Surti.

( To be Continued on Request...)

Beatless

2008-06-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

It is with increasing conviction that I have come to realize, that I might never attend a live concert that I might truly enjoy. Most of my favourite bands can only have a real reunion if a particular dose of a psychotropic had gone through someone else's nostril, or if JD Salinger had never been born, or if fame hadnt unleashed all its trappings on some of our more talented men. I cannot find a better way to make this point. Like Siddhartha I suffer.

Each individual ash particle that emanated from John and George's body apparently rotated about its own axis on that fateful night( Refer previous entry). Rant reviews galore!!

No band shall ever cover the Beatles when I am not there in Madras. A great pestilence will sweep the land , and all that is sweet and pure will be gone.

I place such blind faith in poetic justice.

I must GET BACK

2008-05-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

Here I am, wasting away in a place so far away from normal men, so far removed from the reality I am used to that it decides to do away with spirit, and in its place encourages a strange system of spit and sit on its platforms, that 15 days seems like a few lifetimes ago. The very same gods that i choose not to believe in seem at their wrathful worst,forcing out of me seemingly contradictory statements, making me blog at a time when the internet is making its greatest effort to dig deeper into my pocket.

Just now when I suffering from the worst of my music and movie withdrawal symptoms, a bunch of bands have decided to get together and perform a beatles tribute concert in Madras. I wanna say Dont Let Me Down(repeat three times), but just like it has been over the past few lonely weeks,no one seems to a pair of ears to spare.

Caffeine

2008-04-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

If you wanna hang out youve got to take her out; caffeine
If you wanna get down, down on the ground; caffeine
She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; caffeine

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; caffeine
When your day is done and you wanna run; caffeine
She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; caffeine

If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; caffeine
Dont forget this fact, you cant get it back; caffeine
She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; caffeine

She dont lie, she dont lie, she dont lie; caffeine

Last Exit to Santhome

2008-04-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

Wake up at 4:30 PM. Use your or preferably somebody else's cycle to get to the gate. There is no tomorrow. Thats a given. So walk.

Watch the sun dissolve into the river/sewer. Watch the canoes sail into the sun.

Walk past the painted ducks and snails. Walk to image audi. Sms Sheldon for fundaes. Get lost among the high rises. Get your hopes up about the clearing that lays ahead. Get lost again.

Ask for the wrong directions. Get the right ones. Know you're right when you see some Aquaculture building. Let ghosts crowd your fragile eggshell mind.

Live in Madras for 20 years. Visit Santhome for the first time. Be grateful for the fact that you've never been taken there before.

Nightfall.

The lights from the sea. The squalor on your left. Toilets masquerading as ships. Watch kids treat the entire road as one big zebra crossing. The sex that is bought. The sex that is sold. The sex that is perhaps not.

Watch the transsexuals collect their tax. Watch shopkeepers shut down for the night.

Let the lighthouse guide you. kill grammar. walk past a big catch. a five foot fish. Or eel. Or whatever.

Allow the lights of Marina to welcome you. kill grammar again. try burying it this time.

Let the waves crash onto your legs. Gently step on sea shells. Avoid the crabs.

Stare into the endless expanse. Let a malnourished horse momentarily obstruct your view.
Watch a brilliant flash of light signal a storm brewing in the cold distance. A rain that will wet no one.

Put kadalai. Of the good for you, protein kind. Chuck it. Do so because your body can do without the extra silicon. Get an ice cream. something called cocho stic. laugh. But not aloud. Decide to display your insanity in some other situation. It might help you get away with murder someday, if you use the plea. Read grammars' eulogy. Yes he was a great man.

Receive a message that asks you if you are on a date. Silently realize that there are people in this world for which the word date has alternate meanings. And that you're not one of them.

Walk to the bus stop. Be in two minds exactly. One two. Take the beaten path.Board the wrong bus. Depend on the kindness of strangers. Board the right one.

More dessert.

The above instructions, if followed religiously, might finally put you, in the same category of crazy as me.

No Country For Old Men

2008-01-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

The film opens with a panning shot of an unbridled unmarked Texan landscape, with a voice-over by Tommy Lee Jones, sporting a thick Southern accent.He goes about describing a person he arrested years ago, on the serious charge of killing his girlfriend.It is within these few minutes that the Coen Brothers set the tone for the movie, and open the window through which you would view this film.

A faithful adaptation of a novel by Cormac Mccarthy going by the same name, it's styled as a western, with the expected plot elements of 'booty' and its suitors , each positioning himself on different positions on the moral scale.

A Mexican drug deal goes wrong, leaving everybody dead with an unclaimed case with 2 million dollars in it.Moss(Josh Brolin) stumbles on it, and unable to believe his luck, walks away with the easiest 2 million dollars he ever made in his life, leaving a rather heavily dehydrated man to die in the desert.

As fate would have it, his guilt( both recurring themes in the film) gets the better of him that night, and he returns to the scene of the crime, without realising and this very act would forcibly intertwine and bind together the fates of the three men who are central to the story.

We are introduced early on to Anton Chigurgh, who escapes from custody with a dedicated brutal act of violence, setting a rather dark tone for perhaps one of cinema's best villain characters of all time, edging out the likes of Noah Cross and Nurse Ratched.He goes through the bleak landscape mindlessly and mercilessly killing anybody, irrespective of whether they lie on his path or not, a cattle stunner being his weapon of choice.His weird 60' hairdo and perfectly coherent manner of speaking only add to his 'I am death personified' image.The film oozes Chigurgh in every scene,even when it doesn't hold him.

The film structures itself as a game of cat and mouse, and has plenty of scary moments: The hunter quickly dissolves into the hunted, and vice versa.At no point in time do the three men meet each other, face to face, but they all chart out each other's future.

Another motif,an established Coen favourite, is that of chance.Fate,coincidences,and the way the coin falls has always been a standard Coen plot element, in this case literally.

The Coens may have made films in the past where the screen death count is zero(Intolerable Cruelty), but they will never,I guess, make a film without its fair share of funny moments.
One particularly brilliant scene , somewhat reminiscent of the 'Sicilian scene' in 'True Romance'
takes the cake; and here,yet again , it involves chance.

This may easily be one of the Coen Brother's best efforts, and that is saying a lot after Miller's Crossing, Fargo and The Big Lebowski.The Coen's have come up with a modern day classic for all times, and its crime if you don't see it.Its already there in my top 21 list :)

So I suggest you drop whatever your doing, even if it is surgery, and go watch the film. . The work can wait, the patient can die.It hardly matters in the larger scheme of being able to watch a good movie.

A Night in the Life

2007-12-17T16:26:00.000-08:00

A lot can happen in a day.A lot more can happen in a night.
It's just not worth sleeping through a stormy night.With so much happy confusion.
If you find yourself lacking sleep at odd hours in the morning, it might be a good idea to not sleep at all that night.Some classic-bluesy-folksy rock will keep you good company.Norwegian Wood.Midnight Cruiser.Scarborough Fair.Lots of other stuff too.Through a stormy night.Through your window.A limited view of a world far away.

They ll keep you company till steely dawn.

However if you have too many such nights like I am threatening to have, it might be a good idea to join your local charter of the Tyler Durden Society.Just make sure you don't find yourself sleeping at one place and walking up at another, to avoid any disappointments.

This is Kryptyk

2007-10-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

'Are there' is exactly the kind of phrase you would use to describe the turnout for Shaastra this time.Unfortunately 'completely arbit' is the kind of phrase you would use to describe the quality of participation.Yes the site crashed,but that only supports the quantity theory.
A significant portion of the participants (some of them decolettes :) , a large number of them metrosexuals) could have only participated in events like Project XXX, Stimulation Championship, Let's Open House,Sizzle Championship and (Math) Modeling.
Except that they didn't sizzle, and that I am very glad that they didn't open.
TNR for so much EP for AP( 43 colleges i heard!!). In fact a lot of junta called me about Shaastra (OQ) from Hyd, and they sort of gave me the impression that only reason they wanted to come here was to meet their friends here in IIT and to check out the campus.

Warasht.

20

2007-07-30T02:15:00.000-07:00

I raced through dying drying grasslands towards the hill amidst all the chaos under a glassy sky.Several cries went out into the vast expanse as I quickened my pace.I ignored the painful itchy rash the grass was inflicting on me.The rocky edges and rugged path had to do much better than that to slow me down.

Several cries and bruises later I was on top. Phoebe was holding on for dear childhood.I offered my bloody hand to her,but it wasn't an easy job for her to claim it.

She was slipping away slowly.

I offered her my other hand and threw myself forward.I didn't want to imagine my empty hand juxtaposed with a falling wailing sister.My imagination wasn't going easy on me,and I had to fight through the confusion and the excess adrenaline.

However my slippery fingers couldn't do much,and she slipped through my fingertips into space,screaming.

I just lay there dazed and confused.I slowly stood up,only to smell the cold unforgiving,uncaring rain,and hear the indifferent shouts of joy from all around welcoming the rain.

I wept, for it was the end of the Age of Innocence and coming of the Heart of Darkness.

All people aren't good people any more , a GI Joe isn't the equivalent of several weeks of pure joy,summer doesnt mean two months of fun and street cricket and there is no going back.

Black Mask

2007-07-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

You are always told what to like.

For example,the word great,when tagged to a film, often invokes the anal retentive philosopher
in people,especially film critics.An undue quantum of analysis is carried out noting existentialism in films that were only a result of a film producers materialism,the importance of the particular shade that some tapestry had that appears in a scene thats supposed to be a tribute to some other scene in some other typically ultra-analyzed film ,spotting an anti mccarthyist filmaker in an ordinary guy trying to make his living by making movies that hopefully many people might want to watch.
Yes,one often gets the feeling that critics like to agree on certain 'aspects',even though they obviously do no rate films alike.

When the movie in question did come out in the year 1994,it did cause quite a stir.It made its first 10 million within a few days,unheard of before for an art film.Critics were quick to send the QT to a Camusesque trial for racism and moral indifference.'Dead Nigger Store' especially attracted caustic criticism from many ,including Spike Lee.

But in the end,Pulp Fiction is a film that doesn't take itself too seriously,in spite of sparing a significant portion of its duration to theistic debate,and was made by a man who takes film making very seriously indeed.

This doesnt work like a review,and this is largely my own interpretation.This will work very well if you have the movie on your comp,if you may want to revisit certain scenes.

SPOILER WARNING

It starts off in a nondescript manner,or so you are lead to believe,but you quickly get the idea that this british couple arent there in LA on a holiday.This Bonnie and Clyde team,go about voicing the difficulties that the average blue collar robber faces,armed Jews,immigrants with 'lower than threshold' knowledge of the English tongue etc..

Money is hard to come by apparently-So far into the movie one can be pardoned for believing that it would turn out to be another couple heist caper comedy,but then you have the titles.

Cuts next to a scene that looks to be a black cop white cop scenario,(of the blue streak die hard 2 lethal weapon 1 2 3 4 fame) and they are discussing utter mundane trivialities,all of which turn out to be plot elements later on.

Its only when they enter the apartment to retrieve the suitcase that one confirms his/her suspicion that they are not policemen,but quite the contrary.Lots of the small talk the played out before does its job here of fixing the scene.The foot fetish exchange also plays a role later on.

The next works like a boxing saga,and a notable plot element is the fact that Vincent and jules are in casual clothes as opposed to the previous scenes.

The following scene is the first one to generate any confusion for a first time QT film viewer,as you know not where it comes from,know not where it goes,but really no complaints since you end up enjoying it for what it is.

The entire conversation with Mia,the constant fear that plays on Vincent's head, because of a certain something that happened to Tony Rocky Horror,Mia Wallace's overbearing sexual aggression and Marsellus Wallace's apparent power and 'protective ' nature (of his wife) all adds to create that dentist office atmosphere of dread,that culminates in one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

Now it all begins to unfold, and things begin to fall in place in the funniest and the most grotesque of ways.

There is this scene where Mr Wolf says that he'd reach his destination in ten minutes,and you actually have subtitles that count down the time to the exact second,again:evidence that supports the lack of seriousness I was talking about.

The film ends where it begins,continuing with the tradition of the circle that has been earlier employed in notable films like Lolita and more so in Goodfellas.

I could go on,but I might just end up telling you what to like.

Note: I have two films a several too many times:Pulp Fiction and Monty Python and the holy grail,the first one because it was the only good film I had at home for a very long time and I used to watch it at whenever I got infinitely bored at home, which was a lot,and the second because the Pythons are the Pythons.

*The anti Mccarthyist film in picture is the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Warholarium II

2007-06-21T11:09:00.001-07:00

Seriously Wtf!!!

Should have been one post really.
Do these two men(?) also have similar closet-o meter readings? :)

Warholarium

2007-06-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

Campbell's soup anyone?
[:)]

The path of the righteous man

2007-06-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Its a journey that began almost a year ago.Strangely enough I saw the destination long before I saw the beginning.Its had more than its fair share of pitfalls,but also those rare sunrise moments.Its a goal I tried to score even though I knew the ball was already in.For life's in the living,in the roads,not in the busstops.

There was only a little I had to do to reach the first camp,a bit more for the second.But the next few were no molehills.The next couple of hills perhaps represent the happiest part of the journey,except when i knew the end was near.I even went whale watching and played some golf.
For one whole year I was Duke of the County.

The sixth hill had to face my plummeting enthusiasm .It also perhaps bore me for the longest time.There were times when I thought I should travel no further,see no more hills and perhaps see a doctor.And one quack .

But I had to go on.For the end was near.I had to push the envelope of danger.Live in a bizzaro world.Meet a few survivors.
I needed peace then.Serenity .

Of course there was some looking back . Only then could the bits of the puzzle fall into place.

I fell.Again.

I was a stranger in my own brain.

We had a Pact

2007-05-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here's my greatest sitcom characters list(definitely doesn't qualify as all time,haven't seen too many old ones)

10.John Dorian 'JD' (scrubs)-Greatest real life cartoon character I know.Appletini loving vanilla bear.

9. Niles Crane(Frasier)-The quintessential lovable loser

8.Phoebe Buffay(Friends)-Eccentric,unpredictable ,arbitrary,and possibly the only consistently funny character in the series

7.Frasier Crane(Frasier)- Chalk and Cheese,Father and Son

6.Seinfeld (Seinfeld)-The Indifferent ,unfeeling "What are these salty secretions" and " oh,thats a shame" guy.

5.Homer(Simpson's)-Duh. Or should I say Doh.Doh

4.Kramer(Seinfeld)-Nosy brash dufus.Poetry in slapstick.

3.Eric Cartman(south park)-Not even remotely politically "correct",in your face standout character.

2.Kevin Arnold(The wonder years) -Poster boy of the turbulent years of American history,reminder of the innocence that once was.

1.George Costanza(Seinfeld)-The Self loathing,petty,underconfident guy in all of us.Completely devoid of any semblance of emotion or empathy.Originally based on Woody Allen,but for a good part of the show on Larry David himself.

Apparently,during an early conversation with Larry David, Alexander questioned a script, saying, "This could never happen to anyone, and even if it did, no human being would react like this." David replied, "What do you mean? This happened to me once, and this is exactly how I reacted!"

With three of its main characters on the list,no prizes for guessing what would be my highest rated sitcom.

A lot of other characters didnt make the cut,for example Ted the lawyer from scrubs,or Bart simpson,but i am sure they wouldnt complain given the competition.

Watchtower The Along

2007-05-20T01:27:00.000-07:00

Try this song in reverse.
According to Dylan himself, its a story told in the reverse.
It makes perfect sense.

All along the watchtower
Ooh baby
Yeah
Gotta beware gotta beware I will
Hear you sing around the watch
All along the watchtower
Oh
Hey

And the wind began to howl
Two riders were approachin
A wild cat did growl
Outside in the cold distance
Bare-foot servants to, but huh
While all the women came and went
Princes kept the view

All along the watchtower
Hey

Hey
The hours getting late
So let us not talk falsely now
And this is not our fate
But you and I weve been through that
Who feel that life is but a joke but uh
There are many here among us
The thief he kindly spoke
No reason to get excited

Hey hey
Nobody of it is worth

None will level on the line
Plow men dig my earth
Businessman they drink my wine
I cant get no relief
Theres too much confusion
Said the joker to the thief

There must be some kind of way out of here

In the Land of Milk and Honey

2007-05-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

Thats right.One Can't buy A Thrill.

I just downloaded one.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

2007-05-03T05:16:00.000-07:00

Often,determining which one of two related events is the cause and which one ,the effect is hugely challenging.This may seem counter intuitive,based on everyday experience.But you probably know what I am talking about,for religions often talk of fate,which effectively reverses causality.

Consider this situation-In any unsorted sample space,one can expect a non- small standard deviation.Same with society.If any human attribute can be quantised,you can expect some people to have a much higher "value" of that compared to others in most cases.
So in any society,you can expect a few people to be withdrawn and mentally unstable ,inspite of having fairly normal "childhoods".The argument that these people should be "eliminated" is highly dangerous,as there must be a decent amount of deviants in any society.(there are evolutionary biologists who argue this way)

The challenge lies in making them "toothless".

In the light of the recent massacre in Virginia,proponents against the banning of guns argue that its not the guns that kill people,but people kill people.This theory is highly stupid to say in the least,because as I said deviants will always be there-just dont give them guns.

Imagine that the gun density in America is far lower than what it is now.
The killer,in all probability,would have,in his fit of rage,punched up a few guys in a bar.Nobody would have died,and he would have come under greater scrutiny by the police.Several lives would have been saved.

Lets get this straight,deviants cannot be cured or eliminated.Make them toothless.
The proponents against banning of guns are making a flawed assumption-that all" players "or people in a country are perfectly rational and will not use guns with no purpose,whose only result could be self destruction and killing of several other people.Its obviously absurd.

It has infact been shown that if all players are rational,it may not result in the end that lies in the best interests of all.

Consider two cars on a narrow lane travelling towards each other,on a collision course,they can only shift to the right lane.

Now three things can happen:

Both players decide to shift right,
Both players remain in the same lane
exactly one of them shifts.

Now first situation corresponds to both players being rational,second to both being irrational,and third to one of them being rational.As you can see,they have a chance of survival only with the third!!!

America will greatly benefit from a gun ban.Brazil has already tried something similar, ie encourage people to return their guns.

So Lennon *may disagree,but happiness is no warm gun.

*He probably didnt mean a real gun,as he was high in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram :)

Masters of Rock

2006-09-23T23:28:00.001-07:00

For people who have'nt ,meaning no offence to hardcore fans,most of my blogs so far have had [i]floydax[/i] titles.It contains some reference to some of PF'S work,either in the form of their song titles,album titles or phrases they use.
Recently watched the movie Amadeus.Its pretty good,especially if you happen to like theatre,the movie runs like a grand opera,and provides a rather unseen perspective on Mozart and his genius.
Mozart's music is never fully appreciated during his lifetime,atleast according to the movie.His works get shagged on only much later,his genius though,never being doubted.
This set me thinking.How would the best psychedelic and progresive of the sixties and seventies be remembered,say a hundred years later?That they will be remembered is sure,they have been worshipped for forty,but how?

I see a day where the 'cultured' crowd would say ahh...third song..P*U*L*S*E...wow!Or when the classic example of opera would be The Wall,and of a Symphony the Dark side of the moon(are symphonies allowed to have vocals?)
People would stack The Beatles Anthology in the Congress Library.Riders on the storm would be part of standard training for a wannabe pianist.

Their rebellious image will mellow,their marriage with hallucinogens will dissolve.Nobody thinks of Mozart as a drunkard today.And Tchaikovsky as a gay,not that there is anything wrong with it(Seinfeld Rules !)

They will be the Masters of Rock.

*Masters of rock is the least known pink floyd song collection ever.It has some of their earliest songs.

Yet Another Movie

2006-08-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

Requiem for a Passion.
Personally,I am finding it amply hard to describe it in better words. What once was,no longer is.
He is about six months old now,but his life history reads something like Pink's story of the Wall fame.

After what seems like years,after valiantly fighting the Battle of Everbore,I succumb to the temptations of the blog again,after being dead sure I wont!

This sem seems relatively peaceful,mostly certainly,after going through last semesters painful motions.I took up some not so recommended elective this sem(for chemical engg. junta that is) in math,basic graph theory.The course seems great,but I will have do a decent bit to manage.
Also I might have have to do Partial Differential Equations later.But with a gap of nearly 1.5 years separating the course that requires it, and PDE,I dont know how I would remember an inkling.

Heck I dont even remember what I did last sem!

Its been raining a decent bit for the past few months,and IIT looks at its seducing best when it
does.

But with the computer playing femme fatale ,the rains ,for most people is just a condensation of clouds caused due to low temperature.

The LAN!!It has everything !It has almost any song you'd want,except songs by some almost forgotten groups like Gentle Giant.It also has most of the movies worth watching,and is generally well loaded in the art of enetrtainment.

Watched Eraserhead recently.Artsy.Extremely.Also vague.But worth a watch if you are a movie buff.

The Graduate!Scarborough Fair!Brilliant soundtrack!It is probably the only accurate depiction of the 60's we have today.

The Hippies,the beatles,the doors and all those hallucinogens are all very 60's yes,but this has been blown out of proportion.

The60's also saw a lot of 'normal' people.People who had to do work,people who had short tidy hair,and people who went to college,people who despised hallucinogens,but people who had a free spirit nevertheless.Thats probably the greatest achievement of the movie.Showing the sixties in proper light,but with a rebellious experimental spirit.

Also watched Inside Man by Spike Lee at home.Didnt catch it in Satyam.Definitely worth watching.Very Tarantinoesque.But I always thought Spike Lee hated Tarantino!
Also a very strong the usual suspects influence.

To work now.

Oh this is so pulpy!

2006-07-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

You are the king of smooth -- enough said.

Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

Angst

2006-07-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

To be sung in the same tune as the opening scene soundtrack for kill bill 1

"Shortage...its your cg...BANG.
I was late and he was on time
He rode to class on the first chime
I wrote black and he wrote red
He would always win the bet

Bang bang, my exams went down
Bang bang,my lows broke new grounds
Bang bang, that awful round(read 0)
Bang bang, his grading shot me down.

Semesters came and changed the time
When I got my grade, I didnt want to call it mine
He would always laugh and say
"Remember this,your head is made of clay"

Bang bang,your exams went down
Bang bang, your lows broke new grounds
Bang bang, that awful round
Bang bang, I used to give you that round.

Music played, and people sang
Just for me, the crc siren rang.
Now he's come, I don't know why
And till this day, sometimes ask why
He didn't wanna say goodbye
He didn't wouldnt just let our grades lie.

Bang bang,my exams went down
Bang bang,my lows broke new grounds
Bang bang, that awful roundBang bang,all rg shot me down...

Post Delhi Musings

2006-07-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I havent blogged for quite some time now,and with good reason.
Billions of cusecs have flowed through the Ganges since then,a world cup has got over along with a wimbledon,the most enigmatic rockstar to ever live died,terrorists struck making it seem like an even longer time.

Ahhh another arbit title again.This is about a guy,i know,or seem to know for the past six years.
Lets call him Syd.He used to take the bus with me to school,to get down halfway through to go to his school.

We used to take the same bus almost everyday,which still amazes my unpunctual and erratic self,as to how he would show an almost congruent trend in unpunctuality(?!)

This happened form somewhere in the middle of eighth grade till i completed my tenth.After that,timings changed,seasons passed,and the meetings gradually became infrequent and finally halted,.

But he had this uncanny habit of turning up every now and then,in unacceptably unexpected places,on the road,when i am taking a walk,on the way to the doctor's,when going to get some sharpners because teachers still persist in continuing and upholding the ancient barbaric practice of making students write neat records,etc.

A typical conversation would go like this:
Syd:Hi da.
Phony:Hi "da"
Syd:Hows life da...Life rocks man.Its all happening and fun.i thought i'd just go for a ride and then play hockey.
Phony:Ok.
Syd:Chalo...see you around,nice talking to you.Bye(followed by a weird handshake given by an even more weirdly tatooed hand).
Phony:ok.

Then I dont see him for about two years.

One extraordinary afternoon,i see him in Saarang.After the prelims of the main quiz.Sitting near a juice stand near clt.I could hardly recognise him.

Since he had a a weirdly tatooed hand in school itself,and since he was in "college" now,he followed it up by piercing his eyebrows,nose,ears.He also claimed later he had pierced an unmentionable place,but I didnt buy it,because he didnt seem to be in that much pain while walking.

"Yo man!"He said,as I saw him walking towards me,with Houdiniesque thoughts rushing through my brain.He was wearing the shirt of some vague Swedish Death metal band,or atleast thats what i could make out of it.

"what college da?"he drilled further.I thought I would get away with saying "ok" as usual,but decided against it and said"here only da".

"oh thats so up there man"he said pointing in some vague direction in the sky.

"What are you doing here..and where do you study?"i asked,making it a point to look half interested.

"oh R L K college",enlightening me about the existence of one more three lettered engineering college.

"Oh good"i said,not feeling so.

"I want you to meet Akshaya,ya...akshu...he's one of my closest friends"he said pointing to me.

Thats when it hit me that I didnt even know his name.Think.THINK!

She was almost of angelic beauty,with her hair softly falling on her shoulders.She said"Thats so nice"..or something like that.I wasnt listening.

Now after four months in IIT,then ,my definition of beauty had suffered a few changes.Anything that didnt have balls qualified as a knockout.So dont ask me.

Think.THINK!They were drifting away.One could hear Run like hell in the background,the lines which go

"for if they catch you in the backseat trying to pick her locks,
they'll send you back to your mother in a cardboard box
you better run"

I dont rememberwhat happened next.I had to call out to him.Some really cornily stupid sluggish part of my brain decided that the boyfriend of akshaya had to be akshay.This was thinking at its worst form in me.Normally I think better.

Besides if they found out I didnt know his name after being called his best friend,it'll sound outrageous.All because of that half boiled infidel.

I figured that,if his name turned out to be something else,as it most probably will be,I could always try and call the bluff saying the bf of Xa has to be X.

She 'll probably think I'm shit if i said that.But I figured she probably thought so already.

So I did it.

He actually turned back.

He said"Oh didnt I tell you,I am not akhsay anymore.I changed my name to Surrendaerr last year."

"Oh" I said,relieved that he was called akshay atleast at some point of time in the past.
"so you 'll be going to alumni avenue,you two?" I asked.

"Not really,I just met her.Saarang's a great place to make close friends man!"he said.As he walked away,leaving her behind.

"Just add me on orkut ok.Gotta go.Hope to see you soon."she said,and then gave out a Liv Tyleresque smile before leaving.

And there I stood laughing at the Atheists,for how wrong they were,thanking my stars and also one Mr.Orkut Buyukkokten.

So dark the con of man.

2006-05-20T11:32:00.001-07:00

With the release(?) of the movie The Da Vinci Code,and the preceding hype and controversy
came memories of me reading the book a few months after its release,and all its anagrams.

Now this isnt about the book(btw its avg)or the pseudo politico secular controversy around it.

Its about my brush with anagrams

Reservoir Dogs
Sir Good Server

Mr.Pink of "I dont tip"fame comes to my mind,
He ends up playing a waiter in Pulp Fiction!

Holden Caulfield
Hell included Oaf!
Cull dead foe hind
(My apologies to Salinger,or was this intentional?)

name is shortage,and in insti only.
I see only hags and rot in insti man!

There are lots of others i dont remember...will post them later..

Arbit post

2006-05-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

My first really arbit post.Really dont know why I find myself posting,but its maybe because i'm heading to Delhi tomorrow,after a really long boring fortnight at home...trying to complete a post that s simply defying completion.

Since I am so vetti,I 'll tell you why I changed the name of my blog.

Welcome to the Machine happens to feature high on the 'i-like -these-songs' list.Though it happens to be very popular,especially among floyd fans,I some how feel its never given its due,always getting pushed behind by songs like Another Brick in the Wall 2.

Though it quite explicitly deals with the music industry and how the band was unhappy because of these people,the label managers,I feel its just a ploy floyd uses to make a point clear without
sounding too phony and preachy[Salinger getting to me again]

It deals with systems all across the world.
Like universities,colleges,schools,and families.
And how you tend to become too stuctured and inconsequential in the process.Allowing no flowering .
All you feel is a cold detachment.

I can related big time, to this concept,given that IIT can be a really big inhumane machine.
Its not that I dont like it,but lots of IITians tend to harbour such thoughts at times...

Memoirs of Freisha?

2006-05-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Big dreams .Images of a nice place.
A huge hall...called sac for then unknown reasons.
Talk of "seven pointers" "credits"and stuff that none of us seem to understand.
Passing of the baton.
Meeting a huge bunch of people extremely unlike me.
Civil labs,structural labs and marsh tests.
A prof telling us that one day not too long from then, we wouldnt give a damn for those lakes ,those
deer and those trees.
He being proved right far earlier than expected.
Numbers mattered more.
Seeing those green walls of the hostel for the first time.
Monkeys!Oh how amusing they were then.
The encounter with the roomies.
Thinking Consti,as he was not known then,to be a shady guy.
Appearances can be deceptive.But then again,they need not be.

Fearfully walking through a corridor full of seniors in Mandak to Chiru's room for a game of cards?The ensemble localite cast.
Getting back well past midnight.
Meeting Ram.And Sreeni.The rest of them I knew.
Finding out he's called preggie,the result of an undetachable attachable.Thinking that was kuntry max.
Finding out most people i knew lived in saras.Wishing then,i did so too.
My first early night at hostel.Being ragged.
My first late night at the hostel.Experiencing no reversal of fate.
An attempted session by a shady(2,3,4th year?)called Pota.Consti's turn
Chillar he is?
Being 'ragged' the next day by the lit-sec,then of unknown origin.
Both of us discovering that we were from the same school.Feeling relieved.
But then,i did not know iitian traditions.
Warsht rape(?)followed in the ensuing days.
Meeting Shrini...who would later on prove his studmaxness...lessons in paranoia management then

Intra hostel freshie quiz. Coming first with consti and focus.And ananya.
Its an intra hostel event??
Being 'invited' to the terrace by the tenth wingers.Some weird orgies in mind
People again taking advantage of my poor hindi
Being asked to translate Romeo and juliet's romantic crappy hind f****** verse.
Very poetic,werent they?
Being lost in translation.

"Mujhme kya kami hain?"
Me bulb.Me translate
"What shortage do I have?"
Thus Shortage was born!

Discovering DKC!
Discovering Orkut!
Dicovering the TT room!

Trying out for nso TT,atheletics.
Ram trying out TT,baddie,cricket,football,volley and atheletics.
Being brought to the ground reality of ncc.
The flying away of the days.
Increasing visits to saras.
Dumb C sessions into the night.
Gk and his DKC mixup.
Dopa ..justifying his nick.

Camping at insti when localites dashed off home.

Discovering Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.Thinking everybody else was inconsequencial.
Interesting Shaastra.And me packing it.Thinking 5 weeks is too long a time away from home.
Initial hopes of a branch change seemingly being dashed.
Civil pmt.Lotsa work
Envying chemical engineers in the making for their pmt.Or lack of it.

Workshop.
Fitting.

Doing the ID project.Fly ,did it?

Pain.

Filling the branch change form.Hoping.
Against hope?

Gk and the frog.
The Endsems wheezing past.
Ncc camp.16 days of waking up at 0500 hrs.
A boring FORTNIGHT.

Checking out my first gpa.
Not knowing what to feel.
Endless sessions of rummy,ass,bluff and gambling with gong.
Giving up in life.
Asleep one afternoon.A call from The physicsgod.
A call that didnt change my life.But a call that definitely changed my branch.
Missing mech by a whisker.
Request for batch change?

A new branch.A new batch.But same old boring acads.
ED.
Ch102
Increasing visits to home.Coming and hurrying ed up on sunday night.

Saarang!Its quizzes!Its not so unpaired females!Its pro shows!

Delving into Floyd.Thinking everybody else is inconsequencial.

Giving up totally.Basic Elec,and its papers with papers being reason enough.

Blogging.
Tarantino.

Quiz1
Quiz2
Boredom
Giveupdom

Mechanica.Winning.And the unsigned cheque.
Playing the rebel.Questioning the world?

ED endsems.
Doubting if i'd pass.Asking everybody after the endsems if they cup people in it.Everybody but a few being in the affirmative.

Endsem.
Freedom.

Freshie no more.
One down ,hopefully only three more to go.

Wish you were here

2006-04-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

Chapter k.

No words will suffice.
To describe what I am going through.
But maybe a song.
No kostins.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been? it’s alright we know where you’ve been.
You’ve been in the pipeline, filling in time, provided with toys and
’scouting for boys’.
You bought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn’t like school, and you know you’re nobody’s fool,
So welcome to the machine.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream? it’s alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star, he played a mean guitar,
He always ate in the steak bar. he loved to drive in his jaguar.
So welcome to the machine.

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

2006-04-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Chapter 3

The relentless wind.
Rather uncanny,really,considering that all that surrounded me was trees and buildings.Buildings with three floors dammit.Buildings that housed none.

Claustrophobia.

No sky to be seen.Only a roof that man did not make.
Frogs on the road.Small ones.And yet again ,the not so small.

Nothing new about the path i was tracing .
Turned around what would have been a very familiar corner.

Darkness.Not absolute.

A bird testing out its wings.

A bandicoot.Huge.Looking forlorn.Trying to cross the path i would ulimately take.Just sensable. Could smell it.The rat.

It scurried away.All the world is not jobless
An unfamiliar grunt.Huge antlers.

Prancer in the death of the night.

With several of its better halves.Looking.But not quite finding.Grunt perhaps explained.

A bed.Near the water.Trying to explain itself.
But no.Not without a voice.A bed having a voice at that moment would have most definitely scared me.

Then the emergence of a silver sky.The road ahead wet.Road i stand on dry.

Preferential Rain.

No familiar smell.For this was a place,normally placeable by its smell.

An uncomfortable change.Detectable, but fits no mental mould.A change that finds no place to snuggle into in my mind.

Transition period.

And then it hit.

But why?

*Why chapter 3?For the author here wants to go non-linear in blogging.A story that will be told over months.

Rang De Basanti

2006-02-28T00:50:00.000-08:00

The days that follow any quiz just seem to be in an incredible hurry to get over,the brutality of midsem to follow.

But something not so expected happened right in the middle of quiz 1.

There was a special screening of Rang De Basanti for iit junta in OAT (Open Air Theatre)

The movie is definitely worth a watch,but ends on a flimsy note exposing fundamental flaws in the character and the very frame of the movie itself.

For the lack of a better term,what follows can be called a sort of movie review.

First,the positives

Pluses

1.Brilliant cinematograpghy,very good use of the not so photographed areas that immediately surround Delhi.

2.A very nice way to bring out the story of Bhagat Singh and other people,by deftly combining the story of our modern day heroes (in the story) and their story,alternate use of black and white and colour to blend history with reality.

3.Aamir Khan with his witty dialogue,and really juvenile comments in the initial part of the movie.Though not the movie's protagonist,he is reponsible for half of what was nice in the movie.

4.Soha Ali Khan,who looks a lot like her mother.

5.ARR is GOD.

After the movie we had a chance to talk to the director of the movie,along with Madhavan and Siddharth and few others not really worth mentioning.

Minuses

1.The original intention of the director was to 'move the youth into rebellion'.The attempt falls flat on its face

I found myself unable to relate to characters in the movie,who are all give ups (with one notable exemption) with no purpose in life(You actually have Aamir khan's mom being proud of her son for this)

Indian movies love this thing about making people with little purpose and lots of time to waste the central characters,while its the opposite in most other places.

2.The movie s fundamental theme happens to be the Mig 21 crashes;i do not want to reveal more but they end up shooting the Defence Minister (And they give you this impression that it is tougher to swat a mosquito) and owning themselves up on AIR

While their cause may have nothing fundamentally wrong with it ,killing the defence minister under the pretext of killing corruption is nothing short of blatant support to terrorism.

They kill the minister in the name of getting justice for their fallen friend.

They kill a symbol of the 'system',who's hands are tied,most of the times atleast...they have to win elections,they have to play the game,and they have to play it dirty.

One might say that he was a symbol,and in his death comes victory to a cause.

Osama wouldnt take lot of time to say that about the 2000 odd people in the twin towers,who according him would be symbols of "America and the free world"...

Destroy the symbols.Win over hearts

Terrorism requires an entry by itself...so until next time..

Quality control/Profit motive

2006-02-24T05:03:00.000-08:00

The IIT M campus boasts of an incredible variety in fauna and flora,so much so that it is a protected forest.One can find spotted deer,blackbuck,jackals,snakes,mongooses,all sorts of amphibians,weird scorpions weirder insects and lots of birds(they are of only one type here,and they fly).

On a not so completely different note,as the reader will find out later,i want to talk about mess food.

Mess food,by its very definition is incorrigibly bad,no matter where.Only the degrees of unpalatability vary.Irrespective of whether messes are run by the public sector or the private sector,quality of nearly everthing is invariably low.

Profit motive ,which is normally the greatest driver towards optimum quality,doesnt seem to work that well with messes.The issue of competition crushing out the current supplier arises,but not to our advantage.If all them are bad,it doesnt really matter.

People immediately assume,that with production in such bulk amounts,a few cockroches here and there really dont matter.Its an attitude problem.

After all ,with assembly line and quality control and the likes,management people routinely implement six sigma,with competitive costs.People just give up on this one issue,giving lame excuses,like" during my days i used find lizards in my food,be thankful you only found cockroaches",or "eat this junk,it 'll make a man out of you".

This calls for a sea change in attitude.

Till then God save our tongues.

PS. If you were wondering whats the IIT wildlife connect in all this,here goes
A frog somehow made its way into the fried rice that we were supposed to eat.It was cooked.
But i dinnered at the dhaba that day,and dragged a few hostelmates along.

They later lauded me for my foresight.

Etymo

2006-02-22T21:48:00.000-08:00

This post will be short,and its about some english common words that we use daily,which are surprisingly of indian origin.

This I came across during my research work for india quiz,SAARANG 2006.

Musk:A strong smelling reddish brown substance which is secreted by the male musk-deer for scent making, which is also an important ingredient in perfumery. From Late Latin miscus, from Persian musk, from Sanskrit muska (scrotum)

Somehow i dont see the scrotum connect,but still.

Pajamas/pyjama - A lose fitting garment consisting of trousers and a jacket, worn for sleeping or lounging, often used in plural.Hindi paijama - loose fitting trousers, from Persian pai- leg + jamah - garment

Interestingly,the persian origin thing is actually transliterates to the Parsi origin.

Shampoo - A liquid preparation containing soap for washing hair.Hindi campoo - press.

This came as a big surprise,and this question actually figured in india quiz.

Mongoose - Any of various Old World carnivorous mammals having agile body and a long tail and noted for the ability to seize and kill venomous snakes. Marathi mangus, of Dravidian origin.

Anaconda - A large non-venomous arboreal snake of tropical South America that kills its prey by suffocating in its coils. Alteration of Sinhalese henakandaya - whip snake.

I was seriously surprised at this ,as anacondas are not found in india.

Cheetah - A long-legged, swift running wild cat of Africa and Southwest Asia, having black-spotted, tawny fur and non-retractile claws.The fastest animal on land can run for short distances at about 96kn (60 miles) per hour. Hindi cita, from Sanskrit citrakaya - tiger/leopard: Citra- variegated + kaya - body

Thats it for now,for Vitalstatistix must take his annual bath.

Vegetarianism

2006-02-22T04:41:00.000-08:00

I recently happened to chance upon this thread in orkut which basically had a guy comparing non vegetarians to terrorists,and as expected lots of non-veggies went beserk with very few really trying to analyse the situation at all.To give my post quiz 1 joblessness a form i decided to speak my mind on this issue,so here goes.

Well vegetarianism is a reasonably shady concept,given that has no proper definition.For some eggs would be veggie food,while some others would call you a murderer in the womb for having eggs for breakfast while a few other people would even like to compare you to Charles Manson for doing so much as to have french toast.

Undeniably,90% of the time one is a vegetarian or not ,only by a process of natural selection.That is one is veggie if his parents are.People just simply justify their stand on this issue.Very few people actually give suffucient thought to answer this very fundamental 'to be or not to be' question.

For those who would argue that being an omnivore is a man 's birthright,for that is exactly what he has been for the past 10,000 s of years,and that the whole world being veggie is isnt (or atleast most of it) good at all,as it would disturb 'the natural cycle',here is my counterargument.

There is a sufficient amount of 'constructability' in the food cycles that involve man.Lets take the example of poultry.Chicken are actually farmed,ie housed, fed,watered solely for the purpose of being consumed later.Now lets say we stop farming them,and lots of people convert to vegetarianism(forget the numbers).Now humans would simply consume more plants(that he grew) ,there would only be wild chicken,which involve itself in other food cycles,which would invariably be smaller and less complicated.

There is also the energy issue.As we all know solar energy gets converted into other chemical forms of energy in every step,and its not 100%efficient.So our optimum is to have minimum number of steps,which obviously means stopping at the plant stage(we havent evolved yet to tap energy at the solar stage).Now the energy that is wasted in this conversion can never be got back into a form that can do work(I am no expert in thermodynamics,but this is true)

Also the argument about how killing a mosquito is different from killing a hen(as the first one pains you,second one doesnt).

One can quite easily argue that seeing a hen outside and not in your tummy is a threat to the sustainability of your life ,and therefore consuming fowl is not wrong.Secondly one hardly loses any blood due to a mosquito bite(or a dozen of them for that matter),so why kill them?

This blog might actually leave the reader confused as to what my take on this issue is.I have to admit that I fell into the trap of defending what I do.I am a veggie by natural selection,but here i find myself blogging away...

Valhalla!I am coming!

2006-02-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

Finally after going through hundreds of blogs,totally joblessly,which goes without saying,my blog is up!
But what sort of blogger will i be?
Well from my extensive research(?)in this area...i have found out that most bloggers fall under these broad categories
1.The Total giveup
2.The Baghdad Blogger types
3.The funny types
4.The trying to be funny types
5.The 'I woke up today and brushed,bathed,dressed myself...' types
6.The socio-politico-economic theory types
7.And finally the best type,i my mind,the optimal combination of the previous six.

Well if I had just started off by describing the second type without a pause that would be doing grave injustice to him,for he is famous in his own right.If it is still of fundamental interest to the reader to know who he is,google him,for i must rest my troops for the night.