charity begins at pub...

"When one is drunk, one tends to speak the truth" goes the age old cliché in the Boozers' Bible. Keeping aside the New Year resolutions for a while, Dindu and I were in this resto-pub last weekend. My limit is 60 ml. After that I start seeing things more vaguely clear. Dindu's limit is 180 ml, but his supernatural bird eye view becomes active as soon as the first drop of alcohol goes inside him. And then begins the conversation, where almost everything is discussed once again in the same old monotonous way - from marriage to monogamy, from racism to religion, from sex to sensex, from poverty to privatization, from girls to globalization - you name it.

Dindu: Macha! Why don't you order another large?

Me: No Thanks! I am done.

Dindu: You don't know.. A man is mortal only until his first kiss and second drink..

Me: Dae! I don't want to achieve half-nirvana. Perhaps I will cross one drink limit only when I am going to become fully immortal.. You know what I mean right.. he he he..

Gobhi Manchurian arrives; Dindu snatches the plate from waiter's hands, places two tiny pieces in my plate and starts eating the rest.

Dindu: I want to earn a lot of money and do some charity, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. I want to do something so that I am useful to at least four people around me.

Me: Don't worry man! You will be useful to four people. You, your wife and your two children. You will do a lot of charity.

Dindu: Dae! No kidding. I am serious. I really want to be useful.

Me: Ok man! No more drinks for you. Finish this and we are off.

It was the deepest corners of Dindu speaking - the desire to be useful. But just by desiring if one could get everything I would have dated Kangana Ranaut, Katrina Kaif, Jessica Alba, Kate Moss, Rachel Weisze etc etc (you name) by now.

...

(Sigh! I go into a reverie of one of these ethereal beauties sitting with me instead of the drunk-and-about-to-puke-his-brains-out-Tambi)

...

Most of people want to do charity. Some in even big way - Gates, Buffet likes. In my opinion these guys (Gates, Buffet) have already done a lot of charity by creating so many jobs and opportunities and by making things easy. What they are doing now, by giving away the wealth they have accumulated, is just the visible part of their charity.

Charity for most of the people means giving away the money. And mostly those people feel the urge for charity, who possess enough disposable income, which again depends on person's individual view of when his or her income crosses the disposable threshold. A person earning 8 lpa might not feel like charity, whereas a person with 3 lpa might consider doing it. Nothing bad about that as such, but it is difficult for me to digest the idea of giving away money to some ‘xyz’ foundation without knowing what they are going to do with it. I am ultra cynical. And I am always afraid that the collected money will be used by some people in buying tickets for watching a live India Australia match.

'Break the knees of a poor man, then give him crutches to walk' - This is the real definition of charity, as I look around. Society first makes the poor man and then searches for people to do charity to help the poor man out. Society first prepares the criminal, and then cries out to ban the capital punishment. I mean... give me a break.

May be it’s our Indian DNA. People have lived with monarchy for so many centuries, how democracy can suddenly become our culture in just sixty years. Democracy has never been our way of life until after 1947. Democracy was thrown on us Indians who were habitual of living as subjects of Emperors and Dynasties. May be that’s one of the reasons why still dynasties rule us – Gandhis, Nehrus, Scindias, Rajas… Duh! Or may be because after independence we blindly copied the architecture of government and economy from Soviet Union! I am not sure…

I just wonder how cultures become prominent in a society. Why don’t we throw the garbage in a bin instead of on the road? Why don’t we pay taxes? Why don’t we go the right way while driving? Why do we insist on hanging onto old useless customs? Well, one doesn’t have to answer them… just need to think... the answers may come for better…

Meanwhile, I dumped Dindu at his house and flew back to Hyderabad.

Next morning Dindu woke up, called me and said 'Dae! I gave the waiter a tip of 500 rupees! Why didn't you stop me a**h***?!?'

I said 'Relax machi! Just assume that it was charity for the poor man!'

diarios de motocicleta..

NOTE: Italics are the quotes from the book and movie "The Motorcycle Diaries"

What we had in common - our restlessness, our impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road.

Thus two young men (Doctors by profession) embarked upon a journey in 1952 across Latin America on a motorcycle, for around 6 months and eleven thousand kilometers. Reason? May be this:

How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

There wasn’t any sponsorship; there wasn’t any desire for fame (which anyhow came). Just two restless souls wanted to go around and explore.

This isn’t a tale of heroics, nor is it merely some kind of ‘cynical account’; it isn’t meant to be, at least. It’s a chunk of two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.

One country after another, these two young men kept struggling for meager necessities of life (food, water and shelter) and slept with every woman they could. Sometimes, got beaten and chased by the local husbands whose wives they were trying to seduce. One of these was suffering from acute asthma but had an indomitable will. This man was getting shaped into the greatest revolutionary of all times – Ernesto Guevara de la Serna.

What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.

Books alone can’t do it. Listening to knowledge can’t do it. Being in contact with great people can’t do it. Unless a man stands above his limitations, and dares to find his own way, it doesn’t happen. Purpose is about chasing the dreams, not about being chased by the nightmares. Goal is what we find when we have the guts to walk alone; it’s not somewhere we reach following the herd and running away from fears.

You gotta fight for every breath and tell death to go to hell.

It was two years ago, I read about Che Guevara, the person who lived the life of millions of people in just forty years. It was one year ago, I read his Diarios de Motociclota – The Motorcycle Diaries. And it was one day ago, I watched the movie by the same name. Believe me – this man, his book and this movie – they have such a force in them that I can’t describe. In the last chapter of his journal Ernesto wrote this:

Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.

And his following words echo in my brain like nothing else:

All of them, all those who can’t adapt – you and I, for instance – will die cursing the power which they helped bring about with often enormous sacrifices. Revolution is impersonal, so it will take their lives and even use their memory as an example or as an instrument to control the young people coming after them…you will die with your fist clenched and your jaw tense, the perfect manifestation of hatred and struggle, because you aren’t a symbol (some inanimate example), you are an authentic member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves through your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you don’t realize how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you.

What else can I say - a must watch movie, a must read book, a man who was so ordinary by birth but so extraordinary by his guts and deeds.

one morning...

Coffee is the most important drink of the day for me, after Honey-Lemon Tea. First thing that goes inside my stomach every morning is either the sweet and sour HL-T or simmering bitter black coffee. Without these drinks, morning isn’t morning at all. And now when I have a nothing-to-boast-of 160 kbps connection at home, which takes 5 light years for icicidirect-dot-com to open in unhappy hours, I try checking all my inboxes in happy hours along with my drink lubricating every cell of my body from my throat down to my bowels. Slurp! Burp, Burp!

Long centuries of evolution of homosapiens have brought a poignant monotony among them. Now there isn’t only one crazy restless person in this world. For every person awake at 5 in the morning, there is another at some other city, thinking along almost the similar line of thoughts. So, as I log on to my gmail at this relatively godforsaken hour of day, I see Dindu coming online just a second later; and a pop up chat window another second later.

Dindu: ‘Man! Which subject is the most important subject that should be taught to everybody?’

Me (sotto voce): Is this fellow sleep-walking or something? Morning 5 O’clock and he is asking me this? Sure this fellow is sleep-walking.

I had this friend of mine in college, who once slept with his hands on the keyboard, while typing a project report and when he woke up the other day and submitted his project report, his Automotive Engineering instructor sent him summons and asked whether he wants to finish his studies or not. Surprised when Vikesh (name changed) came to his room and checked his report, he was surprised to see his wildest of fantasies about Latetia Casta and Katie Moss documented in the report, instead of Analysis of Crank Shaft Design. We all had cramps in our stomachs for the rest of the term.

Dindu: Maths, Chemistry, Biology, Political Science, Psychology… which one?

Me (sotto voce): What the f*#k! Who cares! Tambi has gone nuts early in the morning!

Dindu: Dae! Are you there or not?

Me: Hi Man! How are you? I hope you are in India and fully awake? It’s 5 in the morning?

Dindu: **ck off! What the hell do you think, I am sleep-walking or something? Surya and Asin are here with me, pissing me off with this question… tell me…

Me: Surya and Asin? I know you are Surya, who is Asin?

Dindu: Not me a**h***. I am Dindu. These two are here beside my bed and asking me these stupid questions. Tell me fast. This Surya fellow is suffering from short term memory loss; he forgets everything after 1 minute. So tell quickly, or else he will hit this shovel on my head…

Damn! I logged off immediately leaving Dindu in his four dimensional world, before he could start behaving like a screwed up schizophrenic. Tambi must have watched some Tamizh movie late last night and got severely affected by that. Phew!!!

Enya playing in my iTunes, I sit in my terrace watching the changing colors of sky, drinking the sweet-sour honey lemon tea, at the same time thinking about what could be the most important subject in this world.

Waste!

I have struggled to find my favorite subject for almost quarter of a century now. In my school days, it was mathematics – may be because my old-man used to teach me and I always scored in 90’s. In higher secondary it became English – may be because my teacher was so pretty. Four years of engineering made me so blasé that I viewed every subject with an equal eye – so no favorites there. In interviews where I had the highest grade was my favorite, just like everybody else. And enter this post education life; I slowly start taking interest in Economics and Computer Science, I don’t know why. But for a subject to be favorite means one needs to know every minute detail of it, its history, its current affairs and its future. I am just a novice when I try to find my location w.r.t. these subjects.

It is very silly to ask what the most important subject is. Like the story of the asshole becoming the boss of body, it is madness to cry for a subject. The basic idea I am trying to form my life on is – ‘one must know something of everything and everything of one thing…’ Subjects are subsets of life, not the other way. Subjects are means of understanding life, not the other way. It is possible to find connections between Operating Systems and Biology, Political Science and Chemistry, Psychology and Physics, J2EE and Journalism, Oracle and Ontology… you name it… Just need an eye…

PS: The images are paintings by Mr Sunil Padwal, a famous modern artist.

cidade de deus...

If you have already watched it, great! If you haven’t, make it a point you watch it ASAP.

The movie ranks in 100 greatest movies of all times in TIME magazine. The movies one must watch before kicking the bucket. It’s a Brazilian movie, so English understanders will need subtitles.

Here is the trailer.

day of freyja…

Note: Only applicable in those areas which observe Dress Down custom.

Apart from Black Friday (any one of several historical disasters that happened on Fridays) and Good Friday (commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus) there is one Casual or Dress Down Friday in the popular modern culture which generally makes Friday more conspicuous than other days of the otherwise dull week. Following is a small attempt in understanding what makes a Friday, Friday:

1. On Friday suddenly one starts becoming aware of the feminine presence around the work place, which is normally absent on other days. That is, from Monday till Thursday a person who does not notice the lady sitting right next to his desk will suddenly starts noticing her with complete awe and surprise on Friday. Figuratively, female population suddenly gets accentuated on this day.

This is attributed to the chemical reaction undergoing across the neurons of female brain because of which the ladies who possess a decent outer frame start fitting themselves inside attractive casual attire, sometimes exaggerated with artificial beauty equipments. And this casual attire suddenly makes their presence more visible. This is the biggest phenomenon which makes Friday, Friday. The reason why neurons undergo this strange chemical reaction remains the subject of an open ended debate.

2. Another phenomenon attributed to Friday is that the weekly alcohol and cigarette consumption curve undergoes a sharp upward move during Friday nights among phenomenally confused males. This in turn, often, triggers the open ended debate mentioned above.

3. In most Germanic Languages Friday is named after Freyja who is a major goddess in Germanic paganism symbolizing love, beauty and fertility. Freyja is described as the fairest of all goddesses, and people prayed to her for happiness and love. Freyja was also associated with war, battle, death, magic, prophecy, and wealth, which makes it very essential for males to keep a healthy distance from the Freyja's Friday Feminine Effect.

4. In astrology Friday is connected with planet Venus and since Women are from Venus, it is assumed that this day their presence becomes more visible. But there is an opposition to this explanation because the same is not applicable to Tuesdays, since Men are considered to have descended from Mars and Tuesdays belong to Mars. Instead, on Tuesdays most men are found praying the celibate god of Hindu Mythology - Hanuman. It is also believed that Men subconsciously prepare on Tuesdays by requesting Lord Hanuman to give them strength and purity to stay away from the ill effects of the upcoming Fridays. Adam and Eve eating apple in the garden of Eden is again believed to have happened on Friday. It is said that Adam had failed to offer his prayers to Lord Hanuman the previous Tuesday!

This list is not exhaustive and there are many other interesting and eye opening explanations which could be found using prevailing search engines and encyclopedias. One must also go through a number of white papers produced by academicians who spent their lives trying explaining this perplexing phenomenon.

Me@AOL...

I had no idea what I was going to experience when I boarded the flight to Bangalore on Jan 11th. I was confused and stressed to my point of breaking, victim of the air, light and sound pollution of the fast growing city, a cause and effect of fast spreading emotional pollution and in desperate need of a healthy break; formerly I planned to go to A&N Islands (inspired and envied by some beautiful people around me), but then thought that I required a deeper change than just a superficial change of only the place. I needed a change from inside.

And so I decided to go for the advance course of art of living at the Bangalore ashram. As I entered the ashram campus, first thing I got to see was Sri Sri Ravi Shankar himself. It happens once in thousand years you see. That such a person takes birth and with his knowledge and conviction brings a positive change in life of millions of other people around the world. And lucky I, I got to see him in person. There were people from all over the globe. Even those who did not understand English. People from Russia, China and Japan had specially brought a translator with them to understand the instructions and discourses.

The real thing started the next morning. The advance course commenced and everyone was supposed to observe complete silence till end of the course i.e. you must not speak even a single word, not even make any eye contact with the other people. I was no way ready for that. Words started accumulating in my brain so fast that I thought I was going to explode with them soon. But I survived somehow. From morning 5 till evening 10 days were full of activities and more and more meditation. Sit cross legged, take your attention here, inhale like this, exhale like that and observe your brain… phew! My immunity could not stand the Bangalore cold and this rigorous practice. I had to return on the third day itself.

After returning, I slept the whole day as if there was no tomorrow. After coming back to senses, I only remember Sri Sri’s eyes looking into mine, and that soft touch of His feet on my hands. I was fortunate and I was changed. Having a guru, a guide, a coach, a teacher is quintessential for the holistic growth of an individual. But everyone has different criterion for the Master. And everyone is not very fortunate to have a Master. My three days stay in the Bangalore ashram gave me a huge insight into my flaws and strengths. And I realized that when it comes to patience, trust and adaptability – I suck! Like hell.

Anyhow, it was my fortune that I saw the living Buddha right in front of my eyes, listened to his discourses live and even touched his feet. Wherever he goes, joy follows him! Had I been a little more adaptable, I could have successfully finished the course and the silence as well. But… :(...

a manchurian tale...

An excerpt from the book on Behavioral Economics I was reading a couple of days back:

“We overestimate the likelihood: of something that we can easily imagine, especially if it would be particularly frightening, like a plane crash or particularly exciting, like winning the lottery; of something that has given us a short-lived extreme experience; or of something we have recently experienced. Likewise we underestimate the likelihood of things that happen relatively often.”

It reminded me of the latest conversation I had with Dindu 1 2. It was his birth day last week. Capricorn, you see! His Lazy Ass is very proud of being capricious Capricorn. I asked him what gift he wanted for his b’day. And guess what… no no no… you won’t be able to guess… He wanted me to courier gobhi-manchurian from the flyover-bakery at Hyderabad to his beach house in Thiruvannmayur, Chennai. Can you believe it? Even beyond the wildest and remotest of imaginations! I can say Dindu will do anything for that gobhi-machurian. He suffers from such pristine hunger for this Indo-Chinese hybrid dish that he will even kill anyone for you if you offer him flyover-bakery’s gobhi-manchurian. After gobhi-manchurian, kothu-parantha comes next in his I-will-kill-for-it list. Oh! But this is not about that, this much was just to increase the length of this post which otherwise could have ended only after the first paragraph.

Allegedly, Dindu has been given the option (i.e. euphemistically, an ultimatum) by his parents that he should either find a girl of his choice by his next birthday or he will be emotionally and tangibly cuffed with the girl of their choice. Woho! Can I get the email id of Karan Johar? I think I have a real life story for him and SRK taking shape - "Chuk de Dindu".

Upon that, Dindu has been told by his family astrologer that if he marries before seeing (i.e. euphemistically, rejecting) twelve girls, it will not be good for his post nuptial life. Somewhat like King Kansa who was told by aakashvaani (radio waves of mythological era) that he will be killed by thirteenth (??) son of Vasudeva! The astrologer left him wondering (the reflection of first paragraph) what will happen to him if he marries less than or equal to twelfth girl he comes to see and know of. Will his married life be that of a chivalrous and beloved hubby (particularly exciting) or he will become an uxorious partner or even worse be labeled a cuckold of worst sort (particularly frightening). That’s what is meant by “overestimating the likelihood of something one can easily imagine…” Dindu just knows he has to go a long way - 12!!! Wish him luck...

When I ask him how much dakshina he gave to the astrologer he refuses to tell me. I guess he has been… you know… I don’t know about how his planets are placed in his birth chart, but I can say his rational brain and thinking cells are a little misplaced for the time being…

Anyhow, myob is slowly becoming my philosophy. So I have stopped giving advices to already overloaded poor Dindu. It’s natural that if one gets overloaded with choices, often one ends up making no choice at all. And that’s where Dindu is right now. Spending most of his weekends at the Chennai beach, wandering aimlessly, wondering why he wonders what he wonders…

forsaken thought...

Blackness of distress
dark everywhere
vision marred by fear
hope numbed with disbelief
no sky above my head
no ground beneath my feet
directionless - I become

A spark of thought arrives
piercing the curtain of darkness
giving warmth of hope
and a reason to survive
I decide I can move on with this thought
forever
Out of darkness
I survive

As the light dawns
leaving blackness behind
that little spark
fades away into the light
and becomes a forsaken thought
I find darkness again
Myself - I deceive.

ah! not again...

For last two weeks, I haven't been able to catch up with the latest news about the nation and the world. Whatever “breaking” happens, reaches me after one full day, when the sudden inferno of attention it once created in the news channels gets extinguished with its hajjar times repetition.

Bhutto was assassinated, Kenya is burning bad, BJP triumphed in the home state (Himachal Pradesh) as well, India got slaughtered by Aussies once again, and New Year arrived with some episodic disgracing deeds of countrymen across the cities. Every news, which was labeled ‘Breaking News’ in the news channels in last two weeks reached me after becoming supersaturated on the television screens.

The latest retired ‘Breaking News’ which hit me hard was the molestation of some girls in Mumbai and Pune on the 31st night. Especially the Mumbai one – I mean how a mob of 60 people can ambush two girls and molest them? There is something terribly wrong in the way the mind set is getting shaped around the cities. The economy is growing, of course, but are people growing up to justify the GDP growth?

I wouldn’t say it was the responsibility of one particular section – Police, Mob, Politicians, or provocative dressing of women – like the desultory discussions that followed. I would just say it was a matter of shame for the whole nation. And it makes it even worse discussing such events like this . It appears that the first thing everyone does after such tragedies is to play “Who is to Blame!” game. And once the game is over, everyone starts waiting for one more game to come their way. Is it so exciting?

Instead of building a firm foundation of trust and understanding, we are getting drowned in the quagmire of blame-storming, finger-pointing, responsibility-shrugging and moral lethargy. Can relegating the responsibility and blame to some section clear us of the stigma of what happened?

Society has to change, and for that every individual has to change and this change can be brought only by right education, right policy and right implementation. We have to build a strong platform of trust on which our posterity can stand tall and take off for the new future. Growth has to turn into muscle to be meaningful; otherwise the 10% growth which we are boasting of today will render the nation obese. But who is going to do it and when will it be done remains again an open question... Till then I just hope with fingers crossed (not pointed to anyone)...