Yours Introspectively

How many times have we done that routine about soul searching and come up with really mind numbing profound statements about life, the universe and everything else? I am sure everyone at least once in his lifetime has sipped on a cup of coffee occupying a place that to him signifies his inner self and retrospected, introspected and emerged a thoroughly pooped human being at the end of it all. For take it from me, when you put yourself in a microscope that is your inner self, you get magnified beyond any limits that you can imagine (SEMs and EMs be damned). And in this picture when you come to realize the lines on your forehead caused through years of manipulation, obsession, passion, all contributing to that basic fight for survival, believe me that your ideals of how perfect your world is will lower themselves by notches faster than the stock market the day Mukesh Ambani files for bankruptcy.
And we all so flirtingly refer to it as philosophizing. Blame my bad mood because I just realized that I was the one surviving member of the family of the big bad wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the poor piglets’ sty away. And then trace the root cause of this blame to philosophy. Damn you Socrates, may god consecrate you to hell Plato and Aristotle – you can take that path of golden mean of yours and shovel it. But believe me, at all naturally occurring times, introspection is the bully that gets you down not the oft blamed philosophical mood.
The other day I had this fellow renouncing all compliments to his survival on this pitiable planet because he was overawed by the fact that greater men have walked on the road where he believes he is stranded in a traffic jam. Upon sending my congratulations to him for what I considered to be his standout strengths, he shied away from the compliments citing personal clashes with the images that I was projecting and those that he had projected for himself (once again that “inner self” funda). That sent me on my own retrospection trip. A journey which I was thankful when it ended because any further and I would have myself sought out the almighty and slapped him for committing this grave mistake of sending me to live amongst human beings.
But I have this one shrewd conniving constant companion spending a lot of time on my shoulder calling himself my “happy face” and he does to me what Jeeves’ cocktails do to a life threatened Bertram Wooster. I was thankful to find out that for every 100 snide comments/exasperated prayers that I had passed regarding Kareena Kapur’s unnecessarily prolonged existence on this planet, I had also put down 3 regarding the greatness of Satyajit Ray. For every score of insults I had hurled at Ludlum for making me read “Sigma Protocol”, I had prostrated twice in front of “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and sung hymns to Harper Lee. For every dozen rocks I had thrown at my adversaries, I had presented my parents with a bouquet.
Introspectively “Philosophizing” is not bad till the time it assumes the form of an absolute performance appraisal. I have no aversions to becoming aware of my fallibilities as a human being as long as I understand that this in itself lays out the path for my progress towards a better one. I can live with a mental image of me as a rotten egg as long as I realize that the other eggs in the basket are also way past their expiry date. So the question about whether we should totally do away with introspection, retrospection and the entire motley crew which provokes one to utter phrases like “hold that thought”, “park that image” and “take out from this session (as if my past were a Chinese noodle soup!)” or wallow in self pity and renounce all “maya”, rent ourselves a cave in the Himalayas and go on a lifelong unpaid vacation to introspect in the midst of yetis and yaks; is actually a no contest. The key to a practical quest of life is moderation.
The motto to seek is “live a little, learn a little”. Its not that we don’t need no education but I am not applying for a Phd on self realization anytime in this stint on earth. Know that every person in this world is a schizophrenic – the one that he shows the world, the one he knows he is. The mistake that people make is realizing that they are suffering from this omnipresent disorder and pop the red pill to extradite themselves from the matrix that is this society. Live your life as an un-curable patient and you will be quite at home in this asylum of the world. As long as both the faces of your personality are absolutely believable to you and you accept this practice as a basal necessity for playing your part on the world stage and playing it well, there’s nothing wrong in introspectively gaining acceptance in your existence and philosophically acquiring means for continued subsistence against mortal torture.

AOB: Age of Barefaced-liars

Been lying left right and centre. Been at it since the time the first syllables came out of my mouth. It’s getting so bad now that the inner me is now lying to who else but me. Trying to desperately convince that all is well and that all that isn’t will soon be. Yeah sure! Play that game on someone who doesn’t know the gig. Me? You are talking to a pro here. You are talking to someone who makes his living selling soaps which promise the buyer that she is going to become Aishwarya Rai the next time she steps under the shower (whoever understood what jojoba oil and orchid extracts were doing in a soap in the first place. And what is jojoba oil? Sounds like some hair oil my grandma would use and buy off some street hawker on a bi cycle.)
This mound of flesh here gets up in the morning telling himself that this is going to be a beautiful day knowing pretty well that he hasn’t seen anything quite like even a span of time that could qualify as a day let alone a good one at that. A beautiful day – that will be the day this bugger will be crowned Mr Universe and Catherine Zeta Jones will divorce Michael Douglas to take him out on a date in a chartered plane….. to her Irish castle…… for a seven course dinner….. with drums of heaven starters….. mulligatawny soup….. Russian Salad…. Italian main course…. French dessert…. there was a point to this but I am forgetting it now. Great dinner though.
Anyway we were talking about my straight faced stretching of the truth till the point that it became a very very tolerable and believable lie. The boss calls telling me that he is going to put his foot through my esophagus if I don’t get the job done within the next four hours. I know that even if I were to scream out loud enough to make Indralok experience tremors of 8 on the Richter scale, the work would not get done inside the day. So what do I tell my boss? You got it! A simple in your face smiling answer. Three words that get him off my back for the next 4 hours. Rest assured after that 4 hours have passed, the E mail server will be down for a couple and then my hard disk will have a problem with detection for about an hour. If it still isn’t quitting time by then and he is still sitting on my head like betaal on vikram, then quite sorrowfully, the third party valve supplier will have to take the stick. Gotta sacrifice the weak for the strong to live on. Not me, blame Darwin.
I meet up with my counter part from the opposite foyer of the building over a cup of coffee in the canteen. We both hate each others guts like only we can. But I need the information out of him so that I can complete my presentation for the meeting the next day. Needless to say I am absolutely professional and ruthless in dealing with this utter disgrace of a techie, a scallywag, the backstabbing guttersnipe, a snooty faced pockmarked villain whom hell itself spat out. What, you ask, do I accurse him with? I go “Hi! Loved that technical evaluation on the new powder manufacturing facility. By the way what exactly was the capital expenditure on that beauty? Guess you must have done a great job on optimizing the process flow. I mean that figure for a project of this magnitude is just unimaginable. Can you pass me the breakup with the supplier’s contact details and the Project Gantt chart regarding the important datelines of completion?” Sweet, simple, honest to God flattery. Don’t take it otherwise; my personal take on the man’s character has nothing to do with the fact that he is the only source of information on which my behind rests right now. Spite is good; the only problem is spite isn’t always right!Barefaced lying - the art of saving barenaked bottoms and more. The science of live today fight same time, same day next week Outlook schedule permitting. The process of having your cake and selling it too. The joy of smiling at your nemesis and calling him your best friend at the same time. The tool to getting most things done the way you want to but the rulebook doesn’t. The one skill to rule over all others for the one who masters this craft can easily pass off about the rest cant he?

Don't Turn Around.....

Or you just might run into yourself. And take it from someone who does it quite often, the head bump can be quite painful. How many times have I told myself to forget whatever absolutely embarrassing abominable thing that I did, pick up the pieces and move on? But the image just sticks to you like…. like the overlapping fold of the envelope which you have to rip off in order to see how much money your grandparents left you on your tenth birthday. I mean I have a hazy recollection of what my eighth standard teacher said while congratulating me on topping the entire class but I distinctly as hell remember my second standard teacher slapping me on the back of my head just as I was about to launch into the second stanza of “Hathi mere Saathi…” during the third period on a Monday in front of my entire class as I was demonstrating my newly honed skills on the table drumming front. And every time that thought runs through the 65k colors fully functional mental LCD projector that I carry around in my cerebellum, I can swear to god I could just melt and disappear through the crack in between immaculately laid out matching tiles which are a part of a mural on an ostentatiously rich man’s shining bathroom wall.
Why is it that we can file our achievements so easily but our failures haunt us to the ends of the world and back? Why cant I just accept the fact that the first time I ran the 100 m for my physical examination grade in class six, half the girls of the class beat me and had it not been for the burst of speed (yeah baby!) I put up in the concluding 9 m of the race; I believe it would have been a lot worse? I mean I have always been this anti establishment guy in terms of sports who believes the sole purpose he was ever let near a sporting arena was to cheer and jeer in that order respectively. Why then does the thought of my Physical training teacher saying 35 sec at the end line bother me even after so many years? I thought I was a much bigger man than that. Guess I was wrong.
I think the reason why I can’t let go of my failures is that they constantly remind me of all that I could have done differently and been a more successful person today. I keep replaying that entire sequence about multiplying 9*3 in the Maths oral exam in class 1 and answering 18 and hope against hope that maybe just maybe today in the drawers of my mind that kid standing in front of the teacher would answer 27 and get a perfect score on the paper. The sound of the mishit snare in the final roll of the all important solo of Stairway to Heaven still resonates in my head with the intensity of a speaker system with tweeter woofer, sub woofer at full bass even though nobody in the entire audience even noticed it. I guess what makes this a particularly nagging thought is that it ruined what would otherwise have been a near perfect copy of Bonham and boy would I have been proud. The very reason that I missed perfection by the hundredth of a millimeter makes the fault stand out so glaringly. The fact that I keep turning around and stubbing my toe against myself is because all these moments make me painfully aware of the fact that I am what my mistakes make me.
Ever heard of that saying which goes “you are only as strong as your weakest link”? I believe that is the entire origin of these repeated visits to the darkest moments of my life. I don’t want to remember them but these memories are here to stay. They are never going to leave me and so it is that my only chance of survival lies in befriending the devil. I can’t wish the images of me tripping over myself away but what I can definitely do is take lessons from them so then I don’t add to the archives. But come to think of it do I really need to go through so much pain of learning from mistakes just so that I can have mental peace and no haunting memories for the rest of my life? I have to exert my mental faculties with retrospective effect so that I don’t have to exert my mental faculties with retrospection in the future? Am I running around myself in riddles without understanding what I am typing here? Come to think of it, I have had quite a good time at laughing over myself remembering these mishaps. Have had quite a few successful dinner conversations with that 100m “dash” of mine. So I guess as long as I can laugh over my misfortunes and stick the middle finger at all the doofus impressions that I have put up for the world to see, I really don’t mind….. turning around.

Will the Real India Please Stand Up?

I am fed up of watching salvation movies. Movies that have their theme as the return from the brink of extinction for the entire mankind. Why is it that the US of A always manages to save the day while we Indians are portrayed as chumps dressed in dhotis, kurtas and turbans posing as the worst of the beggars standing in front of Taj Mahal with our heads skywards chanting in some odd chorus calling for “who else” to save our souls? When will we ever have our own brand of a credible ultra suave super ass kicking Gentleman spy? When will Bollywood step onto the mantle of making a crisis movie with India in the thick of soup and one where our very own pilots can kick the guts out of the invading aliens or one where our scientists can churn up some potent lethal gas that can snuff out the lives across all of Asia and winds favoring, hit the shores of liberty within 15 hours and our very own Brig Sharma can step up to the challenge to prevent the evil Mr Dong from playing Dr Doom (and by the way I am sure we can provide enough eye candy for the role of Miss ass kicking damsel in distress in climax needing salvation before bomb diffusion. We did win a handful Miss Universes and some Miss Worlds. Didn’t we)?
I realize that it is not that we haven’t had national crisis movies before. We have had our share of Mr India(s) and Krantiveer(s). What we have lacked is the determination to take it to the global platform. We have underplayed our potential by retaining our talents within the subcontinent. I think I can provide one reason for our failure to become the global cynosure. You see we picked our enemy quite close to home. I mean there are only so many other than the interested parties that you can endanger when all that separates the opposing forces geographically is a picket fence. Our nemesis (in the cinematic ventures) on the other hand decided to pick fights with someone who lives across an entire continent. (Come to think of it, could cinematic interests be one of the causes of both the cold war and the gulf war? Who knows but somebody should check up on that. Probably could be a great storyline for a Brad Pitt starrer flick in the near future. Anyway back to the main show). What it does is give Hollywood an entire playing field across Europe and parts of Asia. Gives them that much more possibilities of staging Air Force One emergencies over a wider geographical expanse. Our poor cousins sitting in Mumbai on the other hand have to console themselves with just the SAARC limitations barring the few exceptions where our problems are exported to the land of possibilities a case in point being Jo Bole So Nihaal (God cant get that movie out of my head.) So am I saying that we should urge the Govt to bug someone across the continental demarcations for the benefit of the silver screen back home? Wouldn’t hurt but we can do with much lesser exertion I think.
How about an alien invasion movie where Infy Bangalore can come up with the all important virus instead of Jeff Goldblum in NASA? Or how about a futuristic fight to the survival for the human species led by Sabyasachi Mukherjee instead of John Connor? I think we can definitely have a winner in an accidental leak of highly confidential designs of fusion bomb developed by a group of researchers in IISc and a cross continent chase of the baddies by an international consortium of super sleuths led by who else but Brig Sharma of the first paragraph fame. And for once can we have an Indian satellite picking up the all important first contact with Extra terrestrial beings? Can we just be creative enough for making one of those darned UFOs land in the Thar desert instead of the Patagonia or the Atacama? Will be a good change of climate for the aliens also don’t you think? I understand that given the Katrinas and the Ritas making Bush look quite the chimp that he actually is, a perfect storm theme quite catches the fascination in the land of opportunities but didn’t we have our own share of Tsunamis? Just because we didn’t name the damn thing Padmavati doesn’t mean that we let go of the billions that could be gained through a successful screening of the same.
Come on people, pull up your socks and let’s not pull any punches here. Let’s for once get our heads down and deliver a knockout performance of our capabilities in saving the world in times of crisis. Let the world know that in case the green hostile aliens actually come raining destructive laser beams, we will be wearing more than dhotis and kurtas, chanting more than hymns ominously sounding like “aa jaa aa jaa….” and our hands will be used for much more effect than raising them heavenward for help from god knows which quarters. Let’s for once show that the nation playing host to one sixth of the world’s population can successfully shoulder the responsibility of the rest. So here’s to our first Bollywood venture of India the world savior. Hope Bollywood’s listening.

Surprised?

Don’t get me wrong but that don’t impress me much. I have somehow developed this attitude of not getting surprised at anything. Everything that otherwise would elicit that eye popping, mouth gaping response from a reasonable specimen of the human genome is somehow lost on me. I have come to that point of rationalization that my motto on responses to almost all situations is “If it happened, it was possible. If it was possible, it is explainable. Where is the surprise?” Surprised? Read on
This somehow has worked to my advantage at times. Many a soul has confronted me with what he/she has thought to be a truly cinching piece of information but my blank face has drowned their enthusiasm to the point that the cynics labeled me as the dumbest of all creatures and some have actually concluded that I was just too well informed to be unnecessarily astonished. My utter absence of response or retaliation to these have further fuelled controversy over the actual range of my intelligence. Let me come absolutely clear on the topic then. I am neither too gifted nor too deprived. My faculties are reasonably well developed to acknowledge all that goes on in this world and I do not claim to have any sort of super sensory perceptions or abilities that would qualify me as a living relative of Professor Shonku or Uncle Sidhu (only for the fans of Satyajit Ray’s works). It is just that I have decided not to scare my already diminutive wits any further. You say that Charles Lindberg’s crossing of the Atlantic in the Spirit of St Louis was truly remarkable. I don’t entirely disagree with you but the fact that it was accomplished means that it was physically possible and therefore should the muscles in my forehead really need the exercise that you so want to give them? I think not. You want to exclaim the utmost surprise when you learn that Greer Garson’s acceptance speech was the origin of the need for the time limit at the Oscars. Be my guest but it could as well have been the janitor at the Kodak theatre requesting the audience not to litter the place in the most eloquent manner and the result would have been the same wouldn’t it. It is just a piece of trivia and let’s leave it that, shall we? How many people have gaped open mouthed at the very sight of the pyramids and been blown to bits upon hearing that manual labor was employed to haul the rocks to the top and build this architectural wonder? I am in absolute agreement with the fact that it was a monumental task to have been achieved and for that it deserves a standing ovation and not an overarched eyebrow. And tell me if I am terribly out of place when I tell you that the fact that Paul Allen owns the Portand Trailblazers is nothing out of the ordinary. I mean as long as we are decided that a human and not a chimp were to own the team, it might as well be him mightn’t it? And so it is that my refusal to let any piece of enlightening information startle me out of my state of mental dereliction is to many others quite an enigmatic revelation.
But this particular practice is not all bed of roses I tell you. It sometimes leads to a great amount of misunderstanding as well. While it may make you appear as an ultra intellectual super intelligent human being, it takes away that fundamental right to question. I don’t know why but a nod of the head is taken to be a sign that all further questions have been stymied. I might not be surprised to learn that Rutherford got the atomic model out of the solar system but that does not mean that I understand why his model is faulty on account of an electron continuously losing momentum and finally collapsing into the nucleus thereby violating the primary stability of the atom. And nowhere does this make a greater impact than in dealings with the boss. Recently we were discussing a certain project when he passed on a certain piece of news that had just arrived and which would prove to be a major roadblock in the progress of the project. Everybody seated around the table dropped from the sky except for me. I retained my all-knowing-one-with-universe look. One look around the table and my boss decides that I was the one to handle the situation. Heck of a time I chose to raise an eyebrow!

Engineering colleges: Satan’s into Retail

If you want to become an engineer, take my first advice – find a way to do it without going to an engineering college. If you are too late to take the first one, take my second one – don’t graduate. Ever. And if you are late to take that one too then you know what I am talking about. They play a cruel joke on us engineers especially the ones they keep in the hostels for 4 whole years. They let you into a paradise. Show you that life is one big playfield. Tell you that you don’t need to worry about a thing in the world. Make you believe that you could sleep as much as you like and pass exams that came once every six months sounding a foghorn before their arrival by studying for a night or better still motivating the roll number next to you to do your bidding. And just when you thought life couldn’t get any rosier, they give you your degree and kick you out of wonderland.
I still remember my first day at BHU. That memory of my first 90 (a quintessential engineering tradition of bowing to the seniors during ragging) is still as vivid as it were yesterday. Past the horrors of ragging (which form great fodder for all jokes in future life), you came into a world which was nothing short of Neverland. Discovering the thrills of a nightout and the joys of bunking just because you could was true unadulterated bliss. Sitting at Limbdi corner munching on samosas and downing umpteen cups of tea while vehemently discussing any and every topic from the latest crisis in ones unreciprocated love life to Clinton’s celebrated one was the very anvil on which lifelong friendships were formed. Those all night jam sessions playing anything from Led Zep to Nirvana and then trooping into bed when the rest of the world was getting ready to get out of it are somehow some of the best memories that come to my mind when I start to think about all the good times that I had. And just when you thought life couldn’t get any better, they promoted you to the fourth year. I am sure that it is a well known secret by now that they pulled the greatest coup by making engineering a four year course. If any outsider were to ever find out what a thorough waste of time the fourth year in engineering is, I am sure the rightful authorities would promptly cut it down to size. And then you suddenly snap right out of the dream the day you realize, your visa at Disney land has expired.
The entire set up reeks of conspiracy I tell you. They give you a hard time at ragging so that you start to have some doubts about your life outside home and all and just when you are about to renounce the world as one bad place they jab you in the ribs and say “Just joking my man. You really think we are here to work?” Then begins the whirlwind experience that is an engineering college. All through the first and the second year, you are more concerned about which guy hooked up with which girl and then trashing their romance over a cup of coffee (a great way to make your sagging egos boost by the way. This comes personally recommended) than which partial integral equation is variable separable and which is not. A music fest holds more juice for your senses than a mechanical engineering workshop and your feet would much rather find their way into a common room than the class room. Just when you are getting a wee bit too comfortable with your surroundings, they up the ante a little in the third year. Just give you a little jolt from the blue to test your nerves. You sit up and take notice that maybe the world is not all that good. Maybe now is the time to separate the men from the boys. Maybe just maybe now comes the time when I show my mettle. If only they let you out then. If only they told you what you were thinking was absolutely right. But no, conspiracy I tell you. It is all one big game that they are playing with our heads. They give you (what they would like you to believe) a hard earned promotion to the fourth year. And much like fattening a lamb before the slaughter or the lull before the storm or getting the hero high before pinning the murder on him, they raise the curtains on the biggest fraud that engineering has to offer. They give you, the fourth year. The seventh semester passes like a blimp on the horizon for a jet going at 900 miles an hour what with the highs of getting a job or that all important admission into the grad school, etc. The eighth semester is what I call the Garfield semester. You relax, you chill, basically you could be lying on a beach in Goa for the entirety of the period and not have a better time. And all the while the wheels of time are turning, the machineries of monstrosity are at work and rest assured the rug is going to be pulled from underneath pretty soon
You graduate from college, have a huge certificate to show for your efforts and a grade card saying graduate, summa-cum-laude (which is just a fancy way of saying that I find writing my resume harder than the end semester) and you are feeling pretty good about yourselves when they give you a taste of the corporate life. And then all the sins that you were forced to commit during that forced carnival period of 4 years at engineering comes bearing down on your soul unlike any bad karma that you have experienced ever before. Where you were accustomed to bunking classes at the drop of a hat, try getting into your cabin a minute later than your boss! Where you thought procrastinating on the assignment was actually a way of showing who was the boss, try pulling that off on the latest presentation that you are supposed to deliver and rest assured your boss will truly show you who the boss actually is. While you thought that night outs were “Kewl”, at work they are more on the lines of being an “Owl” a very very tired overworked barn variety at that. Where you believed that holding an intellectual discussion with the professor was akin to putting your head on the guillotine with your head facing the blade, you will absolutely feel at home in the corporate environment though because of entirely different reasons. And where you thought that work was something you did to break the monotony of playing, the monotony and the work still retain their place, just that the play part is woefully absent altogether.All this makes me feel that Satan is indeed playing with our souls. He shows us the joys of the world only to make us feel more wretched. He gives us the demo version and just when you are about to reach the final podium, asks for the registration number for unlocking it promising 32 different levels at same time. While in the Eden of college, he shows you the apple of a “better corporate life” and you bite only to fall and never rise again. The dark lord holds fort at all our repositories of education and knowledge and sends forth his dark forces to haunt you for the rest of your lives as you leave those exalted shores for the doomed pastures of beyond. He makes sure that whenever you remember your hostel room, you always feel a tinge in your heart and a longing to go back only to realize that your soul is trapped forever in the whirl of corporate politics, impossible deadlines and frustratingly shallow Microsoft Office tinkering. So don’t fall into the trap. Don’t enjoy your life for it is not going to last. Don’t make merry in the campus. Lead a life of virtue and astuteness and your soul will not be found wanting at exit. But wasn't that what they told Adam and Eve?

Tom and Jerry: The Story of Life

I am pretty sure that the instant I was born, God made sure that there was a dinosaur whose existence would also be defined by this very moment. And the primary reason for this beast to come to life would be to chase the hell out mine. And rest assured we have been at it ever since. Dinosaurs! you say? You knew that I was off my rocker by a long way but prone to hallucinations that too of the Barney kind? And I ask you; don't you see this great, big, spiked, fire-breathing, paw-trampling monster snapping at my heels at all moments? Don’t tell me that this dragon called Woe-e-Saurabh is not visible to you. Maybe not behind me but take a look at my face and you would know that utterly-bamboozled, plain-confused, not-at-all-polaroidworthy, please-get-me-out-of-here look was proof that I was Jerry and he was Tom, I was running he was swatting, I was horrified and he was gratified.
Now you may realise my love for Tom and Jerry. It has nothing to do with the cuteness of Jerry's tail (as if I give rat's ass for that) or the funny situations that Hanna Barbara create (nope they don’t catch my wits either). I like the cartoon series purely for the fact that it’s so poignant. I identify with the squirming Jerry as he finds himself in the thickest of soups for apparently no fault of his. Here he is merrily walking down the streets trying to make the best of whatever little legs God gave him as the curtain goes up and not a minute would have passed when out of the blue all the worries of the world would be attributed to his existence and there would be the bane of his life straining its breath to snuff out his. My situation exactly. Here I would be waking up in the morning to a beautiful sunshine and no sooner would I step out of the house, something would sound the horn that the one idiot to take care of all the blame of anything that has gone wrong today or will go wrong in the next 24 hours has left the building. So it has come to be that I have resigned to this cursed existence with my Tom on my back. It manifests daily in the form of make-me-late-for-office traffic jams, has-there-been-an-idiot-like-you-before boss' stares, not-at-all-you-are-the-biggest-one-yet boss' lectures, I-know-you-want-it-but-I-gotta-procrastinate subordinates, gawd-just-kill-me deadlines, wish-I-could-extract-Bill-Gates’-gut Microsoft presentations and a hundred different things but these hyphenated adjectives are becoming a pain.
But if you thought life was all tears for me, then you need to hit those cartoons in all earnest. You have definitely missed the endings. Jerry always makes it to his hole in the end. He might have received a red behind or a bump on the head on the way but at the end of the day, it is Tom who bangs his head on the wall as Jerry prances into his lair. Jerry might be cornered but then again “a cornered mouse is one of the most dangerous creatures”. So you see my dinosaur friend may find all the satisfaction in chasing the living daylights out of me the entire day but inside the confines of the four walls I pay rent for and call my home, this dinosaur is off limits. Yeah I am the king of the universe at the end of the day and didn’t Shakespeare, the great bard himself say “All’s well that ends well”. Ha so there you have it. Who’s your daddy?

But why do I have this sinking feeling that as soon as I step out in the morning, the dinosaur is going to squash me with a fly swatter? Sigh that’s life I guess

Wish You Were Here....

How’s that for something that I would like people to remember me with? You know all these rich and famous get called onto the TV shows and at the end of the interview they are asked “so how would you like others to remember you?” and you get all the well rehearsed answers like “as a good human being”; “a great person”; “a kind person”; “a good friend”, yada yada yada
So I started thinking what would my response to the above be. You have to keep in mind that I have had quite a long time to plan this response. So, I began with the same old crap about being “a good human being, a great person”. Upon a little analysis I found nothing so special about being a good human being. Needed were two opposable thumbs, an Ok brain to body mass proportion (I know I know, I probably lost out on that criteria) and an upright walking posture and yes I almost forgot a passport proclaiming that you were a part of some social structure. So I thought about the second part, the one about being a great person. Now what exactly was a great person? There were so many things to attribute to a great person that by the time you went through the entire list, it was impossible to actually qualify as one. I know I probably cannot even fathom how to begin on the path of the greatness as a person but I would certainly be very very surprised to find more than a handful who have any idea of where the path actually leads let alone where the end lies. So it was after much thought that I scrapped this one and moved over to something different, thoda hat ke!!
My next well researched response was “a good friend”. Cracked it I thought I had. I mean how could you find a flip side to that one? A good friend! Jackpot! Until that is I realized that how many people would actually be there whom I could be a good friend to? Did I actually want to be such a good friend to so many people that a sizeable mass of people gathering around behind my back would call me a friend at all let alone a good one at that? Heck no! I want to have my share of enemies and spiteful rivals. I want to compete against all odds and have the feeling of being victorious against some and experience the hollowness of losing to others. No, I would not want so many people saying that I was a good friend that the very meaning of the word would have to be distorted. I am accused of many things as it is, please let this one not be on my head. Thank you
Now that I had two seemingly good looking options down the drain, I was once again on square one regarding the all important response. So it was a long time till I hit upon another great sounding line “I want people to remember me as I would remember my parents” ha! Take that you all. Final word. Home run. But I have this pesky conscience that keeps turning up on the most inauspicious of moments primarily to burst my balloons. All it had to say for this statement was “you sure?” I mean how can anyone else understand what my parents mean to me? How do you describe God to someone else? How do you even begin to describe the attributes that define your parents to another person? Caught at the boundary by a flying Jonty Rhodes I felt like. Another brainwave washed down the ditch.
The next seriously good line I came with was “the king of good times” (ok I did not come up with that line but the association of this to the burning question was absolutely mine.) But this fell flat when I considered that not all times were good times and was I going to restrict my remembrance to such a limited and not at all reliable time period? As it is I am kind of not very well known for my wit and let’s not even talk about his neighbor charm. This option was lost from the very beginning due to practicality and feasibility issues.
It took some doing but I slowly put the thought out of my mind. It was partly due to the fact that I was getting nowhere with the answer and partly because I came to realize that the TV interview was increasingly becoming unlikely. So I said why bother at all! And then it happened. I discovered Pink Floyd and I discovered this song called “Wish you were here….” If there were a group of people anywhere in the world at any given point of time who would in their lives feel the need for me to be there for them, it would have to mean that my cause after all not entirely lost in this lifetime. There was still some reason for me to consume my daily quota of food grains. If only some people felt that I was important enough to share their joys and sorrows with me, to include me in their achievements and consult me in their hours of distress, my existence would still be justified. I was still wary of zeroing in on this one. My previous answers had still left quite a painful backstabbing experience. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked this one. Apart from the fact that the tune is simply heavenly and the guitar has a life of its own, these words themselves convey so much more. They encompass that entire bit about being a good friend, human being, person, good times, bad times, everlasting memories et al. And I have a certain tingling feeling in my stomach that I have finally hit upon the one truly defining statement about how I would like people to remember me. Don’t call me your best friend. I don’t mind. Don’t say that I was he the greatest person who ever walked on this earth. I don’t feel bad. Don’t consider me fit for being an important person in your time schedule; I won’t even bat an eyelid. Just for once say “Wish Saurabh was here…” and rest assured that Saurabh would be wishing the same.Long live Pink Floyd.

The Sigma Protocol comes to Bollywood

I was just finishing up on Sigma Protocol by Robert Ludlum. To say the least I was hooked. Following the exploits of agent Anna Navarro and Ben Hartman crisscrossing through Europe and America, I actually felt quite sad when the book ended. I had almost gotten used to the last minute edge of the seat turn of events and just when either of my two favorite characters (of course hero and heroine) found themselves at the wrong end of the gun barrel/pole/knife (Swiss army as well as the normal kitchen)/sniper gun/shoe/hammer/knuckle/grenade, my faith in god was justly rewarded by their timely extraction to safety. I was truly bitter when my hero’s twin brother had his brains splayed all over the cabin and his lovely wife had to die in the cabin explosion. I am not quite sure about my emotions in the latter one though because my hero escaped unhurt and it eliminated a probable love interest (you know lovely distraught twin brother’s wife, obligation to protect, etc) thereby avoiding any complications. I had my heart already set on Anna Navarro as the heroin. Period. I totally agree with Ludlum on this one.
As the book ended I thought of it in the context of a movie (am still not sure whether they have actually made one or not) and not the usual slick Hollywood production with Ben Afleck (Matt Damon was already taken as Jason Bourne so I chose the next best one) playing the wronged Ben Hartman and Eva Mendes (Latino, hot, DOJ agent.. ok disregard the last requirement and do the math) turning up as Ms Navarro and joining them would of course be John Voigt as Dr. Lenz (German, man of steely resolve and amazing temperament… I think we have our man). Instead I dreamt up of this plot in our very own desi Bollywood pot boiler version. Here’s how it goes:
Zurich and Vienna can retain their places (for obvious want of foreign locales and lesser headache for scriptwriters) in the script but of course New York and Hartman Capital Management would have to be replaced by Mumbai and Parekh Industries (just makes me wonder how many films have we had where the rich heroes have taken refuge behind this ubiquitous word “industries” without any rhyme or reason explaining what it is that the industry is engaged in. Whether it sells T shirts or car radiators!! Nothing. Zilch. Just the omnipresent ABC industries – the biggest most respected firm in all of India with over 20000 staff and offices in all the capitals in the world. Yeah that profile sounds ok). The premise of world management and control of human history post the Second World War through a corporate tie up across enemy lines sounds flimsy to me in the Indian context. Here it is that the writers will have to work overtime but I guess the situation can be easily remedied by setting up an economic tie up between the founding fathers of Pakistan and India and setting up some diabolical scheme to control all the events that have shaped the history of the 2 nations so far through means of corporate stratagems. So we will have some emotional heart rending scenes from the Bombay blasts and Kashmir violence while the unscrupulous businessmen in the background would be shaking hands and having an underground lair meeting in the Swiss Alps. Now that the basic plot is somewhat set, we must turn our attention to the cast and crew. Here’s my pick for the same

• Ben Hartman – Raj Parekh (The first part of the name guarantees commercial success and the surname… well.. because I have already named the industries as Parekh Industries in the preceding lines) played by Abhishek Bachhan (yeah baby B)
• Anna Navarro – Priya Joshi (Mumbaikar honest female Crime Branch officers are so much more acceptable and believable. I think the name should stick) played by Preity Zinta (I would have begged for Gayatri Joshi but just because the surnames match doesn’t mean that I should give personal preferences priority over pragmatism. After all we are making a commercially viable venture here)
• Max Hartman – Dinanath Parekh ( The name itself justifies the philanthropy part and I know you must be thinking Big B because of Abhishek in the role of Ben but wait, I have better use for him.) played by Amrish Puri (no explanations required or given)
• Dr. Lenz – ( so tempted to go for Mogambo or Dong or Shakaal but I fear that era is passé) Dr Lee ( I could have easily portrayed someone from the wrong side of Sutlej in this role with the all pervading surname but thought against it in the summer of our friendship. So if Sutlej wouldn’t do the trick, Mansarovar it had to be) played by Naseeruddin Shah (I can just feel the steely glint in his eyes as he slips into the role of the scheming genius. I know there’s this small problem about the nationality part but that can be so easily explained by the fact that he knows all about genetics and has matched his appearances with the normal gentry found in the region of his heroics. For extra effect we can throw in some terms like protoplasmic nucleofusion and mitochondrial intermission. What say? ).
• Alan Bartlett – Commissioner Vijay Chauhan (I think I have revealed the actor beyond any doubts whatsoever).

The rest of the cast can just amble in and out whenever they want though I would love Rani Mukherjee to make a cameo reprising the role of Maya (Leisl) and Milind Gunaji as the utterly-irritating-refusing-to-die assassin Suleiman (“The Architect”).

For bringing the venture to the screen I would not trust any one other than Rahul Rawail. Who else can handle the subject with the required amount of maturity and subtlety (see Jo Bole so Nihaal if you have any doubts on the matter). Of course the movie has to have at least 6 songs for Venus cassettes and TIPs industries to file their income tax returns at the end of the year. So we must have one of bereavement right in the opening sequences when Raj is remembering his twin Ram killed in the plane crash. We can have another one echoing the sentiments of betrayal and confusion as Raj escapes and Maya dies. Introduction of Suleiman can be met with a dhinchak item song (there we have even accommodated Koena Mitra in the script) in a Mumbai dance bar (see we even addressed burning social issues in the film. For further current affairs relevance and filing for tax benefit we could probably rope in Muralitharan and Aditya Panscholi to make a guest appearance in this song and Koena Mitra could be listed in the telephone directory under T). Surely a love song is not out of context in the hotel room between Raj and Priya and wouldn’t the audience feel deprived if Raj weren’t to have a signature tune to signal to Priya that he had come to save her from the Jail-cum-castle-cum-evil laboratory-cum-lair extraordinaire of Dr Lee? To round up the list of possibilities of remixes, we must have a blaring, in your face, bass thumping opening score (what better time to jangle the audience’s nerves than the very opening).

And before I end, I mustn't forget to name the venture. My pick for it is "Fisaddi Joshilay" though you can definitely suggest some better ones. Leave that to the higher echelons

There.. that more or less rounds up my contribution towards this year’s revenue for Bollywood. For further queries read the book by Robert Ludlum or go and drown yourself (not much of a difference in the experience really)

i (Pod), Robot

Scene 1: I am feeling absolutely over the moon as its payday and my pocket is feeling particularly warm. So I hit the electronic mall opposite my house in search for something to take the burden off my little pocket. So it is that I am moving from shop to shop in search for that all important purchase. I had to literally hop skip and jump out of the PDA shop because just hearing the prices burnt a hole in my pocket. Hearing the prices of the new Sony handycams gave me some hope but I found out that I would have to feel over all of Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons and then for good measure high jump over the ones of Neptune and Uranus before I could get a decent cam fitting the budget and giving me a recognizable picture at the end of the day. And after about an hour’s ambling through all the aisles, it seemed that all that I was good for was not the laptop but its carry case, not the camcorder but its stand, not the digicam but its memory stick. So I was on the verge of kicking the bucket in this fruitless expedition of mine when I noticed this little beauty called iPod sitting pretty on the shelf. Carter would not have been happier at seeing Tutankhamen’s tomb as I was on seeing this priceless piece of art. After making sure that I would not have to pawn myself to own this thing, I gingerly stepped into the elite club of iPod owners.

Scene 2: I am sitting inside the apartment opening the box. I must take a moment here to describe the packaging of the product. Being employed in an industry where packaging is all about grabbing shelf space attention, I daresay I have some understanding of the need of innovation in this field. And there is just one word to describe the box that the iPod comes encased in – “Brilliant”. Buy one yourself to experience the joys as you discover neatly tucked in USB cords, stereo head phones and manual. After eagerly completing the formalities of transferring the songs through iTunes and charging it for the requisite amount of time, I plug in the headphones and get ready for the experience of a lifetime.

The very first thing that strikes you about the whole thing is the simplicity. There is no clutter, no unnecessary buttons. No frills which are not required. The click wheel is a revelation of sorts and just holding it in your hands tells you that this beauty is special. My good fortune that I began the iPod experience with Led Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven”. Let me just say that this is one song which I have heard probably once every week for the past 6 years. But the one that heard on the iPod was completely different than the ones that I had heard all these years. This pocket sized wonder brought out riffs and plucking that I had not imagined possible. I could almost picture Paige and Plant in front of me. Being a drummer myself, I am always kicked when Bonham joins the party around 4:16 into the song. But the kick that I received on hearing the opening roll on the iPod is something that I cannot even begin to describe in words. I could clearly make out every note of Paige’s solo and Bonham’s every snare hit. I just sat there dumbstruck through an eternity of elation that lasted 8:01.
Thank god for shuffle because next came U2 with Beautiful Day. I have never before noticed the bass on this song but it just jumped me on this day. And I don’t even have words for how the chorus sounded. With 16 preset equalizer settings, I could definitely swear that is was indeed “A Beautiful Day”. And so it was with every song that this thing played. It gave me a whole new reason to dump this horrible song called “Lets do balle balle” other than the self justifying factor that Kareena Kapoor is eternally etched into the memory of the beats somehow. The iPod told me how one could ruin a perfectly ok tune. You just had to add a lot of background vocals each having a separate entity of its own so that a recording studio would resemble a Bong Fish market on a Sunday when the shrimp prices have headed south because East Bengal has lost the match against Mohun Bagan. Let it be recorded for posterity to note that iPod gave me the clinching reason to hit the delete button to erase this from my hard disk (anything like this for Ms Kapoor??)
It was about half an hour into this magical journey that the playlist shuffled onto Vincent. I have no knowledge of Vincent Van Gough except for his paintings but I swear to god that for the 5:21 that the song played, I had a tete-a-tete with my man. A couple of Denvers and Macleans later I was feeling kind of drowsy when Chopsuey hit the ear drums. And boy did it hit. My pupils have not dilated that much in their lives. I literally woke up if you know what I mean.In short what I am saying is that you might have a lot of reviews saying that good and bad things about an iPod but to me this has been the single most satisfactory buy of my life and if this is the feeling that females derive from every outing to malls, I retract my earlier remarks on their shopping habits but then again we cannot, dare not compare an iPod to anything else should we? Of course not… its official, the grudge remains.

When You Say Nothing At All

Years of loquaciousness have quite left bereft of appreciation for the language of the unspoken. Recently when someone put it to me so tacitly and in no uncertain terms that I generally gave my vocal chords the exercise that the rest of body needs, I decided to pay a little more attention to the inaudible and give M/s. hammer, anvil and stirrups with offices in my middle ear a much deserved and well earned respite. So it was that I began a personal mission to take cognizance of the unsaid all around me and I discovered for the first time in my life the existence of an interaction super highway at levels I had not even thought possible of crediting the human body with before I began this little experiment of mine. In fact I became so acutely aware of this ultra high frequency mode of emotion and information transmission that I began rummaging through the drawers of my memory to search for signs that I had somehow been subjected to this routine sub consciously even though I might have not realized it and suffice it to say that I was pleasantly surprised
The earliest that I can remember me being subjected to inaudible conversations is actually quite a painful occurrence. It refers to those big terrifying eyes that Ma would make to deliver a succinct, clear message “you are dead”. The message was loud and clear, clearer than you could hope to get on a 64 channel mixer amplifier system employing 50000 watt Bose speakers. In fact the amount of dilation of the pupils would actually relay the intensity of soup that I had landed myself into. A cursory flash of the eyes meant that there was still hope of salvaging the situation and I would do myself the greatest favor by evaporating into thin air. Any stare longer than 5 seconds meant that nothing less the tear glands working overtime would be sufficient to buy me passage into the rest of my remaining loath existence. Things have since then evolved much between us and now the pupil dilation has been nudged out of prominence by the eye roll and exasperated hand splaying to distinctly convey utter disappointment. But what I still live for is the smile that tells me that I am home. What still sets the worst disappointment in my life right is the phone ring at 8:30 sharp whatever part of the world any one of us may be in. What still gives me the courage to go on is the nod of my father’s head saying that he is there to catch me when I fall.
I would credit my fourth grade teacher as the person who would list second chronologically in my list of unspoken conversations. One look at her face at you could gauge the score in the latest test. A buoyant look on her face while she handed you your paper meant a certain perfect score while an extended frown and a snap of the wrist as she tossed the paper in your direction meant “your parents are going to have a heart attack this PTA”. How’s that for unspoken conversation in shorthand? Her facial expression as she entered the classroom would be enough to tell us whether the day would be god level fun while understanding the social sciences in our society or a scornful drone over how we were neglecting our studies and fritting away the chance to a better life. Looks like I was much better at this when I was a kid than I am now. Much like a skill lost due to disuse.
Now that I put my mind to it, I can clearly see the intensity of emotions as Bhupathi bangs his chest against Paes’. How could I have missed Tendulkar’s sentence as he took stance against Warne? It seriously offends me to find my faculties found wanting so much when I realize now that my best friend’s pat on the back as I won the first prize gave me more joy than anything else in the world. Just wish I had done that more often to more people. How could I not have understood this potent mode of communication when the most glaring example was staring me in the face? Did any of us living in the hostel trying to wade our way through engineering have to proclaim brotherhood to become a part of the family? The understanding that we would see other through thick and thin and each other’s joys and sorrows would be taken as personally as possible was an unwritten unsaid oath that bound us together as strongly then as it does today.And today as I earn my livelihood as a manager, nothing drives home the need for the unsaid better than the little pat on the back and a little nod which just says that a job was well done. I don’t know about you but my day starts better if my Boss greets me in the morning with a smile. Tells me that at least the hour before he starts checking his e mail is going to go ok for me. Now who gets the stare today? I’m also somebody’s boss you know!

The Queen of My World

She will most certainly sing. Her voice will be as clear as the sound of ripples spreading across a calm water surface. And when she sings, the entire world will stay transfixed. Her voice will need no accompaniment; it shall have a life of its own. Words will come alive in her songs and the night shall dance to her tunes. As she sings, you will feel the softness of her voice touch your soul and leave it begging for more. Her songs will be of joy and laughter. There will be no sadness in them for gloom dare not darken the place which resonates with the sound of her voice.
She will have the most wonderful smile. Something that touches the heart and in your darkest hour lifts your spirits and lets them soar. She will have the power to lift you from the darkest depths of despair and fill you with all the happiness in the world with just a little smile. When she will laugh, the sound shall carry to the farthest corners and spread joy to all who hear it. The wind will carry the sound of her laughter far and wide and the trees will sway to its music.
Despair shall fear her for where she decides to step, her light shines the way. She will bring hope and good cheer to all who are fortunate enough to see her. Children will love her for she will be a fairy to them and elders will shower her with all their blessings. Her friends shall envy her for there would be no one like her in the whole wide world and she will be the darling of everyone everywhere.
She will be the queen of all that God created and her reign will be one of gaiety and nobility. She will be just in her disposition and fair to all. She will not fear to reprimand the unjust nor be found wanting in her reward to the true. Her wisdom will be her constant companion and she will be renowned for her constant vigil of truth.

Ok Mr King-of-Wishful-Thinking, now that you have described The Queen of the entire universe herself, do you really think that she would hook up with a hick like you and elevate you to the position of the de facto King of the Universe? She might be able to lift your spirit from the darkest depths of despair and all that but let’s not let our imagination run wild here. You? Really? You sure you’re not drunk? Drugged maybe? Just plain whacky?
Lets then get to the brass tacks. Now that we have made Shakespeare proud of ourselves in the preceding sentences, what would really be my dream woman like?

She would be no Lata Mangeshkar but she would definitely be able to carry off a ghazal perfectly and I would lie in her lap and spend the entire night listening to her voice as she moves effortlessly from Raag malkaus by Parveen Sultana to the latest AR Rahman song sung by Chitra and then sings me a Janis Joplin or Dolores O’ Riordan. She will most definitely laugh heartily and yes that includes my wisecracks too. She will have her share of woes but she will have a spirit that is truly indomitable. She would definitely be my pillar of strength and therefore she would have the strength to bear the worries of not one but at least two people. She might not rule the entire world but her kingdom shall definitely have one faithful subject… me. She will not be the picture of perfection for I shall not want her to be so faultless that I am myself ashamed to confront her. But she will have an unwavering sense of right and wrong and her analysis of the situation shall be objective as it can be and still carry with it the warmth that it needs to give. And while her judgments in all other fields may invite criticism rarely, her culinary prowess will most definitely be beyond comparison. She will create the most sinfully delicious dishes ever and I will happily be the lab-rat for any of her gourmet experiments. Most of all, she would be willing to listen to all that I have to say and I know that can be quite an earful. To be my perfect companion, she would definitely require some pots of patience in her kitty.
Will she then be the most perfect woman in the world? Do I want the best woman in the world to be the one who I finally love? Did I just hear someone say “Dream on buddy!”? Well no she wouldn’t be the grace of Princess Diana, wisdom of Jijabai and courage of Laxmibai all rolled into one but what she would have to be is “just right”. She will not be Juliet for Romeo but Monica for Chandler, not the goddess Aphrodite but the plain Meg Ryan for Tom Hanks in “You’ve got mail / Sleepless in Seattle”. All she needs to be is the perfect foil to my inadequacies (I know that’s asking a lot but then we are imagining here aren’t we?) and I am sure I will still have the ending of a “happily ever after” etched into the story of my life. And what, you ask, shall I sing for my significant other?
(Ahem… cough cough)You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest……….. (this is where she picks up and I lie back to close my eyes and listen to her)

Comfortably Dumb

I don’t claim to be the sharpest tool in the shed. No I have no intentions of being the most intelligent being on the planet. What is my intention of life then? Remaining just the way I am. And prey what is that you ask. Well I like to call my state of stationary mental evolution as the state of being “Comfortably Dumb”.
Of course you want to know the symptoms of such a degenerate state for fear of relapsing into it yourself but don’t worry it isn’t so bad after all. Once you realize that all the people surrounding you have faculties that far outstrip yours in whatever sense you wish to imagine, there comes a time in your life of profound realization that no matter how much struggle and kick, you are never going to make the cut to the podium anytime in the foreseeable future. It is then that you succumb to reveling in being the average Joe (hope Joe doesn’t mind). And I know it sounds like the lamest defenses ever but it really isn’t all that bad. Not having to live up to any expectations or conform to any standards of performance actually has quite a charm of its own. Of course you get to sip the soda from the sidelines while the actual superstars garner all the glory but who said clapping for the players on stage doesn’t have its own advantages? For starters you can hoot and pass comments. How’s that for compensation? The journey to such a profound realization though has been long and winding and a little hard on the small ego that I harbor but reality has taken so much of a toll that it now rarely ventures out into the open. Here’s how it went for me.
When I was a kid, it was quite the fad to be an all rounder. Back in school, you were standing in a row of uniformly clad zombies in the morning assembly when suddenly out stepped this guy all smartly decked to receive his prize that he had won for reciting the third verse of the fifth chapter of the Bhagvad Gita in the fifth note of the third octave at the 23rd All India Geriatric Convention. What I neat idea I thought. All I had to do was do something that the other kids were not thinking of and go and win a prize in some obscure event organized by the street’s rummy playing association and of course stand up to receive the prize at the morning assembly in front of the whole congregation. What my small little brain failed to foresee was that the kids next to me in the x and y coordinates had also latched onto the same idea and just my luck that we all aimed at the same Rummy player’s association. So went my first crack at stardom
By the time I hit middle school, I realized that physically it was impossible for me to have the remotest possibility of performing in the sports arena without endangering the entire neighborhood with a 7.8 earthquake. So I decided that I would seek specialty in the game of the mind which is so popularly called quizzing. Big mistake that one. Realized quite late though and I was once again left clapping as the guy who was able to correctly identify Mel Gibson in drag from the visual clue claimed the prize.
By the time I hit high school, I was getting desperate for my shot at success. I wasn’t doing too badly in class and fortunately for me my parents had decided to put me through some musical instrument training right from childhood. In my desperation to be conspicuous, I hit the road to the school orchestra and decided to make my mark there. Oh I was conspicuous alright and the only reason my music teacher didn’t kill me was because I left the school.
College was where the realization that I was a good for nothing hick finally beginning to sink in. Being constantly around guys and gals whose IQs were always more than double the square of mine was quite a humbling experience. But I guess there was still some strand of DNA in me which thought of giving it a final try. So I hit the drama circuit as a, would you believe it… background musician. Doesn’t get any lamer than this. I wasn’t Romeo romancing Juliet on stage. I was just the guy who played C# when he did so. I wasn’t Ram battling Ravana in front of the audience. No siree, I was the all important drum beats of the Monkey army! Finally it hit me that I was doing some irreparable damage to my already non existent credibility by continuing on this path and some drastic measures were in order.

I took the leap of faith alright. I leapt into oblivion. I left the stage never to return. I took my seat in the audience and started watching the masters at work. And finally it dawned on me what I was good at. I was a keen observer and a good critic. So what if I couldn’t gather up the courage to face the crowd as Seleucus Nicator, I could trash the ridiculous skirt this guy was wearing. So what if I couldn’t for the life of me appreciate the fact that Don Mclean’s Starry Starry night was a tribute to Vincent Van Gough, I could cheer my classmate when he gave the correct answer and grab the chocolate as he came down from the stage and decided to share his loot with his roomy. So what if I couldn’t keep the beat in even the simplest 4 by 4 routines, I could tighten the last bolt on the snare of the drum set and feel elated as the lead guitarist let me hold his E string when he needed to take a leak. Yeah baby I had truly arrived! Some people might have seen me hamming as the drummer of a rock band but believe me that was just a passing phase. So you see that I had finally found my calling in being…. Nothing! All my life I strove to be something and I found peace in quite the opposite. I had existed in the hope of making excellence my credo but realized that a change of credo was the order of the day. All my life I thought of scaling “The Wall” but today I am “Comfortably Dumb”.

Mechanical Engineering: A study of Life

There is something they teach you inside a Mechanical Engineering classroom that neither the teacher nor the student is aware of but sets apart this breed of engineers from the rest. There is something in the pursuit of robustness of equipment design and greater efficiency of a heat engine that teaches one more about life than anywhere or anything else. I recall a certain movie which said “A Mechanical Engineer has a certain fire inside him”. While we just adopted the slogan as a vindication of our superiority in as childish a manner as we could, you cannot escape a certain truth in the statement now that I look back at it. There was something about being with 40 other mechanical engineers for those 4 years that I believe equipped me for life better than anything that I have experienced before or since.
This is one art of science which teaches you that something as fragile as glass can withstand the pressure of a hundred elephants given that the design is right. It is here that you realize that if you sucked the air out to create enough vacuum, water would begin to boil at room temperature. There could be no greater education in toughness than an experiment on what else but toughness! As you realized that hardness was just a surface property and that toughness was generally inversely proportionate to it, some secrets of behaviors of people suddenly became crystal. No sermon on perfection could be as telling as a lathe job turned to micrometer surface finish. The lesson about striking when the iron is hot does not come alive anywhere other than a Black-smithy workshop. And right next door in the carpentry one learns that the slightest wrong stroke with the jack plane can ruin a carefully crafted job in a second.
Where else do you see the latest computers with the biggest and fastest processing capabilities engaged in the force analysis of…… a shaft. The newest technology analyzing the oldest problems. Kinda demnstrates the interdependence of things and the fact that everything whether old or new can and will make its mark in this world. The wonder of realizing that a 3 D cube when viewed at angle that is equally inclined to all the axes and represented on a 2 D plane paper will actually have the outline of a hexagon makes you realize the fallibility of appearances like nothing else. All those reams of notes on microstructure told one in no uncertain terms that unless the grain size was right and all the slip systems had been locked at the grain boundaries, the subject matter would keep yielding to pressure. I lay no claim to be a master of turbo machinery but my biggest take out from the entire course was the vulnerability of an equipment rotating at 3000 rpm to something as inconsequential as an air bubble and insufficient pressure, kind of a humbling experience to realize the potential of even the most innocuous thing to cause the greatest harm. The music of the gears moving in sync is a perfect analogy to the rhythm of life when everything is going just right. A sudden sound out of place and you know that something has interfered.
I remember the amount of cribs that we used to come up with because we saw ourselves rotting away while filing that confounded piece of metal in oppressive environs of the fitting workshop when our counterparts in the Comp Sc deptt were busy developing codes for multimedia applications sitting in air conditioned laboratories. But I also remember the joy on my face which more than made up for the beads of sweat on my forehead when I saw my finished job at the end of a grueling 4 hours. Kind of taught one the real value of a hard work.
In many ways, Mechanical Engineering taught me more to face the world outside than anything else. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the same principles that I used to make the most robust designs would keep me steady in my personal life also –

“Design strength must always be greater than maximum applied stress otherwise failure will result.”

Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do

They did it. They went and trashed IIT-JEE. The one sense of pride I had in qualifying arguably the “toughest undergraduate selection procedure in the world” has been taken from me. What is being touted as a replacement is nothing less than a slap on the face of all those who spent restless hours spread over innumerable nights trembling with trepidation over what was going to confront them inside the examination hall on that fateful day. The day you gave the JEE. There was no escaping the gravity of the moment. The absolute elation of coming out of the hall and discovering that you got at least one of the 10 questions right and that put you right in the top percentile of all the gawking trembling guys on the campus. I ask you, will the guys giving JEE now have any of the amazing memories to share that we have? Will they ever understand the joy of spending an entire weekend to solve just one question of Irodov and exulting at the thought that they had just entered the Physics’ extremely-long-walk-to-the-hall-of-fame?
And I haven’t even started to trash the explanation that they have come up with to justify this travesty. Apparently they feel that this drastic (try foolhardy) measure is absolutely necessary to cull the “Influence of Coaching Classes”. They are trying to tell me that all my God level friends who made it to the topmost percentile among all of us (try top 100 AIR) were bumbling idiots who made it across the hurdle of those measly 30 questions (10 each in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) just because they got together in some stupid little classroom for 2 years and practiced hard to crack the paper. Let me tell the esteemed people right up there trying to make life easier for poor little students that if I had strained all the muscles that make up my brain and added the ones in my peripheral nervous system just for extra effect and just as a contingency plan prayed standing on one foot to the entire Hindu pantheon for 2 continuous years and then gone to give the paper while my friend had just woken up from a year long slumber and come to give the paper in his nightgown, his position would still have been AIR 1 and I would still be passing off mine as my ELO rating! The people who made it across did not do it because they were coached to do so! They did it because they had it in themselves to understand the magic of complex numbers and the beauty of interfering light waves. These geniuses (and I am proud just to have been able to hang out with some of them) could solve linear differential equations in their sleep. Now I went to these so called “Education Sweat shops” myself and believe me that it took me an entire day to close my jaw once I saw an AIR 3 give the correct answers to 10 straight integrals in a MATHS QUIZ RAPID FIRE ROUND. If the gravity of the above situation doesn’t strike you, consider this. The time span for the answers was 60 seconds. That means that the guy heard and answered 10 integrals at the rate of one per 6 seconds! Hell, I can’t draw the integral sign that quick.
If anyone benefited from these coaching classes, then yes I raise my hand. My muddled wits were cleared by attending these places where just by being around smart people made me take a peek into the fascinating world of Organic bio-molecules and their electron affinities. Kind of the best example of a Pygmalion effect. And I ask you – is that so wrong? Just because I got “tutored” and got better at science through hard labor with some guidance, is it justification enough to turn a winner’s circle into a dance floor for all? By this particular argument, I would recommend that all Corporates roll up their HR departments and ask them to go home because isn’t skill improvement of employees through relevant coaching an integral condition of their employment? Hell, by that same argument, I would call upon the Government to close up first its HRD ministry and then the entire education system so that only the meritorious shall rise to the required positions by displaying their ingenuity. By that same argument every person should rediscover the wheel and the theory of relativity in his lifetime. If coaching were so bad, then we should abhor transfer of knowledge. Every wannabe engineer might just as well stay back home and demonstrate that he can understand the meshing of gears and then he wouldn’t need to go to the college to become a certified Mechanical Engineer would he? And it is not that these Coaching Classes are running a Mafia racket or anything where either you go to them or leave your dream in the garbage. Last I checked they still operated within the limits of democratic principles where the choice of enrollment was with the student! I have myself known quite a lot of people who have made it through the hallowed portals on their very own. So where is the all pervasive problem I ask you?
This entire situation is like hacking away at the problem that never was. If you wanted to reduce the stress associated with the exam, try and reduce the exclusivity that is so associated with being an Engineer or a Doctor in this country. Try to make a scientist as glamorous as a Computer Engineer and you will have a good start to a healthy solution. You cannot hope to reduce stress at the cost of meritocracy. It is like giving the same passing grade irrespective of whether you scored 100% or 80% or 50% because the criteria was that you need to get more than 40%. How do you separate the geniuses from me?
If only parents would realize that the IITs weren’t the end of the world and that my friend who went to DU is earning the same big bucks as my other friend who graduated Summa-cum-Laude CSE IITD some 10 years into their respective careers, there would be lesser hue and cry about exam stress. There would be a more level playing field. There would be happier faces inside each home and lesser phone calls to the psychiatrist! If only the Government would decide to make other fields more lucrative by giving them the necessary infrastructure instead of having meetings on how to reduce examination standards, we would retain the best of both worlds. What we are witnessing today is an attempt to scale Mount Everest. Only, instead of climbing the required 8848 metres a la Tenzing and Hillary, we are trying to blow up the mountain base to bring the peak to the ground.

Happy selecting. May the best brains still win!!!!

Venus is a Shopping Mall

This comes from a lifetime of experience of going to the market with Ma. I would have never stumbled upon this topic as a writeable material but a chance e mail from a certain friend gave me the idea to pen it. I only used to grumble when Ma would drag me all the way to the market any time there was any requirement of amusement but when this particular friend of mine described a certain Sunday that she had entirely spent within the confines of a shopping mall as pure heaven, I decided to take up the cudgels. So here goes.
If that thing about women coming from Venus holds any water, then I am willing to bet my last breath that they have the biggest shopping mall that man can ever imagine somewhere underneath that sulphuric acid atmosphere of the planet. You don’t believe me? Talk to any woman about the experience of shopping and I dare you to come back and tell me that deriving joy from this seemingly trifle activity is not ingrained in their genes. It’s almost like the operating system that is installed in the computer at the time of its assembly. It is almost the single most important BIOS instruction that was embedded into the ROM chip that goes into a female mind – “Thou shalt exult at the sight of a shop”
What beats me is the joy that a female can derive by ruminating in front of a shop just looking at the thing of desire and picturing herself in a position of using the thing. Well if it were me, I would either get in, buy it and demonstrate physically the elation of owning that certain piece in question or decide that my pocket had not yet achieved maturity to handle the responsibility of owning that and move on. Yes I would dream about owning it but that would be in the confines of my own room while my eyes would be undergoing R.E.M. I have no joy in making shopping a vocation. I cannot for the love of me understand how can someone spend 8 hours inside a mall and call it a fruitful exercise at the end of the day? I mean I know what I want to get. I know where to get it. In this day and age of the internet, I can even get onto the net and find out how much this darned thing costs. Hell if I were a bit more enterprising and a little more courageous to trust the Paypal system of electronic money exchange, I would have happily renounced this absolutely jocular task of going to the market.
Still not satisfied? Well in that case, riddle me this – how long does it take for you as a male to buy a pair of trousers and a shirt once inside the store? My dear how much choice do you have? It is the same old pair of jeans and your shirt can just not get any more imaginative than the chromatic deviations that you can take your pick from. Be my guest but my guess (and I daresay it is quite a good one) is that you would be in and out of the activity in a matter of minutes. Let me now educate you about the various stages that are involved when a female (for example my own Ma) decides to undertake the monumental task of buying a piece of clothing.

Stage 1: Recon – This is the most important part of the entire process and serves as the prep stage for all future courses of action. If you are the unfortunate soul acting as the sidekick in this expedition, then prey you would do well to pay attention at this point of time. This is the stage when the scene is thoroughly evaluated for potential. Many a times further interactions will be nipped in the bud because of the failure of the ambience to enthrall the audience even when the thing required is right under their noses and at others just because the air was just right, a totally new quest will be launched entirely on the spur of the moment. It is the latter that has been so famously documented as “Impulse Buying”. Be whatever the case, this stage is the one that has the potential to snowball into a major time pass. So if you are in the mood of catching the all important last ball of the innings on the TV back home, you had better roll up your sleeves and show some enterprising attitude to convince the centre of discussion of this piece that she would do well to stick to her product and this place. Pay attention to the seemingly trifle words – “Her” and “This” in the last line. While the former will cause your pocket to thank you, the latter will be instrumental in getting you back home in time for what we discussed above

Stage 2: Umm.. – This part of the passage is brought to you courtesy of the keen observational tendencies of yours truly. Umm.. indicates that choices are being evaluated. The number of umm..(s) is a very important nuance in the subtle art of managing shopping (some might also call it a science). It indicates the number of variables that are going to be involved in the final solution of the fragile partial differential equation called “Purchase”. And any mathematician worth his salt would tell you that the more the umm..(s), the more are the chances of your suffering a nervous break down right in the middle of the shop.

Stage 3: Hmm.. - Let us now concentrate on Hmm.. If you thought that umm.. management was all that you had to worry about, meet his big brother, the esteemed Hmm.. Hmm.. indicates that while a decision has been reached, it is still nebulous and it is now that the ball is in your court. Take it from me when I tell you that now you will decide whether you want to axe this thing or axe your own foot! She will turn to you now and want your opinion on her buy. Attention my dear friend. If your response is too quick, she will know that you just want to get it out of the way and so your powers will be vetoed and the entire unending loop of evaluate, frustrate storekeeper, evaluate again, frustrate storekeeper more will start again. If you on the other hand take too much time to come out with the response, you have lost the game once again. So you must have a very measured timed response which should be something on the lines of “excellent choice. Nothing could be better. Pack it”

Stage 4: Hasty retreat – Don’t rest on your laurels until you have truly finished the race or in other words don’t take the shopping expedition for over until it actually is. Make sure that the exit is absolutely un-enthralling and nothing remotely interesting dots the sides of the path of retreat. This will require careful consideration and scan when you enter the place to find the best escape route and if I were a little bit overly cautious I would actually recommend visiting the area a day in advance to plan this part better but let’s be rational beings here. With a little practice I am sure you will do well in this part.

So was this entire thing to mock the living daylights out of the entire female species? Well I did start out with the intention of doing so but I just realized that the entire process of shopping I just described was for buying a pair of trousers for …… me. To be absolutely honest I have not had the courage to buy a single piece of clothing or shoes or ok anything without my Mom accosting me to the shop and making me do the needful. Come to think of it I would have been an absolute pig had this person not taken it upon herself to make a decent human being out of me. Yes she can be a pain when she is in her elements inside the confines of a shop. Irrespective of the item she is buying, she wants the buy in of the entire entourage that is accompanying her on this visit. But I am kind of pressed to realize that it is not always that she undertakes these trips for her personal benefit. In fact that happens to be quite the minority. At most times, I do happen to be the beneficiary of these expeditions. So am I still going to grumble over this entire episode? You bet I am but I am going to love her all the same for it.

God: The Eternal Debate

Do I dare think that I will be able to solve this question that so many have tried to answer before me (and all of them have been endowed with such better faculties that mine)? Why then have I chosen this topic? While I may definitely not be able to settle the debate that I have decided to rake up here, I will answer the later question. It is just a last ditch attempt to salvage some pride by adding an entry to my blog. While I do not credit myself with being a penner of any great importance but I have definitely been able to enthrall most of my English teachers through school with my compositions at the drop of a hat. The trend did continue through college where I contributed with great enthusiasm and zeal to most of the mags that circulated in the campus. So it was with much glee that I opened up this blogging account hoping to fill reams and reams of megabytes with my thoughts. But supposedly the electric medium does not quite agree with me. So I have kind of hit a writer’s block (if I can legitimately use that phrase for my caliber) for the past few months with the result that the blog has been mostly ruminating blank. So thought why not start with something simple to bring back the spark. And what could be easier than our dear Ol’ Almighty?
So who is this great person (just to be politically correct) that we turn to at every nook and corner of our lives? Some say God is the supreme human being, the one man/woman capable of doing all that is natural and supernatural, the supreme commander of all the forces good or evil, the ruler of the entire Universe and any other if they exist, in short he/she is THE ONE. Some others have remarked that God is formless and shapeless and any attempt to classify as him or her is fruitless. God is nothing but the pure energy. They go so far as to enlist Einstein (yes the great man himself) as one of their chief protagonists who so famously declared that all matter is eventually convertible completely to energy. So this school of thought is quite scientific in declaring that God is indeed the one single control centre of all the energy that flows in the entire Universe and all the parallel ones that may or may not exist. So it is but natural that this source of energy controls the course and flow of all other matter that dares to stamp its existence in its presence. And then there are of course the pesky agnostics who have so rebelliously declared that there is after all no such supreme majestic being or force who can lay claim to authority over all shapes and forms that exist here. In short they have said THERE IS NO GOD.
So am I trying to take sides here and point out which school of thought is correct and which is not? Am I that off my rocker that I am even trying to hazard a guess at that? I assure you that I have no such fascination or inclination. The reason I am writing is not to doubt or confirm HIS presence but to ask why in a personal frame of reference. Why is it that I want him to exist or not to exist? What will happen to me if he does or doesn’t have a presence?
We as human beings are quite fickle creatures and I daresay no one would challenge me there. So it is quite natural for us to fall prey to our petty natures and make numerous mistakes. I would sincerely be hard pressed to find a single individual who claims to be above the need for absolution and still be made of the same blood and flesh that governs my constitution. But what is happening to me here? Why did I suddenly take refuge in the comfort of the plurality of humans instead of referring to my singular follies? Didn’t being part of a larger mass of failing individuals give me a valid reason for my mistakes, something like a passport to failure? After all I did start the inquisition for my personal reference. That is exactly the reason I feel that I need the higher being to exist. To take the blame for all my shortcomings. I don’t know about others but I feel very comforted by the thought that I can look heavenward at every small mistake I make and transfer the blame for my inadequacy.
The same is true for the opposite situation also. I would also like to have someone seated at the supreme pedestal whom I can thank for all the successes in life in the hope that I will continue to receive his graces in future and scale new heights. It kind of gives me hope for future successes to know that today God is on my side.
So while my rational mind tells me that this belief in God at least for me stems from my inner need to depend on someone and that this need would go away if I had been emotionally more independent, the same consciousness is also blessed for the fact that there is this refuge in my mind that I can turn to for anything and everything that happens to me and emerge a stronger individual after a conversation with him/her. So do I really need to answer the question for any piece of mental satisfaction? I guess not. He might be real or he may be a figment of my imagination; He may be energy or he may just be the same nucleolar composition as me; He might be present on this world or on the next or not at all. The fact of the matter is I don’t really care as long as I can still utter those divine words – OH MY GOD!!

Amen!

Living Alone: Born to be Wild?

I have been living alone for the past one month now and let me begin by acknowledging that I haven’t learnt this much about life ever before in my life. By living alone I don’t mean just staying away from home. I mean managing your entire life yourself. The whole deal! The entire thingy about washing clothes, ironing them, washing utensils, drying them, cleaning the entire apartment and yes the greatest bane of all – cooking!!
I have been so pooped with all the responsibilities of living alone that I started doing some real intense contemplation. About the absolute necessity of all the abovementioned items and here’s what I came up with.

Washing Clothes: yeah! Unless you have oodles of money which enables you to buy a new set of clothes every day you live, you have to wash them and dry them so that you can wear them again. Unless of course you have resolved to live like a pig which I can assure you is not very welcome socially. So unless you want to be an absolute social outcaste, washing clothes is indispensable. Yes there is the obvious option of outsourcing this job to a hired maid or the local laundry but in the absence of a regular time table like mine, both the options are a tad difficult to maintain. So the best deal is of course to lay your hands on a washing machine and hold off the activity till you run out of the last good set of clothes that you have. Then when the opportune moment arrives, gear up all the steely reserves of resolution that you have and plunge headlong into the task.

Ironing clothes: This one is not a particularly disturbing problem in India because of the abundance of the roadside press-wallahs but once you have stepped out of the safety of the country like I have and land in a place like Indonesia, you will come to realize the importance of the innocuous press wallah in your life. Believe me when I tell you that my manhunt for a press wallah in these lonely streets of Indonesia has been nothing less than Bush’s for Osama and suffice it to say that we are both relentless in our pursuits. But while the latter is at a point of no return-or-progress, I have had to resort to “do-it-yourself” for a socially acceptable survival

Cleaning the Apartment: It was a day of great revelations that I finally understood why Ma would get so angry with me eating on the bed or the sofa? I thought she was being overly fastidious in my education of etiquettes and manners but what I didn’t understand then and I am woefully aware of now is that it is all a part of a much bigger picture. The joy of curling up on the sofa and eating that pepperoni and cheese Pizza while watching your favourite TV show disappears when the next morning’s reconnaissance yields a pig sty where last night’s dining area was. Even for someone who does not quite mind the whole deal about being a pig inside the confines of his four walls which he pays rent for, cleaning the place where one lives is not an escapable affair. I mean I could shirk the responsibility for a week but when the glass top centre table lost its ability to refract light through its thickness, I decided it was time I took up the mop and restored some credibility to the apartment. So yes, even this checks out in the list of bare minimum acts of survival.

Key watch: Never before in my life have I realized the pain of losing a key. It’s worse than the most humiliating day in your boss’ cabin. At least there you know that you can get back at him in your mind once the day is over and you are curling up back at home cursing his forthcoming generations to baldness. But what do you do when you realize that after that horribly long workday you have come back to the one place which you call home and God Almighty! You have lost the keys to the apartment? Once the initial phase of four letter words is over, the truth dawns that some action is called for. So unless you are Al Pacino in “The Score” or Richard P Feynman, you are in for a very trying time – one that will test the very core of your values and tell you whether you are a man or just that goddamned idiot who has to live alone!

Washing Utensils: I am absolutely sure that this task is an act of God to drive home the fact that no right comes without a corresponding duty. You have the total right and freedom to enjoy that bowl of dinner but beware for you have to wash the utensils so that you can eat again the next night. It is like the sword of Diocles. I could never quite enjoy my food because of this particular doom that awaited me after that sated belly. That was all rectified when I resolved not to eat until I had cleaned up all the dishes before I sat down to enjoy my meal. I now have a much more satisfying meal experience knowing that at least the cooking utensils are clean and only the ones I am eating in right now need to go under the tap. Amen!

Cooking: I can understand the man who developed the science of detergents to give us dish washing powder or laundry powder (though I would very much like to see him serve a life sentence for the same) but it was definitely a fiend in human form that first discovered that food needed to be cooked!! I mean Early Man was quite content in plucking fruits from the trees and killing his prey and devouring it without the need for “simmer for 5 minutes. Stir till light brown and serve with a garnishing of grated cheese”. And this becomes all the more frustrating for someone like me who has been brought up on a diet of some of the most aromatically stimulating, taste bud exhilarating, sinfully delicious cuisines (that’s the primary reason why Kofi Annan might just decide to pin Ethiopia’s starvation on my size). It is only someone who has been in my place who can identify with me in my reverence of Ray Croc (Mc Donald’s) and Tom Managhan (Domino’s). It is now when I have to taste the utter rubbish of my labors on the cooking range that I realize the root of my love for my Ma and my Grandma. It is here that I publicly acknowledge that you people were placed on Earth so that I could distinguish between good and bad (food). Thank you God for these 2 angels for I may have never known what any food other than instant noodles tastes like. Amen!

I heard that it was highly unusual for American kids to stay with their parents once they had hit the later part of their teens and most of them rent their own places to live. It was there only that I also heard that they did this to emphasize their independence. I bet that these poor fellows given the chance to speak up their internal feelings would just like to pack up lock stock and barrel and crash into their lovely bed back in their parent’s house. I know I would.

A Nobel for Instant Noodles

This goes out to the man who came up first with the idea for instant noodles. Buddy, you are God’s greatest gift to a Bachelor who has to stay alone. I am writing this to acknowledge your genius, your absolute brilliance and want to tell you that they committed the greatest injustice by not awarding you with a Nobel. So what if there was no category perfect enough for this particular invention to qualify in, I am sure if a little effort had been made, all the Nobels in that year would have been bagged by this gem of a discovery. I bow to thee o great one for saving my life and giving me the confidence that I require to step into the kitchen. So what if the only award that this product ever got were a thousand clones and a measly industry worth a few billions, in my book you are always the biggest winner.
How many bachelors have confessed to coming home to a bowl of steaming hot instant noodles and having the best sated tummy experience of their lives? How many days have I myself spent curling up on the sofa after a hard day savoring a bowl of my favorite food in the whole wide world? I shudder to think what I would have done in a world without this particular product. Not only would I have been forced to eat out every single day of my existence alone, I might even have had to go the whole distance and learn the actual art of mixing flour and rice and all things nice to cook myself an eatable meal! May I once again take this moment to kneel down to my man’s (no offense, it could very well have been a woman! Still trying to find out the trivia related to the origins. Would be very interested in knowing the same) greatness.
How do you show your reverence to something that holds such a wide variety of possibilities? This amazing product is a playground for both the gourmet maestro and moi – the bumbling idiot in the culinary arena. While the former may decide to accentuate the delicacy with something a la extraordinaire, I am quite content to add a few scrambled eggs and I am damn sure that at the end of the day, the levels of satisfaction from devouring the end result would not be very different in either case. If ever there was some truth in that story about Ambrosia, I am nominating that this as the closest cousin of the same. God you might be reveling in your nectar and stuff but we on earth have our very own supply of divinity. It comes packaged in a flow wrap along with sachets of flavoring agents and all it requires is warm water and 2 minutes of stirring on the stove.
I would like to end this by saying that whoever it was that came up with this amazing idea was someone who understood bachelors better than anyone else in the world. And if he/she is listening, I would like to tell him/her that he/she brings a smile to millions of singletons like me all around the world everyday. If it were in my power, you my man would have a NOBEL for your efforts any and every year possible. May god bless you for all eternity. Period.