Fingers Cross

I mean, I know it takes a day or two to get used to your clean-shaven face after months of various stages of “beard”, but today was ridiculous.

I looked in the mirror
And saw
A freak of nature
Not me.

(That’s the second poyem I’ve ever written.)

But suddenly, washing my mouth after dinner, it struck me just what that last tube of ointment that the barber used was. Shave, shave again, water spray, towel wipe, pumice stone, water spray/towel wipe, aftershave, and… foundation cream. The jackass just said “cream”, but I remember spying ‘makeup’ on it.

Eeeuuugghhh.

It’s bad enough the New British Man Hair Saloon guys perpetually beg me to let them bleach my face… I think they need a tour of south India, to see how the barbers there do things.

Barberians.

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In other news, I might, I just might have solved my parking woes once and for all! A wave fried my brain last week, both my landlord and -lady agreed today, and we’ve shuffled cars and bikes around in front of 1945 Outram Lines.

I’ll give it a week or so of testing. If all goes well, viz. if both cars can repeatedly get in and out with no problems (I have to turn the wheel with the car stationary to wedge in, but fuck all that), and I have a guaranteed usable parking space… I think it may be time to sell my bike. (And stop writing about parking.) The unseasonably warm weather recently has reminded me just how terrible the Delhi summer sun is… given the choice between an airconditioned car and a dry roast on a two-wheeler, well. I’d rather not be a large lump of sweaty coal.

Numisyou’reabitofaloser

A year or three ago, the Reserve Bank of India, or whichever desi version of the Royal Mint it is that casts our metal currency coins, redid the one- and two-rupee pieces of one. Illogical at first apparence, the new one-rupees are smaller than the old ones and shiny as a Magppie’s loot, while the new two-rupees are slightly smaller than the old but perfectly circular in circumference, without the hexagonal/octagonal markings that made them so easy to distinguish from their half-brothers by touch in the billfold. I’m used to peering at coins before handing them over or accepting them from shopkeepers these days, but I don’t know how the visually impaired manage. (I don’t know how they manage life at all, but that’s a different issue; praise Nature that I have all my senses.)

For the first time since what appears to be Independence and before, these coins no longer have the flanking corn/wheat sheaves on their front faces; testament to the phenomenal success of the agrarian Revolution, no doubt. Bharat Mahan has enough to eat, so much so that grains rot in Food Corporation of India godowns while we import wheat for the first time in decades. Still, the three lions of Ashoka’s emblem suffice for the front, along with Satyameva Jayate and Bharat/India in Hindi/English.

(I was nearly first-named Ashok as a child. I wonder how that would’ve turned out.)

But what’s this on the obverse of the newish two-rupee stainless steel promissory piece?

Modern art; who’dve thunk?

Something tells me that that meaningless nothing has something to do with Women and Children; they have their own Ministry of Welfare, after all.

The one-rupee takes the wheat cake, but:

Give us a lift to Developed Morality-Free Corruptionless Society, would you please? Or just pass me the Thums Up bottle instead.

False Start

Rereading my Floyd tribute two posts down, I felt bored.

So bored that I now feel like deleting it.

But I can’t be bothered. In fact I can’t be bothered to finish this

Here We Go Again

One third of the way through the Marlboro burning gently in my left hand right now, I’ve realised I don’t feel like smoking it. My last one was at noon, after my bath, and that was just because it was playing Everest to my Hillary.

The time is right to make another Game Stab At Quitting.

After tonight’s whisky, obviously.

PS If you’re a nonsmoker with a smart comment about how many times I’ve tried and failed and posted it before, save it. The only thing is to keep trying until one day I succeed.

What Do You Want From Me?

So, as I hope you read, I really got torn apart by the good folk over at Ask And Ye Shall Receive.

The review itself wasn’t too bad, overall: Father “Mengele” Gene’s main gripe was that I talk incessantly, not write; although somehow he also thinks I write well, technically. Hmm. No inconsistency there.

Constructive advice? You can clearly write well, technically, but you don’t write, you talk. If you have any interest to improve, re-read what you write and ask yourself do you like what you read. Other than that, stop fucking moaning. You are privileged, go live your life.

Do I like what I read of my own writing? Quite often, the answer is ‘not really’. But I also think that attitude is the height of ridiculousness in art: you can’t shoot a film and then pan it yourself. You can’t think your own paintings, poems, or photographs suck. Of course, thousands of artists do exactly that (and perhaps that’s why we have the stereotype of the tragic artist).

I don’t mean to say that the desire for self-improvement itself is rubbish: for example, on the basketball court I’m constantly critically evaluating myself. I’m always thinking of moves I could have made but didn’t, and why I didn’t make them. (Often the answer is that I’m not athletic or talented enough, and never will be. It doesn’t matter. I love the game anyway.) The same goes for my drumming, driving, and bike riding.

My point is that a certain amount of pride and self-belief is essential for healthy self-esteem. When asked to play something on a musical instrument, or to sing for a group, I believe you should never waste time prefacing your performance with disclaimers: “Oh, I’m not very good,” “Oh, I haven’t practised/played in ages.” You should just sing or play, and let others form their own opinions as to how good you are. Chances are of course that you do suck, but so what? At least you had the guts to perform. If you really believed yourself to be so bad, you wouldn’t have let yourself be talked into performing. You’d have been one of the people in the audience thinking to themselves: “Oh, I wish I could sing/write/act/play/drive/dance like that.” (And I guarantee you, there will be at least one such person.)

So yeah, I think my writing in some/many posts could be “better” (whatever that means), but overall, I kinda like my blog, y’know? If I knew how to do it better, I already would’ve.

 The comments page on AAYSR had a lot of people telling me (a) my writing is boring, and (b) I’m a racist for having said that Obama looks like a monkey in that godawful ‘Hope’ picture. (Something I’ve since apologised for.)

Think what you will, but I wasn’t even thinking of Obama as a black man when I called him a monkeyface, and that’s the truth, and all I have to say on the matter anymore.

I tried to reason with the said commenters, but quickly realised that with the exception of one, they weren’t interested in the veracity of their savage attacks on my personality. (Something I didn’t sign up for when I submitted my blog for review; and you’ll notice the review itself never ‘got personal’ at any time.) All that the commenters were/are interested in is their brand of deriving pleasure from assault on other people. They’re not unique, that bunch of commenters: in the many years I spent trawling the internet before and after I set up this blog I’ve seen the phenomenon on forums, in chatrooms, and on other blogs. The regular commenters on the FAIL Blog are an example of what the people at AAYSR could be: profane and slanderous, but also witty, in the extreme. They display an unparalleled mastery of the art of the pun that makes me LOL even. The humourless ass-taking at AAYSRcomments– reminiscent of the mild bullying I was subject to in school– isn’t my brand of condom.

As for being boring, well, whoever you are, and whatever you like to do, I could probably go through my Facebook friends list and find at least ten people who find you boring, your interests boring, your humour boring, your music boring, your writing boring, and your life boring. Chances are you’ll find them boring too. I’m well aware that some people don’t think very much of me or my blog, but as Dumblydorr sternly told Hagrid in Book Four, was it: “Really, Hagrid, if you are holding out for universal popularity, you’ll be holed up for a very long time.” Your time is better spent jacking off than worrying about people who find you and your life boring, trust me.

And yet, why have I felt the need for this little pep talk I’ve just given myself (for that’s really what it is, isn’t it)? In truth, I must admit that the combined force of the review and the comment pasting has adversely affected my inclination to blog. Should I listen to the criticism, and write less and better at the same time?

I’ve thought about it, and I can’t really do the whole “writing for an audience” gig. Trying to make my posts funny, with liberal profanity, over-the-top, incredible hyperbole, and a Ruler-Of-The-Universe point of view, really isn’t my thing. My thing is writing it as I think it. My thing is writing about feeling and being called fat, because I have nowhere else to say it. My thing is being vain and selfglorious here, because I can’t be it elsewhere.

In real life I have far from an overly dominant personality. There’s a tendency to please that (I hope) falls short of doormatdom, but I’ll still put myself out for your convenience, the more so the less intimately I know you. (In short, I try to let strangers have their way.) I’ll even turn off MY Dream Theater in MY car if YOU don’t like it, despite the driver-chooses-the-music rule. Conversely, I never ask anyone to change the music they’re playing. Where I am inflexible is in little things like using coasters, not breaking books’ spines, not touching the laptop screen, not starting in second gear, squeezing toothpaste from the bottom up, and using “correct” grammar and punctuation. (This sort of thing is usually labelled ‘neurotic’, especially by less-inclined family members.)

Saala fucking chootiya maadhar bhehn ki lund, though, this is my weblog and I think I’m going to continue to write it the way I want to. I have my reasons for blogging, and as long as they’re extant, I’m unlikely to stop. Reading is your prerogative, after all; it’s not compulsory military service.

I do hope you’ll stay, though. I have whisky, even though it’s a dry day, and rum can be arranged, if you’d prefer that.

Scary Movie Ghost

And here I thought they’d forgotten about me.

You really should read this: http://iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com/2009/01/saale-of-century.html

Agree?

Also, here’re Joe’s: http://iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com/2008/08/im-not-listening-la-la-la.html

And Crowley’s (he got a good one): http://iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-delhis-depp.html

Edit: I forgot my badge, look:

Un, Deux,

The Nostalgic Chica brought to my attention:

(1) Slumdog Millionairepants has garnered (damn you, newspaper lingo!) nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and four sound-related nominations.

(2) The even worsely-named Curious Case of Benjamin’s Buttons has thirteen nominations. Perhaps I should add it to my ‘Movies To Watch’ Notepad file after all.

(3) Dev Patel sounds just like Simon Cowell! I didn’t even know he was British. So he’s a young Akshay Kumar with an upper-class Brit accent.

(4) Ellen DeGeneres, in small doses (sub – three minutes), can actually be watched without brain implosion.

Not that I really care about the movie and the controversy around it. It’s just a movie, as Obama is just a man. But I’m proud of myself for having read the book on which it was based– that doesn’t often happen to me!

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At home early this month I was watching a Discovery Channel program on the big cats of Africa, despite there being an American college basketball game on ESPN. (It was the most boring game I ever saw.) The footage was well shot, and included overhead “satellite” views of the area under observation. The narrator described how all the cats, from lions to smaller ones, had to get within a certain striking distance (3 to 4 metres) to stand a chance of catching their prey (zebra for the lionesses, quail or some other bird for the small cats). The cats would creep forward as far as the tall grass allowed them to, and then stop when they could go no farther without coming into the open and being seen. (I thought about smell, but apparently the smell of lions permeates the savannah or whatever, so zebra aren’t disturbed by it.)

So there was this brilliant overhead high-altitude shot of the herd of zebra grazing away, surrounded by crouching lionesses waiting for a careless ungulate to stray within the critical 4-metre zone.

Back in the regular ground-level camera view, the narrator pointed out that the lionesses sitting there looked blindingly obvious to us humans. Why were the zebra not bothered? But then he reminded us that zebra see in greyscale. The shot was masked with a greyscale filter and BAM! The lionesses turned virtually invisible against the grass. I kid you not–you could hardly see them. The same went for the smaller cats. It was a dramatic presentation that ensured that bit of trivia stayed in my mind.

(The show later depicted a herd of buffalo coming across the self-same pride of lions, now satiated after their two-zebra meal. The lionesses weren’t interested in attacking the buffalo, and were simply playing with their cubs. Those fucking buffalo ’seized their advantage’, though, and charged the pride– they trampled and killed SIX lion cubs! Six out of ten. My heart broke, it really did, to see the lionesses nudging and licking their dead kittens. Sigh.)

I was reminded of this when on a Wikipedia excursion a few days ago (I began by looking up crab lice, following their featuring in an episode of Sex and the City, and from there ended up looking up the difference between arthropods and insects.) We all know that bees see in ultraviolet light; the flowers look completely different to them. (No less beautiful though, I suspect.) But I happened to come across this tidbit: some insects, while able to detect light from different directions through multiple ’simple eyes’, have virtually no sense of sound. (The ones that do probably hear in ways different from humans.) I thought back to the last time I’d scared away a fly by simply yelling at it to get lost, and realised that Wikipedia was right.

And, just in case you’re munching on summat:

Since it is impossible to entirely eliminate pest insects from the human food chain, insects already are present in many foods, especially grains. Most people do not realize that food safety laws in many countries do not prohibit insect parts in food, but rather limit the quantity.

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Two words, no details: gluteal depilation.

Get A Grip

It’s an election and a swearing-in, not an Oprah show.

He’s a POLITICIAN, with all encumbrant flaws. A man, not a Messiah, and he could be the Pope for all the relevance the “Holy Roman Catholic Church” has in my life. If he’s got you believing he’s someone different from the rest of the crowd, then he’s just a POLITICIAN with a particularly good PR machine. Have you forgotten just what a cuntwipe the average POLITICIAN is?

He didn’t speak out against Israel’s humiliating stoning of Palestine loudly enough.

He hasn’t shown signs of wanting to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

In fact, it really baffles me as to what he HAS done so far other than be black and around at a time of global economic hardships. And have his picture painted in colours that seem poorly suited for the end of the first decade of the 21st century. (He looks like a monkey in that pic, to boot.)

Americans can be as silly and emotional as they like. If they want to swoon and pass out with the joy and hope of the history being made (blech), let them.

But if you’re not American, shame on you for falling prey to the propaganda of their media. Never forget America’s shortcomings as a world leader nor its supreme self-interest, except perhaps for its interest in that fucking Jewish country bang in the middle of Muslim territory.

Hitler was probably as adulated in his time.

Vaguely Considering It*

Do you have an opinion on it? Or, as I once heard re: pubic hair, “Opinion kya? If it’s there, it’s there.”

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* Just for novelty: to see what it’s like. The only people who see my armpits these days are in the gym or on the basketball court anyway, so who cares.

Ishent Stepan’s Collage

Manmohan Sarin, former Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court… Arjan Kumar Sikri, sitting Justice of the Delhi High Court… and Raju Ramachandran, former Additional Solicitor-General [of India] and Senior Advocate in the Supreme Court.

There are many others, no doubt, but these are the ones I’ve met in the last few months (and I use the word ‘met’ to mean “saw sitting on a dais”).

All of them have the inimitable honour of having St Stephen’s –> Law Fac on their academic record. Just like me, the biggest stud of them all.

I swell with pride and my cheeks break into smile every time I hear that a big-shot (or anyone, really) studied in Stephen’s, as we were so rudely told NOT to call it in first-year morning assemblies {without the ’St’ prefix, i.e.}– but then, old [Principal] Willy isn’t a Stephanian himself, so who was he to tell us how to refer to our college?

And hearing that others before me have taken the Stephen’s –> Law Fac route and succeeded, albeit in supposedly vastly different professional circumstances* mildy reassures me that I didn’t throw my life away completely when I joined Law Fac instead of running off to the UK to study like I could have.

We get a fair amount of shit, us Stephanian snobs– clannish, elitist, blah, and I can well understand how mildly annoying it must be to people who studied elsewhere (and especially the infamous College Across The Road), but the truth is we all LOVED the place and the pride of Stephen’s will have a small corner of our hearts as long as we breathe.

{Every graduating class thinks this, so I believe, but really, College is sadly going a bit to the dogs. Where are Willy’s fucking traditions, which so got on my nerves at the time, now? (Discouraging change and progress for the sake of some rubbish labelled “tradition” doesn’t sit well with me. Although fuchhas had better know the Oath, or gaand maarenge hum. We’ll swear their allegiance to the flag, alright.) I was very glad to see people smoking around the basketball court last weekend, right under the Delhi Police’s busybody white “Let us work together to eradicate Smoking” sign clashing garishly with the red brick walls, so all is not lost yet… but the corrugated metal sheets covering the lower portion of the metal grille around the “football field” (a joke of a field, that really is) reek of poor taste. Do they not want people looking at the football team practising topless, is that it? Do they not want people walking past on the road (like me, en route to the ATM) to have a few seconds’ glance at college football? And unpainted, corrugated metal, of all things… tut tut, Nandy and whoever else is in power. You may not be to blame, but I blame you. (Mildly, to be sure, because I’m just an alumnus, and I’ve been joyously parking my bike in your motorbike sheds every holiday for three years now. You can cover the grilles with hemp, for all I really care, as long as the bike has a holiday home.)}

Anyway, I also saw on one selfsame dais Justice Cyriac Joseph, who began practice as an advocate in Kottayam and has made it all the way to the Supreme Court. I’ve seen and heard him a couple of times before as well, and I quite like his perhaps childish sense of humour. The strong Malayali accent doesn’t hurt either; I always feel quite at home among Mallus, probably more than any other ethnic group. He gave a rather sermonising speech that Sunday, replete with the view that we are not in control of our lives: ‘God’ is… and while the tendency in my past has oft been to outwardly snigger and poke fun, and inwardly glance at my watch, I’ve begun to listen to these sort of “how to live your life” speeches quite seriously over the last few months. I suspect it’s because I have only a few short mensems left as an ivorytowered stewdent, and I find that if cheesiness and obviousness and the youthful sense of infallible I-know-better-than-you-ness be discounted, there’s actually a lot of truth in what elders say. This applies even to my Law Fac teachers: two or three of the five we have this semester spend as much time counselling us on what to do with the rest of our lives, and in what manner to so do it, as they do teaching us Negotiable Instruments, Pleadings, and Jurisprudence II (Concepts).

If only I could Turn Back Time, I’d have bought Aqua’s Aquarium album and watched Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sliding Doors movie in full, but I’d also have done a heck of a lot of things differently. Slowly but surely, I’m trying to vacate that unenviable position, for as Gandalf so wisely told Frodo in The Fellowship, “All that we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us,” and I don’t think I’ve heard a truer truism in all my life.

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* To hear old people talk, Delhi in the ’70s had a population of about five hundred, with thirty or so Fiats and an equal number of Ambassadors on the roads. And only a hundred or so lawyers.

Edit: Oh, look at my header pic to see the football field and the grille in March 2007. The lower half of the grille is now unrecognisably altered for the worse.