Are You Taking This Seriously?

Exposure to the study of jurisprudence, or the theory and analysis of law in the abstract sense, was well-received in PerakathLand. I welcomed the chance to see that much of philosophy is not as ethereal or irrelevant to daily life as I’d always imagined it to be.

(I also learnt that the way to understand heavy, obtuse philosophical writing is to treat it as a study of an academic subject, like any other, and attack it with pen and notebook and make notes until it makes sense.)

An offshoot of this most trifling exposure to liberal subjects has been some mental development of an ongoing project of mine. An internally consistent theory of life, to make it sound fancy. A way to look at the world, to be simple.

Of course, you can also look at the world by simply opening the window, but I mean an attempt to tame the oft-conflicting viewpoints that come rushing to my head on a given topic, and a way for me to select what viewpoint is most suited for me.

For example, in my response to comments on the post below, I have stated that I do not feel bad about the situation of the poor. This is true, to some degree, or I wouldn’t have said it. However, it’s not universally and omnitemporally true. Every morning I take a break from the library and sit and munch an aloo patty or a bread roll for breakfast. Law Faculty is filled with both human and canine beggar children. The human kids live on a construction site in one corner of the campus, where their parents are daily labourers. The puppies were born in March, towards the end of the academic year. I’ve seen them grow from fat little things that the girls couldn’t stop cooing over into starving packets of legs, ribs, and not much else.

Both these two kinds of beggar-folks come and beg from me every day while I eat. Sometimes the children draw a picture of some shit, colour it, and try and sell it to me for 10 bucks. The dogs gambol at my feet and nip at my toes, and despite myself I quite like them.

But my mind is split in two. One part thinks, “Fuck, man, just get the hell out of my sight, stop bugging me, and let me eat in peace. I don’t care if you’re hungry. Your tough luck that you were born abysmally poor! The grass is always greener, anyway– do I go and beg at Vijay Mallya’s yacht, wishing that I was born super-rich?”

100% truth in that sentence: I do feel that way.

But, you know, I also feel bad for the lowlifes sometimes.

Just not enough to ever give them anything. (I give the dogs some food when there are no kids around.)

So, back to my little theory– when fully developed, I should be able to apply it to a situation such as this, and decide once and for all whether I’m going to be compassionate to the poor, or supremely aloof.

(No, I don’t want there to be a middle ground. That’s not the point of the theory.)

…

This theory, being as it is a creation of my super-intellectual brain, is composed largely of platitudes flicked from books and cinematographic films. (Movies.) 

It’s basic tenet, the most fundamental axiom it has, is Gandalf’s words to Frodo at the start of  The Fellowship of The Ring, which I seem to remember writing in a post similar to this a few weeks ago, so I’ll skip them now. 

Then there are some from the Harry Potter series.

Recently, I’ve added Han’s line from The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift (what unbelievable driving!1!):  That’s life– you make choices and you don’t look back.

…

Anyway, this post isn’t going anywhere fast, and I have to get to the thekas before they close. (No-drinking vow was broken the very next day.) So basically– whatever choice I make, someone other than me turns out to be unhappy. I now need to add something to the theory that explains, or accounts for, or provides a Razor to choose, such choices. Or something that allows me to make choices regardless of other peoples’ happiness. That would be ideal. However, that’s usually viewed as cruelty, and accusations of the same (to varying degrees) do affect my happiness. My current theoretical tool for this situation, Voldemort / Darth Vader’s assertion that: “There is no good or evil; there is only power, and those too afraid to use it,” isn’t proving up to the task. Evidently I’m not the most evil magician who ever lived, nor a highly powerful Sith lord.

Any suggestions on what to watch/read?

Like Earthworms

Some poor fellow in a small car ran over a family sleeping on a road in the middle of the night, a couple of nights ago. (Story.)

Relatives of the deceased have unilaterally decided that the driver was drunk, and that his car windows were illegally tinted.

The thullas, being brainless motherfuckers, have slapped a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (better known in US culture as ‘manslaughter’) on the driver of the car, a 32-year-old finance executive who was returning home after meeting a client. The police spokesperson informed the media, in all earnestness, that they were investigating why the accused had a bag of potato chips in his car.

(I know! Perhaps he liked to tear a hole in it and then grind his hips into it, American Pie – style. Morons.)

It’s not the first time something like this has happened, not by far: every couple of weeks there’s a new news story about how some “pavement-dwellers” were run over by a lorry. Every so often they get run over by a BMW instead, and then the press, being almost as brainless as the cops, goes gaga with media trials and accusations that rich people are de facto drunk and negligent while driving their 60-lakh cars.

Here’s an idea, poor people:

Why don’t you NOT sleep on unlit pavements/roads, and then not get run over? Makes sense, huh? You don’t go sleep next to a train track and then make a fuss when an engine runs you over, do you?

Stoopid fucking ignorant lower-class assholes.

Sarthak Hit 95 FM*

Make my day, Sarthak.

Play more Queen just as I turn on the radio in the morning. Play more Queen, generally.

 

And, while I’m commanding, more songs from your Vault (viz. songs that the average Delhi moron ought to, but hasn’t, heard), and please get your station to learn how to play more than the same bloody Top 12 songs again and again. It’s called Top 40 for a reason– a 40-song rota gives enough space for song rotation without getting user fatigue.

 

_________________________

* Shameless attempt at drawing attention of station staff whose job it is to scour for public opinion. I’m too lazy to simply message them on 9871-95-95-95 and tell them what I think.

I also refrain from messaging simply because they’re always exhorting me to. I like being perverse without reason.

Ballooning Once More

Why am I

so

Hungry

all

the time?

Good Thing He’s Not A Racehorse

Temp is quite the handy way to store (duh) temporary (duh) numbers on your cellphone.

If you simply save a new number without adding any contact details, it’ll only take a few hours before you’re looking at it and scratching your head, we all know that.

The ‘Temp’ prefix helps in two ways–

a) You instantly know where that number you recently saved is located (under ‘T’ in the phone book), even if you don’t remember the person’s name; and

b) When idly browsing through your contact list one day, yes, don’t tell me you don’t do that, you’ll come across the list of Temp contacts and have the pleasure of deleting things (junior cousin of the pleasure of blowing up things) from your phone book without losing any information that you will, if you delete a non-Temp number, need the very next day, guaranteed.

Fuck, can anyone read, and understand, one of my (always grammatically perfect) sentences, with the ten, thousand com, mas (and parantheses)?

The latest addition to my Temp list is one of those guys. You know, the guy who was your junior in College, but you never learnt his name because, relatively speaking, you were ten times as cool as him?

We have regular conversations about nothing at all (and not in the way that you can whisper sweet nothings to a woman) for minutes on end; he calls me by my Christian name, which is absolutely stunning for someone who knows me through undergrad college (as opposed to law school), (too many are the times collegemates have asked me: “You mean ‘Perakath’ isn’t your first name?”), and I fucking don’t know his name and don’t even want to find out.

‘Temp Lame CLC Guy’, goes his moniker on my phone, drawing heavily from the lingo of my Bombay friends, who now punctuate every sentence with either ‘lame’, ‘raging’, or ‘legenDARY’.

It pricks me slightly that he actually is lame, in one leg. 

 

_______________________

PS Londonwallah, if you’re reading, you know this guy, or he knows you. He asked me for your Lundon number, and I gave it to him also. What’s his name?

Fuck, Geek

I’m SO pissed with myself for having drunk tonight.

Those few hours I skipped tonight could turn out to be crucial on Thursday.

“What are you going to do about it?” asked the Spaniard, two posts down.

New vow– no alcohol until June 18.

…

No cigarettes, no alcohol, and actually writing exams… what the hell has happened to me?

We Are Men

They’ve beefed up security in the La Fakelty library after an untoward incident yesterday. I’m not sure exactly what happened, because I can’t understand Hindi that comes out at the pace it does when native speakers are fighting. But I did see a quartet of people move, like a phalanx of Asterix Romans, all the way from the toilets (right at the back), to and out of the entrance of the library. Leading was a very silent girl, holding a guy by the scruff of his neck and pushing him before her like an engine at the rear of a train.

(How do they do that, incidentally? When a train has a push-me-pull-you engine system, don’t they have to synchronise their speed somehow? What if one pulls faster than the other pushes?)

The third fellow was yelling at and hitting the guy being pushed out. And the fourth member  of our little barber shop was another girl, trailing some distance behind, and looking, oddly, gleeful about the whole thing.

Of course all you need to gather a crowd in this country is the slightest hint of an altercation, so as all this was happening the entire studying populace of the library rose and glided as one towards the dispute. Save me, of course, I’m too cool to be bothered by such things, and anyway I’d just that minute sat down to study.

It’s easy enough to figure out what happened. The fellow must have been unable to resist the impulse to grab her boobs as she walked by. (The impulse strikes men of all ages and social classes, let me tell you. It’s just a question of degree and self-control.)

Or perhaps he followed the example of the fellow who did it to a domestic airhostess mid-flight a few days ago, and unzipped and began jacking off in front of her. (I used to disbelieve this when friends told me of it happening to them, often on public roads. I have more than a lot of experience with the procedure in question, and I’ve never felt so desperate as to do anything close to that. But all those reports can’t be wrong, huh? Presumably they don’t whack off as I’m passing by. It must be my uber-maleness deterring them. I am Spartan, after all.)

This woman was in my class this year, and I must say I didn’t think she’d be the type to stand up to such an attack. Very laudable, scrunching that guy’s shirt and getting a more decent guy to thrash him a bit.

So basically– coarseness, violence against women, and extralegal mob retribution in the name of justice. Life as usual in India in the 21st century.

Plan For Today

Simple: don’t drink.

I’m no longer worried about alcoholism, but regular consumption levels have hit record highs. My accounts sheet tells me that spending on whisky for drinking at home has increased from a half-bottle (375 ml) once a week to a half-bottle every two days. As an economist might say, a 300% increase. It helps me get through daily 9-hour slogs in the library, knowing that I can come home and be high in 30 minutes.

Subjective “That’s not much / I drink more than that” feelings apart, alcoholic liver disease is something my parents have seriously warned me against, and given that they’re both doctors, I think the warning should be taken seriously. “It won’t happen to me” is probably the stupidest thing anyone can think. Our maid’s son-in-law, a professional kabaddi player who used to beat his wife and spend all her earnings on booze, had mild cirrhosis, and then one day he got a form of hepatitis. “If that happens,” said my mom, “boom, you’re dead, and that’s it.”

Here We Go, Here We Go

The second leg of my exams begins this morning, with a paper called Civil Procedure. Relatively simple, with no complex questions of law, but far and away the most vast syllabus in all of my law school subjects. Which makes remembering things to womit* in the exam hall that much harder.

It’s going to be really tight for me for the next three weeks.

But after that, as I mailed my folks:

I’ve abandoned my West Coast drive plan with the early arrival of the SW monsoon. Not going to take the chance of floods in Bombay and slippery roads in Goa. My plan is now Delhi-Allahabad-Nagpur-Hyderabad-Chennai-Vellore. A bit meandering, but with reason: except for Nagpur, I have friends in each city to stay with. One-day drives between each city; between 600 – 800 km each. What do you think? Don’t want to do longer than 10 hours in a day when driving alone. Might have company for Del-ALD leg; rest will be solo though. What fun! I can’t wait.

Will get the car checked before leaving and buy various things to take: replace missing mudflap, replace wiper blades if not too expensive, tow rope, a/c converter so I can charge my laptop and phone from the cigarette lighter (do you guys want one of these too? About 350 bucks, I think), pressure gauge, spare tyre tubes, spare fan belt, and iron rod for security. I can do your GPS when I’m getting all that done next month.

Oh, I’m going to have the time of my life. Well over 2500 kilometres of driving across India. I’m hardly the biggest fan of India and its culture and its fucking rural villager population (kill them all!), but I love to drive, so this is a bit of a dream come true for me. I do wish I had a bigger car, with a diesel engine (would cut fuel costs by almost half), but I can do that when I’m older.

And in terms of tangible benefits to you: the focus on Saale B will shift from supercilious women issues and whiny-the-moo student life to a photographic travelogue across states and cities many of you may never have been to.

But first, this @@$#^ CPC, 1908.

 

____________________________

* Aye, he’s womiting, sorr, womiting real bad. Identify that and you get a prize.

Sent Messages

I know this isn’t at all fair to the woman in question, and perhaps any prior women reading, but I’m a choot that way.

Unedited sms-ese. I punctuate my texts.

Her:
I like you a lot:-) and Im saying it because I’m little tipsy.:-) I really really like you. You know its not just physical. You know that right? I like you for whatever you are.

I think:
‘Whatever’ I am?!?  And you should be able to say it when you’re not tipsy, or it’s not worth it.

I say:
To be honest I think you’re only infatuated with me, because you really don’t know or understand me well. But thanks anyway! :)

(I use smileys inter alia as a way to lessen the impact of something I’m saying.)

…

Her:
Well ok. Im infatuated!! But thats what you’re looking for anyway. You’re ONLY physically  attracted to me. So you should be happy then.

Me:
My psyche is a little more complex than that. Let’s not get into it now.

What goes unsaid:
… And the fact that you can’t discern the subtleties that I speak of is a major reason why I’m just not that into you, dearie.

…

Her:
And Im sure if we sleep together, i’l start feeling for you even more. That’s how it works for me! I dont know about other women. And Im sure you wouldnt want me to start feeling strongly for you. I wanna hold you close …kiss you… I want you to make love to me… But that’s not going to be making love! Honestly I’v never slept with a man I’v never loved. And I know if we do it, Im sure to start feeling for you… I know I’l start loving you. You’re a real nice chap. I dont wana fuck up ur life. I know men just want sex! Why am I saying all this?

I think:
Oh, bloody hell. 

I say:
Men don’t always “just want sex”! If that’s all I wanted, I would’ve slept with you long ago, once I knew it was possible. I believe there can be great tenderness in sex without some misguided notions of ‘love’. But you’re right, I wouldn’t want to lead you on.

I then say:
And really, it’s your life that’s in danger of becoming fucked up, not mine. I’ve been through much worse than this.

And I’m thinking:
(a) Really, you obviously have no idea of the things I’ve done. (b) You’re the one with the boyfriend in Singapore, after all! The poor fellow. He even came down to India for your brother’s wedding last month, and this is how you repay him?

…

I don’t know what you, reader, are making of all this. But this is me trying to do what I perceive to be the right thing. I’m always the guy in this situation. There’s always some other guy in the picture. When people ask me, “Have you ever cheated on anyone?”, I say want to say: “No, but I’m the guy people cheat on with.”

Yeah, I suppose it’s better than being the guy who gets no sex at all. I do get a new woman every few months. And like I said above, with some women in my life there’s been wonderful tenderness and affection and feelings coming very close to love (which is, after all, only a word, and beyond that only a bunch of biochemical reactions in your brain). I’m very glad to have met such people.

But I do get tired of knowing from experience that whatever my involvement with a girl may be, it won’t last more than two months at the most. I get tired of knowing that there’s some other guy who I’m temporarily prevailing over, or who is temporarily out of the picture, but who will eventually prise me out and have the last laugh (and fuck).

And most of all, I wonder if this is all that life has in store for me. Is the God Mainframe thinking: “Okay, you can have the most sex (or rather, sex with the most women) of all your close friends while you’re young– go ahead. But that’s it– they will get the benefits of commitment and marriage and love (which may be, after all, only a word, and beyond that only a bunch of biochemical reactions in your brain– but it’s what we live for), while you, PeraFeraFema*, are doomed to one day being a 30-year-old bachelor with a slight paunch, a fat ass, a bald pate the size of Jupiter’s Red Spot, and parents who are beginning to openly wonder why you can’t find a girlfriend, and are you gay?”

 

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* Nerdy nickname devised by law school “buddies”. FERA = The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973, a draconian socialist legislation much abhorred by India’s elite. Repealed and replaced by FEMA = The Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. Pera[kath], Fera, Fema.