It is generally believed that bloggers either have no jobs or that they have overpaid jobs which demand nothing more of their time than the cursory emailing. The belief is not misplaced.

Look at me. What do I do each day at work? Nothing really. It isn't even that my job pays me a lot of money. It is just that I have figured out the essence of the truth - the work put in should be directly commensurate with the remuneration. So I choose to make my own time at my workplace and post in these hallowed corridors.

Truth be told, this post has not been interesting thus far. And there are indications that it is not going to get any better. You might even be tempted to click on the close button in your browser's tab bar or close the browser window if you choose to live in the dark ages of tabless browsing. But that would leave you feeling hopelessly small and insignificant. It would make you into one of those people who don't have it in them to go through a lousy blog post.

That is swell, by the way, if you are me. I have always prided myself on my innate ability to shirk work of any kind, to simply give up when the mountain is too tall or the river is too deep, the latter being of special importance since I take to the water like a fish takes to air. Human beings were never meant to swim. We built ships to help us do that. Why do some of us still continue with the redundant activity and even win gold medals in the process? Of course, they do get busted for marijuana which tells us that these dope heads are as sane as amateur 'aviators' with strap-on wings.

Today not being All Fools' Day, I was almost tempted to make a non-existent post. For some reason it appears that technology does not allow us to create something that does not exist. Well, if only that applied to all the rhetoric around us. It should at least apply to the blog summary page of this site that lists post-less blogs in the 'Latest Posts' column. Apparently technology is not consistent everywhere, which is a reflection of the times we live in. Only women who do not like 'predictability' in their men can appreciate this. However, the same women would not appreciate inconsistency in the choice of their man's lovers.

Current Music: The Eagles - Tequila Sunrise
I don't know who said this, perhaps Marylyn Monroe in one of her movies, but it was said well - The best things in life are free. By implying that this was said well I am in no way agreeing with the statement. However, I am not above appreciating the beauty of the construct.

At this point, I should like to point out that if you are not a language aficionado then try as hard as you may you are not going to understand the above paragraph, the same way you are not going to grasp the subtle difference between the appreciation of language and the appreciation of grammar even though the two are not mutually exclusive. You might as well give up on the rest of this post and click on any of the other mundane articles on the internet. If you are not good enough to read my posts then I am not bad enough to write for your level of comprehension.

The nail being driven on the head, now seems like a good time to dwell on the finer nuances of the statement in question. Since I am not into dwelling on stuff that has not emanated from me I am contradicting myself here. Self-contradiction is one step beyond self-actualisation. Only those who truly do not bother with social conventions can rise above the banality of being conformists. As I say, "Anyone can swim with the stream. Only salmon swim upstream. They die. But they die having sex. Isn't that the way to go?"

Apparently, two wheeler riders have taken to my saying in the letter and not in the spirit. Overtaking from the passenger side has become a fashion of sorts. If they believe that those driving a car have a clear view of who is overtaking them from the wrong side then they should also believe that in case of a collision the car driver will die while they will escape scratch-free. In my not so humble opinion (opinions rarely are ever humble), all two wheelers should be taken off the road. That would not only free up 70% of the road space but also bring chaos theory to its death. On the plus side, two wheeler riders have great potential to be the solutions to the population problem.

Morbidity aside (I can't believe I am saying that), my one month holiday is nearly over. This is most certainly a boo hoo moment. Then again, my blog always has been gloomy.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Ghajini - That song in which Aamir Khan looks gay...

It had been quite a while since I last made a train journey. I love trains. What puts me off, though, are the people who take them. They have no sense of hygiene-induced righteousness, even when travelling in air-conditioned coaches. And to someone like me who prefers to dispose off the pair of socks he wears on a train to reusing them after having them washed, this lack of civil virtue in his fellow beings is as painful as a piece of skin hanging from the roof of his mouth.

The journeys are something else. Enough has been written and said about the romance of train rides. It is all useless for no one who has never been on a train will ever appreciate it. Those who have been on a train have no desire to read someone else’s account of it. Hence this post is not about a train journey. It would not have been about a train journey even if no one else had ever written about it for although my posts have been exercises in pointlessness, they have never been an exercise in futility.

The first leg of the journey culminated in Kolkata. I do not know why people crib so much about the city, unless the Kolkata I went to is different from the Kolkata they visit. To set the record straight, I went to the capital of West Bengal, a city that has been a communist stronghold for a good thirty years. The city is gorgeous. Only a horse’s arse would not fall in love with it. It is a city that has not given up its tradition or culture in the name of development.

It was Patna next, the only city that could bear the burden of my birth. De-training at Patna at 2:15 in the morning in winter is not a pleasant experience. Finding out that the foot over bridges have ramps (in addition to stairs) that enable you to make use of the wheels in your luggage definitely is. Only Biharis can fully appreciate the needlessness of more work than necessary for one’s emotional and physical well-being. That this appreciation stems from a Bihari’s desire to shun work of any kind is purely incidental.

I did not expect anything of Lucknow. I got more than I could bargain for. The Lucknow CM was pasted all over the city. If it were in her power, she could outlaw billboards that do not feature her. Strike that. She has the power to do this, and this post might just give her that idea. Other than that, the city is just what it has always been – stuck in a time warp of its own making.

Shahjahanpur is a small town along the Lucknow-Delhi highway. My mother hails from it. Were it not for the joys of air-conditioning in cars, I would never have undertaken that road journey. It is not the heat that gets to me on Uttar Pradesh highways. It is the dust, dust so fine that it could be used to lubricate engines. They probably lubricate their tractors this way anyway.

The fact of the matter is India has not changed. We might rant and rave about the economy (at least we could rant and rave about the economy), we might sing paens of its liberalisation policies, we might even espouse the qualities of a PM who managed to keep his heart surgery less high-profile than SRK’s shoulder operation though I am not sure that is a good thing. But the fact remains. India lives on.



Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Laakhon Taare...
More often than is generally considered sane, I saunter to the depths of the archives of this blog to read posts that are absolute gems (pre circa 2006). I am compelled to do it because of this inherent need to read material worthy of being read. That I do not find such stuff outside the confines of this blog probably means that I can write better than most people can read.

This is not one of those posts bashing bloggers everywhere, though I believe blogging has fallen so deep into an abyss of its own making that a further fall would actually translate into a rise. Bon Jovi once wrote in one of their songs, "I am so far away, each step that I take's on my way home..." A bunch of guys who possibly never ventured anywhere near a house of learning could understand that for such a thing to be possible the earth will have to be round. The song went on to become a huge hit, even among students of those schools in the US that do not teach the earth is round. Only tells us that sometimes it is more than welcome if students doze off during their classes as long as they are allowed to attend concerts.

I write this post with a roll of tissue literally attached to my nasal passageway, courtesy a very nasty cold brewing in my innards. Although no one really cares to know, I should like to state that leaving the nasal canal free of absorbents is causing unchecked localised precipitation of nasal mucus. This is indeed worrying. Partly because I am sharing highly personal information on the web. Mostly because the mucus is almost as clear as water.

Since I have already sung paeans of the wonders of nasal mucus, I shall desist from walking down this road. You know, the sheer number of roads that I have refused to walk down is simply bizarre. You could even say that the sum total of the distance I have refused to walk down is more than the average distance between the earth and the moon, which raises a very pertinent question. Why did the Apollo astronauts go to the moon? Wouldn't not walking down certain roads have been a better option? Cheaper, definitely.

PS: It is good to be back!

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Guns N (Fucking) Roses - Civil War
Most of us born in the 80s tend to have grandeurs of eloquence. We believe the rest of humanity is a lump of turd, that it is somehow beneath us to even have some attributes in common with them. It is always us vs. them. Heaven forbid if we should ever share a taste in music or clothes. That would be sacrilege. As Motley Crue once famously put it, "The biggest career gaffe that we could ever make was getting caught having a glass of milk." Perhaps they did not put it quite this articulately with all the booze and drugs getting in the way of their coherence but you get the drift.

The 80s was all about excess. Rock n Roll excess, Metal excess, and even bad hair excess. For all that us 80s progenies make a fuss over, the one thing we completely disown is the decade's sense of style. We lean more towards 90s grunge styling. It is a reflection of the times that we live in - contradictions are everywhere.

The latter half of the 20th Century can be described musically. Elvis Presley ruled the 50s. It was all about The Beatles in the 60s. Def Leppard rocked the 70s. Michael Jackson was the king of the 80s. That MJ managed to carve out a throne for himself atop the metal mania is a feat in itself. Of course, for us 80s borns MJ's music is beneath us. Hypocrisy? No. That is what our trait is. As I often keep saying, you do not begrudge a Scorpion for its sting.

As the 80s gave way to the 90s and then to the 00s, 80s borns entered their teens and their adulthood. Ironic isn't it that not a single artist / band stands out in the last two decades? Oh there has been an explosion of 'artists'. Either none has been good enough to rule the roost or we are a screwed up generation that does not know what it wants.

Of course, if you ask most of us metal heads we will tell you that music died with Kurt Cobain's suicide. The bands we listen to even today belong to 80s and before - Quiet Riot, Metallica, Megadeth, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, to name a few. We wear our taste in music almost as proudly as a mother displays her child's trophies on the mantle piece. Unlike a mother though, looking down on someone who listens to a Britney or a Mariah is a given. Today's pop culture makes us cringe.

Being as I am, a result of the 80s, I believe we had our Concorde moment in music in the 80s. For the uninitiated, a Concorde moment is one where mankind reaches the pinnacle of its achievement - ever since the Concorde no passenger aircraft has been built that can fly supersonic, and perhaps none ever will be. It is all downhill from there.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Posion - Every Rose has its Thorn
There are two important things in life. I can't quite recall what they are but they most certainly are two in number. But that is besides the point. There is no point. I never indulge in the frivolous exercise of making points. What's the point in that? Even this God person created the universe pretty pointlessly. Some of us believe in God. Some of us don't. To each their own. I believe there is a God. I just don't believe in Her (yes, God is a woman).

As I sit somewhere along the equator where summer and winter have as much meaning as lilac and violet have for a heterosexual male, I ponder over the miracle of life, the futility of death, and the sheer ecstasy of adultery. 'Adultery' is not the same as 'adulteration' the same way 'women's suffrage' is not the same as 'women's suffering'. It is funny (and excruciatingly annoying at the same time) how many people get words all mixed up. This is probably why capital punishment is still a reality. Bad vocabulary is reason enough to be executed. That, and making a personal diary out of a blog.

My disregard for those whose blogs are nothing better than a journal is public knowledge. I am not interested in some woman's sordid love life, choice of dildo, or leather fetishes when in all probability it is a man masking behind the anonymous wall of the internet making those entries. Don't ask me how I know this. I just do. You would feel the same way about divulging your sources of information if you had been there on that dark and stormy night. And since I am not a dog named Snoopy, my dark and stormy night stories don't necessarily have happy endings.

Time for some reflection. At least as much reflection as this space can possibly permit. The previous year has been a weird one. I got married. The frequency of my blog posts went up. And Aran refused to guest edit Cosmopolitan. Well, she would have refused had she been offered but you get the point without my ever having to make it. Does it mean that the best points are the ones that are never made? Perhaps...

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: David Bowie - The Man who Sold the World
Much has not been made of my ability to survive cranial atrophy for long periods of time. As a tribute to the human race's ineptitude in making anything of anyone other than themselves, this blog post shall be completely devoid of a particular word. There in, as the Bard would say, lies the rub. How could someone not use a word yet convey that such a disuse was intentional and in no way reflective of their vocabulary or lack of it?

Perhaps we will never know, the same way we know that all it takes to get anything (but money) out of me is a woman batting her eyelashes. A few women went even further which probably means that women are not attentive, whatever they accuse us men of notwithstanding. That said, this is a good time to have a contest. The first person to guess the missing word in this post gets to be the first person to guess the missing word in this post. Voila!

Fantasy has been morphing into reality. That is the single greatest truth of the modern era. This basically (and acidically too (ha ha, the engineer's humour strikes!)) implies our dream pool is shrinking. Not the 'in tropical paradise surrounded by gorgeous women' dreams but the 'landing on the moon' dreams. Frankly, I believe those kids who dreamt of becoming astronauts were retarded. But that does not mean I am happier than Queen Latifa's arse as we rob our future generations of their dreams by realising them.

This paragraph can be safely skipped. 'There have always been dreamers. People who see not what is but what can be. There have always been doers. People who make what can be what is. This is how things become possible. This is how the quality of our lives improves. Because we dream. Because we do.' Yes, that is from an old commercial of an automobile company that went bust. I don't know what is more frightening - my remembering such useless things or the fact that we may not be able to dream anymore because there will be nothing left to dream about.

There will be nothing to make us look forward to a new day. Cynics would point out that this has infact been true for a good few hundred years. But who gives a pig's armpit about what cynics say? They speak so much truth so matter of factly that we invariably go into self-preservational denial. No one wants to be told they have an utterly insignificant existence for on a long enough timeline the significance of any being or event approaches zero.

That's that.

Current Music: Limp Bizkit - Now I know
There are some things beyond human understanding. Terrorism is not one of them. Anyone who claims to walk on two legs and breathe oxygen should be able to get the hang of it. Yes this includes the allied forces fighting the 'war on terror', strange though it may appear. Even for a fleeting moment I don't buy the allied bluff. I don't think anyone else does. Fighting for the free world, they say. Go figure.

George Bernard Shaw, or someone like him, once said something to the effect that patriotism is the blind faith that one's own country is right simply because one happens to be born in it. Entire wars have been fought upon this flimsy premise. Although this post is not about the futility of war, I should definitely like to mention that in the history of the human race only two wars have ever been justified - the great war of the Mahabharata, and the 1971 Bangladesh war. Every other war has been the result of man's greed for more.

I digress. The thing is events around me hardly ever shake me up. I am one of those cynics or realists or idealists or whatever other labels you can choose to come up with who believes that the world has always been the same. Almost two millennia ago there were the crusades. Today you have jihad. When colonialism became politically incorrect, it was merely replaced with words like globalisation or intellectual property rights - anything that ensured the wealthy remain that way by sucking dry the old colonial world. Remarkable that Nehru had made this prophecy during a NAM convention, eons before these terms became fashionable.

In my 9 years of adulthood, I have never voted. Not once. Yes, I have never let up on an opportunity to complain about the system but when it came my turn to do something about changing it I remained inactive. I assumed I was insignificant. Forgotten I had that it was that one nail that undid the horseshoe that resulted in a battle being lost.

This time something inside me stirred. It did not stir before. Not when the WTC came down. Not when the Parliament was bombed. Not when Akshardham was attacked. Not when the Mumbai train bombings happened. Not even when tragedy struck closer home in Hyderabad. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Had I been completely desensitised? I don't think so. People not using a condom during sex completely riled me. Then why this apathy towards terrorism?

It was possibly because I realised that the brilliance of democracy is that a country gets the governance it deserves. I realised that with someone who has never once won a Lok Sabha election heading the government, things could not possibly be any better than they are. I realised that all this mindlessness was our own doing. We never tried to change things. All we did is scream off the rooftops.

But what was different this time around? I guess being away from India gives you a very cushy perspective. No, I am not in what is considered to be a developed nation. I am in Nigeria, a country known more for its disorder. Yet, I feel safer here than I did back home. But that is not it. It is a little hard to explain. Let me give it my best shot.

I caught most of the Mumbai news stories on CNN / BBC. I was very touched by the empathetic manner in which they handled this story. They gave the tragedy the dignity it deserved. Indian news channels, on the other hand, turned it into a TRP gimmick. It was appalling. It was even more appalling that reporting news in such a barbaric manner increases TRP. This is a reflection of the kind of people we have become. Deep down, we revel in others' tragedy. And this is saddening. What stirred inside me was a sense of loss. We have possibly lost India to our inner demons. That gives me the goose flesh.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: None
Over the past week or so I have come to the damning conclusion that there is little separating me from the make-your-living-out-of-sensationalising-news channels. Not that it is going to have any impact on the content on this blog but it is good to realise the obvious every now and then as long as we don't make a habit of doing it often enough to take the sheen off living completely. Denial gives us something that nothing else can - a garb of pretence that considerably lessens the lure of suicide.

Living is perhaps the hardest thing to keep on doing. We all have our own methods to push ourselves for that one additional sun rise. For some, it is that business deal to close. For others, it could be that holiday in the Alps. For the more evolved among us, it is that hope of a threesome. What takes the biscuit, however, is that these goals are not an end in themselves. There is always another milestone looming over the horizon once this one is crossed.

Honestly, I am all for this human urge to push the boundaries of its fogged up existence. After all, if man had rested after inventing the wheel then we would not have those cool Swiss watches to show off to our friends. After the discovery of fire had man been satisfied with his primary objective of being able to see a woman's bottom in the dark, we would not have the joys of Tandoori chicken. Had Einstein been happy with, well, anything we would not have the lunacy of satellite television. That said, I do believe we should draw the line at this zest to 'save' the planet. It is communist. I am appalled the capitalist world has not cried foul over it.

First, let's get this straight. Anyone who has delusions of being able to save the planet belongs in the nut factory. We have done far too much damage to salvage anything. Why not make the best of whatever few years the Earth can support us for and then die partying the night away rather than worrying about which colour code to use for non-recyclable materials? Two, as I said, it stifles free market.

Anyone living in a big city knows that the best place for fresh air is your air-conditioned office. No one has yet thought of mandatory office breaks for rejuvenation in oxygenated cubicles. This would birth a whole new industry. As smog increases, sales of detergents would too. As water gets more polluted, sales of purifiers go through the roof. As people start falling sick, it is boom time for hospitals. Imagine the possibilities! And we choose to stifle industrial growth in already bleak times, all in the name of environment?

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Generator Jam
We like to make such a hullabaloo over doing good - following the path of rectitude, never hurting others, those sorts of things - even to the point of questioning etymological sensibilities of fellow beings. Going to bed each night with no guilt or remorse outweighs almost all, even if a part of that 'all' could be Heidi Klum. Truth be told, for the life of me I could never understand why anyone would pass up on Heidi Klum. But if that is what you truly believe in then all power to you, and not just those limited to gay rights.

Caustic though it sounds coming from me, there is inherent good in us all. And natural though it sounds coming from me, there is inherent bad in us all too. Yes, I might be biased under the weight of my prejudices but that does not mean I am wrong. It is very hard to believe that any human being (and I use the term 'human being' very loosely in that it is only indicative of the species homo sapiens) would not even for a fleeting moment wish for her wrong-doer to blow up in a car crash.

Again, it is important to note that the use of 'her' is simply a case of being gender neutral and is not suggestive of any personal references the same way 'May be what I believe is not affecting me is affecting me, or any other pseudo-psychological balderdash that could be suitably inserted in this space by self-professed psycho-analysts.' was not representative of any verbal exchange.

Finally, a day where Script Writer is issuing clarifications! And talking in the third person too. Not like he has his reputation to consider. If anything, his reputation was done no harm whatsoever by misinterpretations of his statements. But he has some morality left in him. He would rather have his succinctly worded racy statements cause upheaval. Not their adolescent misinterpretations.

It is indeed a mad world that we live in. Labelling the 'African-American' community 'black' is racist. Calling someone 'white' is merely representing heritage. The last thing we need is for people to make their own inferences of harmless statements, issued though they may be by those who normally make risqué statements. In all fairness, whenever they make such statements they at least make it very clear that these statements are suggestive.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Nelly Furtado - Maneater
Being all that I am, a culmination of most things extremely fulminating, I have been accused of many things. All of them derogatory, but deserved nonetheless. Not like I give a rat's ass to any of them. Err, why would I ever want to use 'rat' and 'ass' in the same sentence when I could have used instead 'Vida Guerra' and 'ass', and not just in the sentence mind you. May be what I believe is not affecting me is affecting me, or any other pseudo-psychological balderdash that could be suitably inserted in this space by self-professed psycho-analysts.

I am exceedingly (yes, not excessively - I mean this in a good way) opinionated. I believe there really is no point in having an opinion if you do not feel strongly about it. At the same time, that opinion has to stand the test of time which means super-human research / experience has to precede the formulation of the opinion. For instance, I abhor fence-sitters. You have to be either here or there. The middle path is always the road-divider - you never get anywhere perched on it. That does not mean you are not allowed to glance at / admire a red hot Ferrari going the opposite way as long as you are not whimsical enough to jump ship.

I do not believe 'right' or 'wrong' are universal truths for everyone. They are opinions or points of view. Also, I believe ends do not justify means in the same way that an urge to have sex does not justify rape. At this point, I would like to tread down a path very carefully.

We all have our set of morals and ethics that we live by. For Ms. A, for example, getting off a parking ticket by bribing the policeman is thoroughly acceptable while for Ms. B driving a further two kilometres to find the legal parking spot is absolutely essential. I am not judging either as long as they are consistent with their code of morals and ethics. What is good for Peter may kill Tom, after all. It is the hypocrisy I cannot take. Ms. A, to continue with the above example, may occasionally get away through a bribe. She will not complain until she comes across a police officer who hauls her up expecting a pay-off when she has done no wrong. Then she will go all holier-than-thou look-at-me-I-am-being-harassed-by-the-police.

Going back to the point I was making about ends not justifying means, I can never justify rape. Perhaps there are those out there who can, and if that is the code they choose to live by then I have no qualms over it. Just so long as they are not infuriated when their mother / daughter / sister / beloved falls victim to the crime. I can never justify cutting corners through bribery. Perhaps some out there can in which case they have no right to be incensed when a drunk driver runs over someone they care for, and then gets off through a bribe. The problem with the human race always has been to justify things the way they suit us.

The minute you start justifying to others the choices you make you start to realise they may not be the right ones for you. And the minute you feel the need to justify your love it ceases to hold all meaning it had for you.

PS: This post was inspired by Shakeela's comment on rock_26iin's blog.

Note to Shakeela: I never assume I am doing good. I believe there is a fine line between what is ethical and what is moral. Doing what I believe is morally right is more important to me than doing what is ethically right.
Note to rock_26iin: Trust me when I say that I have been there and done that. The opinions I express are not formed out of thin air.
Note to her: I think I have a fair idea about what must have transpired, and what it was that you kept rock_26iin in the dark about. Despite that, I believe you deserve better than rock_26iin to whom it appears it is more important to be proven right than it is to be with the one he has delusions of love for.
Note to self: Stop meddling in people's lives.

Current Music: The babe behind me blabbering on the phone
Ho Hum. Another orkut login, another friend request.

Disclaimer: I am not implying I am extremely 'popular' on orkut. I have one of the most common first names in India, possibly even the world, which sometimes gets people who are looking for the namesakes to contact me. We should change the phrase, "Every Tom, Dick and Harry" to "Every Tom, Dick, Harry and <my name>".

I believe no one outside the law profession has inserted a disclaimer in the middle of a piece, and that in bold letters. Not that I think very highly of it. No, not the inserting of disclaimers, even though that is an exercise in existential escapism - no one stands for what they believe in anymore. I was referring to the law practice - no offence meant to the fraternity that takes great pride in keeping rapists out of jails, more so since my wife belongs to the brotherhood.

Since I am a man, it is usually a great ego boost to have someone else make the first contact on personal /community sites. For some reason, women never do that. It is almost as if the female of the species (all the feminists out there please note that the word 'female' has not been used as a derogatory reference to the fairer sex) fears that a male appendage will suddenly sprout between her legs if she ever did that. But that is a subject matter for another day. Like that day will ever come!

The matter at hand is me. Or rather someone making first contact with me. That is not a deal big enough to warrant an entire blog post - perhaps a paragraph or two at the most. That the contactee in question called himself 'loveble_man_hyd' is horrifying to say the least. More so because the contact message said, "Did you like my friend?" Most of us with an IQ slightly greater than that of a piranha would know that when a man asks you about his friend without naming the friend then there is only one friend he is asking you about.

Make no mistake. I am not homophobic. Not by a long shot. Given an entirely different environment to grow up in, I could have swung both ways. But that is all water under the bridge. I have never been asked about a 'friend' before. Something tells me, this is not going to be the last of it.

Note: The opening line to this post is a tribute to all the Shakeela movie reviews on this site. They are sorely missed. Perhaps the site admin(s) could throw some light on this.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: The sound of thunder
Each moment of my life that I log on to the blogs summary page, I am usually greeted by the ubiquitous 'If you can read this post, it means that the registration process was successful and that you can start blogging...' blurb in the 'Latest Posts' section. The mere act of creating a blog seems to be enough to knock down the blood and sweat it takes to ham out a post.

Oh well. Those who have been putting up with my posts of late know that it does not take any effort at all to update a blog. Either that or the effort is so lame that the writing is unable to rise above it. I prefer to think it is the former. Whatever it may be, there is a minimum sense of reverence that every new post on a blog must evoke - at least in a web server - and by that minimum I am only drawing the line at automated or system generated blog posts ranking above those that require human intervention.

I realise I could have bypassed all this angst-venting on a public forum by writing directly to the administrators of this site. Where is the fun in that? Besides, when I come across something that I believe is enough material to make a post about I usually succumb to the lure. I am invertebrate like that - take the low road.

Much has been made of this low budget movie 'Hulla' making a mountain out of a molehill, in the sense that a two hour movie could be woven around the silly little premise of a watchman whistling. I do not know if the writer of that movie frequents this space because I seem to have quite mastered that art. There is one thing that I do know. More people are going to end up reading this blog than those who are ever going to watch that movie.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Shaggy - It wasn't me
I have no morals or ethics. At least none that can be spoken of. You may even say I am morally unethical or ethically immoral or any combination thereof. Dennis Franz, or may be someone else, in NYPD Blue once said, "There is a fine line between what is ethical and what is moral." Of course, most of us would only remember NYPD Blue as the show that introduced on-screen nudity and objectionable language to pre-watershed television.

Since I am a man, I am pro VSNL (to the uninitiated, that stands for Violence Sex Nudity Language and not Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited). And contrary to what people have begun to expect of me, this post is not about sex. I have come to realise over time that my posts on sex tend to get the least number of user comments, which is a sure-fire indicator of the degradation of the human race. Aren't we, by not appreciating in-your-face sex discourses, fighting against the very impulses that make us human? Therein lies the irony - are we human? I will not answer that question. Partly because I don't feel like it. Mostly because existentialism transcends insanity.

There is one aspect of note that I would want noted. Anyone notice that Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker's character in Sex and the City) is the only one who never takes her clothes off in the series? Why is that? As has always been my forte, I have a theory. Samantha (Kim Cattrall's character) is way more popular than Carrie. Parker knew that she could ever get more adulations than Cattrall. What does she do? She decides not to shed her clothes. So, sometime down the line, when all is done and dusted and people still remember Cattrall, Parker could always say, "Well, at least I did not have to parade around naked to get famous."

A very sad case of loser-psychology at play. Even sadder than the motto, "It does not matter whether you win or lose but how you play the game." I mean, who believes in that? The Indian Olympics contingent. Right. Ethiopians, training on the streets of Addis Ababa, win all the distance running events. Nigeria, training on the sands of Lagos beaches, gets the silver in Football. And all we do is crib over the popularity of cricket putting other sports on the backburner.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Madonna - American Life
The Fountainhead is the best book I have read in the last two years. It is also the only book I have read during the time. Although I do not subscribe to Ayn Rand's views in their entirety, I do believe she hit the nail on the head when she spoke of triviality being accorded a revered status, and that, in more ways than one, would hold for her book too.

That said, no one writes with the intent to impress. I am assuming, of course, that biographers and myspace members do not come under the umbrella of authors. Writing is the most selfish of all human indulgences - you do it simply because it makes you feel good. But when a piece of writing that can only be termed plain, and that in a zest of euphemistic zeal, pleases the creator enough to have it out there for the whole world to read then it does not augur well.

It, in fact, raises two pertinent questions.
1. Was the writer blinded enough by her sense of false vanity to not see how pedestrian her piece is?
2. Is the writer genuinely not good enough to come up with something better?

The latter can and should be glossed over. The former is unpardonable. It is even more unforgivable in the light that connoisseur-impersonators would read between those lines that do not even exist, thereby interpreting such writing to be a victory or a successful way of life. Successful way of life? That can only happen in the denial cocoon we all live in, which is not a bad thing. However, seeing things that do not subsist by itself calls for a visit to the shrink. Then he compounds it by his number seeking ways.

I don't believe I will ever get over this number seeking business, more so since I happen to be "male number seeker's" safety bet. It is degrading to be thought of as a second, which is alright. But how would he ever digest that he even lost his safety?

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Door Gagan Ki Chaaon Mein - Aa Chal Ke Tujhe
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