Don't Waste Your Time Reveling in this Self Indulgent Post

There seems to be some kind of contagious tag epidemic going on in the blogs I visit and mathematical probability has caught up with me after all. Dreamy has sneezed this tag into my lungs and the only path to recuperation is to pass it onto lesser suspecting bloggers. More on that later.

Life Ten years ago

The world had still not started preparing itself for the terror of Y2K and I was steaming in to terrorize batsmen, who weren't allowed to hit too hard so as not to hurt the fielders awaiting their turn to bat, right before class. The carefree air of not bothering about sweat before the first period even as classmates had started dating (this used to mean something else when you were in class 8 in the last century by the way) one another is what I look back most fondly at. Oh, and I remember feeling this novel emptiness as I heard about that nice Lady's car crashing in a Parisian tunnel and her subsequent death. C'est la mort, I guess.

Life Five years ago

Running through the deserted wet streets of the campus and attracting weird looks from the few chapta PhD students on a cold Saturday morning amongst delirious cries from fellow demented souls, waving the tricolor, after Sehwag and Tendlya had uppercut Akhtar and co. out of the World Cup. And then a week later, depression and the morning after nap in the underground gymnasium cum lounge of a friend's dorm after Dada's minions had let the butterflies win.

Life tomorrow

As Morgan Freeman said in The Shawshank Redemption, same shit different day, but it is Friday. So, SSDD with a movie thrown in.

Five locations I would love to run away to

Words like 'run' are blasphemous to me and the laziness in me revolts with alarming activity, but if I could be airlifted from my Lazyboy, I would want to end up in

1. Kashmir
2. Amsterdam (not for the tulips or windmills)
3. Those lost mountains Che goes to in The Motorcycle Diaries
4. That place in Africa where Nick Cage breaks down all his guns in The Lord of War
5. NYC
   

Five bad habits I have

It's going to be hard to choose just five. The others might feel bad, but ...

1. Very rigid in my likes and dislikes when it comes to people. If I don't like you, it's gonna stay that way even if you save the world and if I like you, it'll be that way even if you rape and pilferage the whole of El Dorado.
2. Too transparent.
3. I like challenges when I am taking someone's case. If they don't like it, I find myself getting villainy and stepping it up a notch.
   
4. Too laid back.
5. Wisecracks in movie theaters, especially during sessions of extreme hamming.
   

Five things I will never wear

1. VIP Frenchies
2. Suspenders
3. Kolapuri chappals (they look swell, but hurt the soles of my feet since childhood)
4. Collarless shirts
5. Shoes with strings
   

Five biggest joys at this moment

1. Dhoni and Ishant
2. My cousin who is fat and is called Joy by his Dad
3. Obama
4. Macbook Pro (just ordered one!)
5. Sunshine and the impending advent of summer
   

Something to achieve by next year

To break out of this cocoon - comforting, yet so stifling.

Something that impacted me last year

The weaning off her and the advent of regular blogging.

What will I miss about 2007

Tina and the original members of the Boise Wela Group.

Five things I want to do before I die

1. Give an Oscar acceptance speech for Best Foreign Film where I end up thanking no one.
   
2. Spend a week in bed like John and Yoko.
3. Teach myself to play my acoustic guitar.
   
4. Smoke a joint with Papa.
5. Hire someone to shave me regularly and drive me around.

Now to pass on the virus. Unfortunately, among the few bloggers who read this blog, two have already been tagged, one is on vacation and something tells me the others write about topics that are too serious to write a post like this. So, Puranjoy, not forcing you, but you are most welcome to jump in. Rohmen, please save my nose and accept this tag. SS, you bloomed into the blogosphere just the other day and so HAVE to comply to my bullying tag slapping.

Screening

As I pulled up to my usual parking space in the nondescript back alley of the building with unprecedented punctuality, I must say I found myself a little blue to find it conspicuously empty. I entered the building through the usual back door and walked up the endless gray steps one last time to embrace the cocktailed aroma of fresh baked cookies and Mexican diligence emanating from the little hole next to the studio that calls itself a bakery. The cinefan in me cannot help but gush about how the building is set up exactly like the one in which Somnath starts his business in Jana Aranya with its array of letter boxes signifying businesses ranging in a rich variety from Chinese clothing manufacturing businesses to Tekwondo lessons to our studio. Another similarity is the elevator, albeit minus the creaky, black oiled grills and its operator, seemingly a victim to the harshness time, both dripping with old world charm.

There was a nice little reception laid out - complete with wine and cheese - the diet of the aantels (pseudo-intellectuals) of this world that involves more chewing that eating and more sipping than drinking. I was still belching from my Mysore Masala Dosa of an hour or so ago and the near morbid thought of driving back in searing rain stood like a filter between my jittery nerves and the drink of the Gods (or is it the French?). And then they started pouring in with their unfamiliar faces and disruptive facial hair or handbags, brushing off drops of water from their waterproof jackets onto one another and rubbing their feet on the life expectancy of the huge fiber carpet, probably a product of the handicraft shop down on the second floor. I should have been happy to see all sixty or so of them, but suddenly the exuberant thudding of my heart drowned all ambient sound.

The familiar faces were far and fewer, shining like crazy diamonds, hugging me, pecking me, introducing me to names I wouldn't remember and making me shake alien hands, some firm, others not, but all of them rough to the touch. My actors had come too, discussing the Kuleshov Effect with each other and amongst their other brethren. A couple of aspiring actresses trying to flirt their way into the cast of the next film and hell, I could tell they were good at their job. I felt like that kid in school whose parents didn't come to the annual exhibitions.

Technical problems even though "we only use Macs here". I was third last in the schedule. Seems like they had bunched up all the black and white films together at the end. I would see my camera work sooner though, in that film about guns and shooting, whose name I can't remember completely. Kind avuncular introductory words. Darkness. Then they started rolling. One after the other. Some self-indulgently long, like this post, others choppy, some rip-roaringly funny and others just too beautiful for words, but all of them reeking of five weeks of passion and labor.

Audiences at film screenings tend to be polite. There was applause after every film, the only difference being in the duration of the response. The film about guns and shooting was shot differently. Hopefully, people would not term the hand held technique as utter amateurism. The ending was a shock, even to me, simply because of the sinisterly amazing editing. Applause, as always, but after three seconds of stunned silence. It was almost as if the director had jumped off his seat and slapped each and every one of us. An interval, very much in keeping with the short film theme, that lasted but a few seconds.

The moment was drawing near. Some Sci-Fi flicks whizzed by and over my head. And then, and then that all too familiar pitter patter of the rain against text I had read a million times by now it seemed. People were watching. I was watching them. A couple of 'What?!''s at the intro from behind me. The next scene and realization quietened them. What was I doing? Why was I watching the screen? I knew I would only be sniffing out faults like a constipated old bloodhound. Magnification has its demons. Then the music - sweeping everything away, but was it powerful enough? A couple of 'aww''s in female voices, not completely unexpected. Now the credits were rolling. As always applause. Female hands were petting my right leg and hugging the left part of my body. Sheepish smile in the darkness. As She said, "Thank you".

A couple of films (including my favorite film of the screening - a Black and White Spanish film, though a little too long maybe) later the lights were back on. More applause. All ten of us were standing up. I was nodding my head at different corners of the room and smiling my lopsided Steve Waugh grin, trying to look intelligent, while my palms were engaged in foreplay with one another - a Scorcese touch, I would tell myself on the drive back home. The eyes looked genuine, but hell, how should I know; most of them were actors.

More hugs. Some snaps. Some roses. Some brickbats after the demand of honest opinions, but thankfully there were more roses, or my instructors are really nice. I don't know, you decide.

PS: Compressing the digital HD format to a more manageable size for Youtube has ruined the resolution completely and this looks nothing like it does on the DVD :(

Vermilion

I am nervous as a schoolboy
Just before a significant test.
And I don't know why
A melancholic tune keeps nagging my head.
You hold me with your steady stare
And send me into fits of uncontrollable coughing
With copious passive smoke
From your guiltily lit yet necessary Marlboro Light
On a windy balcony with the backdrop of a hopeful, almost vermilion horizon.

Needless apologies follow
That only heighten the tension;
That take me back to furtive farewell hugs
In dirty San Francisco back alleys.
Suddenly you ask me my favorite color
Waking me from my reverie.
After unprecedented moments of thought
I realize it is the grayness of a cloudy sky
That touches me most.

I have made up my mind
To let the gray rain clouds shower today
After growling, contained thunder for so long.
Then you nonchalantly rest the back of your head against me
And tell me about your virtuous woman
And the sunset at your last holiday together
And how she adores bright vermilion
For the passion it brings into your lives
As we watch the sun set on my frozen gray lips.

2/18/2008

V for Vendetta

Its that time of the year again when all single people around the world use humor as a defense mechanism and appear uber-nonchalant licensed by their bachelorhood. So, let me tell you about the most eventful V-day I have ever had, next to going for a Desi Buffet with 15 other Indian males on February 14, 2004 of course. Oh, almost forgot. Ad Libber wants the single people who aren't depressed and binging on chocolate-strawberry ice cream and reality television at home - the ones that venture out, to wear black on the 14th in memory of Mr. Wodehouse. I shall comply since I can't tolerate reality television for more than four hours.

I was in first year of college. She was in the third year. As you all know, I am a super deep person and so, the detailed reasons for seeking an older woman at that point of time in my life are too complicated for even me to grasp completely, let alone the average reader of this blog. However, a simplistic Freudian explanation would be the surfacing of the Oedipus Complex as a result of being away from home for the first time in 18 years that made me reach for a more mature caress than the girls in my class could provide. Anyway, I had been seeking Her, staving off competition from men, some mustached, some not but all of them elder to me. One of my closest (read only) friends at the time was this super nerd, someone who actually made me look like an illiterate male model. Let's call him Sam. So, Sam found this e-card somewhere on the World Wide Web (or maybe his imaginary online girlfriend sent it to him). It was supposed to make women's hearts and knees go cookie doe since it had this obese little champ in pink diapers holding some sort of equally obese, bloody red obscene orb that looked like Hidimbi's heart with some sonnet that would have made Shakespeare blush. Incidentally, these have now evolved to become the display pictures of anti-feminists on Orkut. I thought it was decidedly Gothic, but apparently women couldn't seem to see beyond the pink diapers.

Not having the time to train the messenger pigeons, unlike Bhagyashree, I emailed it to Her, thus playing hard to get and not actually meeting up, unlike mustached and otherwise seniors. Then there was the waiting period, like a nervous expectant father when his wife goes into labor, or the more relatable scenario of waiting for your classmate to email you the individual project in the nerve-wracking few minutes before the submission deadline. Checking my email had become way more draining than checking my board exam results online just the previous year. My roommate was disbarred from using our land line to order a late night pizza, but much like in Antonioni's films, nothing happened.

Three days had passed. I was beginning to seriously consider gifting a razor to one of the girls in my class for her upper lip as a backup option when it arrived. Naked, unflinching, and composed in the harsh Plain Text format was Her email. It started off ominously - she said she absolutely ADORED the card. Damn, now I would have to buy Sam lunch, which was just Skittles and Coke really. Focus on the email, Clint (that's what my imaginary friend likes to call me sometimes, as in Eastwood). Experience had taught me to search for that dastardly conjunction in such mails - but. We are very impressed with your application BUT we have already filled our first year seats here at Berkley. Focus, focus! Wait what! You have got to be kiddin' me. Serves me right for listening to that technophile Sam. Incidentally, the email had been too big for our university mail server. So, the server had conveniently broken it down into 13, yes 13, attachments and sent it to Her, and then sent her the original mail anyway. Needless to say, She wasn't very happy with the spam. After than, I got student government orders to never email Her again, not even G rated Sardar jokes in plain text format.


I learned my lesson and stopped hanging out with Sam. The letter V, in my life, has now come to stand for Vendetta against all cherubic little humans holding anatomically misshaped organs. Also, I am very proud of the fact that since then, I have stopped using technology of any kind to show my love for the fairer sex and have thus gotten rejected only in person each year on February 14, sometimes even by different people on the same day.

A BIG Thanku ...

to everyone who voted for my poem Incoherence on poetry.com. They tell me it is a winner and enters the next level of judging, becoming eligible for the 2007 Annual Grand Prize that will be awarded in February.

Suspicion and Rebecca

The Stanford Theater played host to me twice this weekend as I found myself there watching Hitchcock's earlier 1940's films - Suspicion and Rebecca. It's a classical theater in every sense of the word. What differentiates it from the run of the mill AMC's and Regency theaters sprouting up in suburban America everyday is its plush maroon carpet and the concept of the Balcony section, something I miss after moving here. As the guests poured in, hobnobbing with each other in the excitement preceding the watching of a Hitch flick, a pianist entertained them on a three layered piano that looked like it had been stolen from the Adams' family home.

Both films starred the delectable Joan Fontaine, in not too different roles. In Suspicion, she played the suspicious wife of the super smooth Cary Grant, who as I would imagine was intended in the script, completely stole the show, with his ability to talk himself out of any situation. In terms of appearance, Grant could make George Clooney look like a rustic transvestite. What differentiates this film from Hitchcock's other movies, is the lack of the overbearing temptation of the director to scare his audience. Instead, the efforts seemed a lot more subtle here to me with the script playing out a lot of precarious scenes rather than the camera.

Joan Fontaine plays a simple girl in Rebecca who ends up becoming the second wife of a tycoon who can't seem to give up his love for his deceased first wife. I must confess I was hugely disappointed initially seeing Lawrence Olivier, or maybe Cary Grant was still dominating my imagination of a male hero. However, gradually, as the film progressed, and Olivier delivered line after line with utter nonchalance to effortlessly produce comedy, I realized why he was so sought after in his day. The film also showcases romance in indelible form. There are these sequences when the couple go on rides where nothing much is said, but the emotion comes through appropriately. In terms of the genre of horror, this film is lot more of an insider with a smart script, packed with twists and turns and spooky looking character actors.

What was common to both films, and possibly to all films of the era, was this almost unapologetic putting down of women. For instance, Fontaine's character might well have worn this sign around her neck in both films that said "Oh where are you my man? I can't live without you" whereas the men were shown to be these cool cats with smart lines. Also, there were no funky camera angles that has come to be associated with Hitchcock. Maybe, these were films made before he found and developed his style. He didn't make his trademark brief appearance in either film. I still think the guy is overrated and don't consider him a great filmmaker, but a smart one. Maybe that's because my admiration for neorealism and directors like Bergman, Antonioni and Ray and master-craftsmen like Kurosawa leave little space for directors of the horror genre and for the most part, the theatrical acting of their cast. However, that doesn't mean I wont watch Foreign Correspondent and Spellbound next week.

Hitch Fest

At the Stanford Theater for any Hitchcock fans or fans of classical cinema in the Bay Area. I am not a fan of Hitch, but I have decided to give the man another chance, especially with the big screen. Will try to catch Rebecca and Suspicion this weekend. Incidentally, I came to know of this through some spam snail mail. See, spam isn't always bad for you!

Allah ke Naam pe dede Baba...

FSM tera bhala karega. So, poetry.com wants to train amateur poets to be beggars. I guess beggars' income do rely on good meaningful poetry after all and since poets have no real financial future, all of it makes perfect sense. Anyway, the website is telling me that my poem 'Incoherence' has been chosen as a finalist (for history, please see previous post, especially the comments section) and that I should get extended family, in-laws, fellow commuters and neighborhood pets to vote for me here. Since, I am too unsocial to maintain relations with the above mentioned beings, I'm just relying on the readers of my blog. Please keep in mind that you ARE to use your entire emotional quotient while voting and impartial subjectivity has NO place in this process.

Thanku.

The Softer Side of Capitalism

Facebook had an advertisement for a poetry contest on poetry.com a few days back. I had submitted one poem, a few years old, before, to poetry.com, but not as an entry for any contest. So, I said to myself, "What the hell" and decided to give it a shot. The website rejected the first four or five choices from my collection on grounds of length, even after much formatting by removing empty lines in between paragraphs. Finally, seeing no way out and with my resolve to submit something getting stronger with each rejection, I fed the website 'Incoherence' - a title that somewhat salvages some random musings written for this short film, which it gobbled up. I didn't care if I won anymore (and certainly didn't expect to, with the shoddy quality of the submitted poetry) and was just over the moon to be even able to submit something.

I was a little surprised that the website didn't email me confirming the acceptance. Later, as I was rummaging through my Spam folder to make sure Gmail didn't label any of my acquaintances as a Spammer, which you may think is a symptom for some eccentric OC disorder, but let me justify by saying that this has happened in the past, and if I have learned anything from such episodes it is that history repeats itself when it comes to technology, looking at me, sandwiched between a message trying to sell me Viagra and Cialis for discounted prices and one from Shauntelle telling me that she was lonely, was the message from poetry.com. At the time, I didn't think much of Gmail's divisional practices and just brushed it aside as spamophobia.

As I was performing my regular spam filtering routine on Friday, I noticed another email from poetry.com with the subject starting with that favorite word of spammers around the world - 'Congratulations'. A little surprised, I opened the email to find that the poem has received
the Editor's Choice Award. I suddenly felt very kicked, at once forming a blog post in my head on how best to show off to my readers, and then I noticed that the email came with a 'prize' - The 2007 Editor's Choice Published Poet Ribbon Award Pin, Watch, and Medallion. My happiness intensified, I pinched myself a couple of times and continued with the rest of the beauty pageant winner routine. It hadn't even complete sunk in when I saw the number 119 somewhere in that sea of praise of an email. A closer look told me that poetry.com was so impressed with my poem that they were giving me the opportunity to own some jeweled watch whose maker had his hands cut off moments after creating this masterpiece, for a 'minimal fee of $119 only'. The email went on about how this watch, much like the holy ring in the LOTR movies (none of which I have watched BTW) alone could get me laid more often, which is apparently a challenge for even the luminaries of the poetic world. The icing on the cake was that the medallion and the pin were 'completely free' if I were to avail of this offer and the complete bling set was known to have alarming effects on hot women who acquired sensitivity and other similar such feelings when exposed to the glint of the bling set. Anyway, if you are a hot woman, here is the poem in question.

As if that was not enough to make one realize the price on one's head, or rather hand, I was told by San Francisco's Caltrain later that day that I would need to pay 'only $500' to get a shooting permit in order to shoot in any of their stations, even though I was a student and not planning to sell my film and would be shooting on a Sunday when there were hardly any people anyway. It would be Communist, I mean criminal, to end this post, without standing up erect and 'hailing' Capitalism, with its discerning soft quality of making embracing citizens feel so wanted and uplifting their otherwise morose moods, by giving them such bloated price tags, much like products they can only admire though shop windows under expensive studio-like shop lights and its all encompassing hug to include petty little vocations like poetry and film. I have deduced a secret piece of information from this little anecdote - Gmail, and thus by extension, Google is Communist. Don't be surprised if my efforts are successful and Google is shut down in the coming few weeks. I also want to clarify that this post was in no way sponsored by the good people over in Microsoft.

Calm Old Man vs. Angry Young Man

Tyler Durden said in Fight Club "We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact." This realization hit the members of a secret society in the netherworld of the capital of Indian cinema long before Durder, or even Brad Pitt was born.

The greater fraction of Indian cinema frequenters in the 70's sought escapism in Indian cinema like a pimple faced straight male teenager seeks Playboy. Thus it should be no surprise that Amitabh Bachhan with his Angry Young Man image, fighting the parasitic system was considered nothing less than a God to the average Joe, or Jai, in this case. However, not too many living people are aware of a cult that thrived in the underbelly of civil society back then - one that worshiped another great persona, possibly greater than any screen persona Mr. Bachhan could ever conjure up. The mere fact that this star's popularity has stood the rigid test of time, even as Mr. Bachhan needed to grow a goatee to win back his fans, is testimony to his unfaltering luminance.

Anyone who has followed Avtar Kishan Hangal's career closely, will agree to one thing without a doubt - the fact that the man's visage, and thus by extension, the man himself, is timeless. A recently discovered memoir of Mrs. Hangal, found in the ruins of modern day Sialkot reveals much about the young Avtar. Mrs. Hangal remembers the overcast day in 1917 Sialkot when the entire neighborhood had gathered at the Hangal shack to behold the newborn baby with so many lines on its forehead and wrinkles on its face that it resembled a cross and zero board. Over time, the lines and wrinkles only increased and Avtar's childhood friends started calling him Babyface, an ironic nickname that has stuck on since. Avtar was only 14 when Alam Ara was released, but he was dumbfounded by the imagery depicted by the leopard skin and bear fur costumes used in the movie. This is what spurred him to become a tailor. The Archaeological Survey of India reveals that he had been a tailor for more than thirty years before deciding to try his hand at Indian Cinema and that Rishi Kapoor actually apprenticed under him to prepare for his role of Akbar the tailor in Amar Akbar Anthony. All I can say is that the tailoring world's loss was a gain for Indian cinema.

While Bachhan was creating social unrest with his roles, Hangal was carrying the torch of Gandhigi into new decades, long before the term had been coined. He was teaching the downtrodden Indian man of the 70's to lay on his back and suffer the beatings of the powers that were, and the power of tears to the sister of the Indian man of the 70's who always provided her honor to the same powers on a platter, because the common man and his sister, are by design, helpless. 1975 was a landmark year for Indian cinema with the release of its blockbuster Sholay. Gabbar Singh's dialogs, glittered with creative rustic swearing, made it into the musical collection of every warm-blooded Indian adolescent. Hangal had his fans too, but nothing sums up his low-key style more than 'Itna sannata kyun hai bhai?'

Don't let the quietness of the man fool you. Hangal has political connections that will make a Dalit leader proud. Former PM P V Narasimha Rao is widely rumored to be his identical twin in political circles, albeit from different mothers. The very fact that Balasaheb Thakerey, that modern day Sherlock Holmes when it comes to identifying the inner goodness of people, had screamed for a boycott of his films in 1993, for wanting to visit his birthplace, which happens to fall in Pakistan, proves how much he unconsciously undermines the Balasaheb's authority with his mild visage and generally calm exterior in his very own cage, err, den.

He has completed 131 films which is more than what Bachhan has done if you don't include his beardless, post Sridevi era, and can even be seen providing well-meaning advice to great-granddaughters-in-law on TV serials these days on topics ranging from marital bliss to political empowerment of women. Hangal's favorite poem is Tennyson's The Brook, and much like the subject of the poem, "for men may come and men may go, but he goes on for ever."

Image: Chakpak.com

Smitten

I sat there listening to Peter Sarstedt as he asked his Lovely where she went to when she was alone in her bed on repeat, in one of the non-HOV lanes of a highway that connects San Francisco to San Jose willing the traffic to move faster than the hands of my watch. Rule #8 of the Student Handbook of the San Francisco School of Digital Film Making states "Students arriving 15 minutes after class starts shall be marked tardy for that session" or something conservatively official like that. The IPU finally heard my inarticulate prayers and started clearing cars off the highway with amazing speed and I managed to be just twelve minutes late on only my second day to class.

Like the main professor, today's professor also had that intellectual trait of the gray beard. He took a dig at the late comers with that weapon used by the great conversationalists of this world - humor and I didn't mind. He introduced himself as James Savoca - a Sicilian storyteller, like the great Francis Ford Coppola and said he was going to try to teach us screenwriting. While clearing out the basics, he kept going off on interesting tangents which told me this guy knew what he was talking about, like when he said "The only thing I know about you all is that you love to take risks in life and I respect that." or when he was saluting democracy by making an attempt to respect the decision of the people who have elected the Legend in the Oval Office today, albeit with a touch of Eastern philosophy.

His preference of character driven scripts over plot driven scripts further enamored him to me. Then I asked him if an event was absolutely necessary to qualify a script as having a conflict. He said "Great question" and I think my ears got bloodier than Mary. After answering, he took a closer look at me and asked me where I was from. I threw out "India" as if I was wrapping myself in a Pashmina shawl. He said, "Have you seen any of Satyajit Ray's movies?" "Big fan. We are from the same place in India", I blurted out. Like an infant welcoming the familiarity of his mother's breast, James said "Oh, you are Bengali" with a slow-rising lopsided grin. What followed I can only imagine to be a few very long minutes for the rest of the class as we dived headfirst into a not very pertinent discussion of Apur Sansar or The World of Apu and eventually Ravi Shankar and the tabla. I was about to ask him about the Calcutta Trilogy but then felt sorry for everyone else and decided to confront him after class.

Almost all examples after that had something to do with Ray. After class I found out he had become a fan of Chhabi Biswas after watching Jalsaghar recently. He was a bigger fan of Kurosawa and I had just missed a screening of Rashomon by a mere two weeks. He told me his bookshelf boasted of a few of Ray's books on film making like My Years with Apu and Our Films, Their Films and I told him about Biswas' lack of a musical ear, an unbelievable fact considering his larger than life performance in Jalsaghar from my reading of Speaking of Films. He then lamented the fact that not too many of Ray's work was out on DVD in the West. It was almost as if Manik Babu was standing over us and we were conversing in the enormous shadow of his 6' 5" frame. I also explained to him how despite her good acting skills, Taboo was an incorrect choice for the role of Ashima Ganguly in Namesake because of her utterly non-Bengali looks.

The only other time I was this smitten by a male stranger was when this American aviator had visited our school and his adventurous life had been a colorful dream to my juvenile mind. In fact, this smite might make me take up the Screenwriting Workshop he is teaching in April and has produced this late night post neglecting the pitch for the script of my film which is due tomorrow. I guess I'll get down to it now.

Indecent Proposal

Prologue: ArSENik twiddling this thumbs. ArSENik playing footsie with himself. ArSENik twiddling his thumbs AND playing footsie with himself. The phone rings shattering the silence only rivaled at dusk in zoos around the world.

Prof: What are your plans for 31st?
ArSENik (to himself): I have a date with the ghost of Lady Di.
ArSENik: Hang on. Lemme check with my PA.

More thumb twiddling and footsie.

Prof (to himself): Saala Pheku.
ArSENik: Haan looks like I am free.
Prof: Great. Ghar aaja. Party sharty karenge aapa.

Cast: ArSENik, Prof, Snakeman, Snakeman's wife Snakeeyes and a confetti of the Prof's friends who are not as important as the rest of the cast to the plot.

Scene 1: Dec 31, 2007 8:07 pm at the Prof's residence. ArSENik arrives seven minutes late for the party sharty but doesn't need to act guilty since there is only one other guest apart from the hosts and that too because his wife is visiting India, ruling out possibilities of tardiness. Time is passed watching almost nude women grooving to remixed tracks of classical Lata hits on B4U over some very strong ready made Mojito, which makes time fly. All the guests have arrived by 10:09 pm and so has the Glenfiddich. Everyone is greeting the guests while ArSENik rushes to break a little ice with his old buddy Glen.

Some buzzed or Punjabi men have taken to the dance floor. Glen makes the Punjabi folk beats
mellower than any self respecting Punjabi singer can tolerate. At some point ArSENik gets sucked into the whirlpool of moving well-muscled hairy limbs and starts dishing out his Bengali version of drunken Bhangra.

Snakeman (referring to ArSENik): Iss bande ko bahut Bhangra ke steps aate hain.
Prof (taking away Snakeman's drink): Is Snakewoman the DD tonight?

More alcohol, more drunken snake dancing...

Snakewoman: So where are you from?
ArSENik: Terebithia.
Snakewoman: Where is that?
ArSENik (rolling his eyes): Oh, that's a district in Calcutta. They have changed the name now though, to Jadavpur.
Snakewoman (with uninhibited glee): Oh, you are Bungali. Do you like posto?
ArSENik pinches himself and clears his ears. He is just about to enter his flirting mode when he realizes she is happily married assuming dancing liaisons are accepted as an indicator of marital bliss.
ArSENik (smiling like a gardener who has just been offered lemonade by his female employer): Are you kiddin'? That is probably the dearest thing to me among everything that is legal outside Holland, but how do you know about posto?
Snakeeyes: My stepfather is Bungali too.
Pregnant silence.
ArSENik: Oh. Umm... I think Bouthan needs help with that bottle opener.
ArSENik runs away.

Scene 2: Jan 3, 2008 12:11 pm at the office cafe during lunch. ArSENik and Prof have placed their trays of bland food on the table not so long ago and ArSENik has just placed a spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

Prof: Tere liye rishta aaya hai.
ArSENik (not the upholder of the best manners, talking while chewing the potatows, which he realizes aren't that mashed anyway) : Rakhi ke liye toh bahut time hai iss saal.
Prof: Abbey Nautanki. Bol karega?
ArSENik: Kisko karna hai?
Prof: Shaadi. Snakeeyes ki Bungalan saheli hai.
ArSENik chokes on some otherwise mild potatoes. After a little water, regains his usual air of serenity.
ArSENik (not realizing it's been three years since he has been of 'age'): Isn't that illegal?

After lunch, Prof and ArSENik use Orkut to stalk the prospective bride by using deduction that would have made Holmes and Bakshi proud, all on the company's time. Luckily for them, Snakewoman has only one Bungalan friend who isn't married or hasn't changed her name to "check new pics" or something equally exhibitionist. Prof is impressed by the 'freshness' of her face as most non-Bungali men are when faced with Bungalan visages. ArSENik is unimpressed about the fact that she only chooses to display her face. "Zaroor moti ya langdi hai, ya dono!" he proclaims with utter disregard for political correctness in the workplace. Then he sees 'IIT Kharagpur' in her communities and starts daydreaming about the realization of his secret fantasy - living off the SO's earnings before letting the pessimist in him win with the argument that IIT-K just proves that she is moti or langdi or both.

Prof: Abbey saale! Achhi hai.
ArSENik: Accha pooch khaana waana banana aata hai ke nahin.
Prof (almost as excited as he was moments before his Bachelor Party): Abhi poochta hoon.
Prof is about to log into Gmail.
ArSENik: Haan aaj kal waise bhi The W ki dal kha kha ke pak gaya main. Biwi ki position toh nahin hai lekin ek bawarchan accomodate kar sakta hoon main.

By this point Prof is puffing out smoke from all openings on his face and suddenly ArSENik can see him take Snakewoman's form. The following is the dialog that ensues between ArSENik and his imaginary friend TP, who is actually a mute and communicates using ASL, but for the benefit of the readers, I have reproduced his lines in English here. Needless to say, as with all translations, the original impact of the profound thoughts are not entirely retained.
ArSENik: I think marriage is a club.
TP: Yeah, it's called Strip Club. Marriage strips you of all liberties.
ArSENik: Abbey no. This one has that pyramid business style structure - remember all that Ambay jazz? The more people you induct, the more points you get. Arrey that same one where you have to sell like 50 soaps to each of your contacts in a month. Why do you think that is so?
TP (with a faraway look in his eyes and in an Ajit voice): Vary simple. Joh mazaa khushi lootne se milti hai woh sirf ghum baantne se hi mil sakti hai.

Dear Waheedaji

They say happiness is nothing but the lack of sorrow. This definition does not apply to me because happiness to me is just watching you without mattering whether you are happy, sad, naughty or angry on screen. Recently, a friend of mine said he could watch a movie with just Katrina dancing around. At the time, I had thought him to be crazy. However, while watching you overshadow Dev Anand in Guide yesterday simply with your ebullience, I realized what my friend was feeling. I did not fast forward over the songs that featured you, and given the fact that I know very little about dance, it is nothing but evidence that I am hooked.

I used to tell people who would listen that you are my all time primero uno beauty, followed by Parveen Babi and Sharmila Tagore, in that order. After yesterday, I have realized that Ms. Babi and Shamilaji are much lower on the list since with you occupying the first position, the next few positions are forced to be unoccupied - a testimony to not only your sheer beauty, but also your poise, elegance and optical intelligence.

When you put on that nose ring and danced to Piya Tose Naina Lagey Re or performed that classical yet sultry Nagin dance, I must shamelessly admit that I went a little weak in the legs. You may well have been referring to a red sweatered Dev Anand as your fellow traveler and asking him to accompany you and to never change with the world, but in the vast strawberry fields in my head, it was I, who was running with you holding your hand, stopping at times not to catch my breath, but just to stare at your mind numbing face and expressive eyes.

If the Genetic Theory is to be believed, there should be more classical beauties like you, Ms. Babi and Sharmilaji walking around on the sets of Indian cinema, but all I see in Soha on the horizon. If you have any granddaughters or even grandnieces, please let this muse-seeking starving poet know. It might solve the problem of the alarmingly low number of strawberries in his basket.

Warmest Regards,
An understated admirer

Image Credit: moviewalah.com

Shattering Myths ... about Realism

Yuri Gagarin said "I could have gone on flying through space forever." Jaggu Chan, our beloved disciple of Prabhuji Mithun Chakraborty who has done much to propagate the 'faith' first in the East and nowadays even in the West has made this something of a motto for his entire career. Inside sources in the Hong Kong mafia claim that it was Jaggu's childhood ambition to soar the high skies and whistle at air hostesses, but unfortunately, he could not meet the height requirement of pilot school.

The Myth features him in his most mature role to date - an urbane archaeologist with a dashing bachelor pad complete with a moving roof overlooking the sea and yet you find no honies on any of his bean bags, mainly because of his narcolepsy. He falls asleep at odd times of the day and starts dreaming of a life lived centuries ago. A princess with a questionable choice in men, ignores royal passes and instead lusts over Jaggu, who is a general in the royal army but his only job is to protect the princess. What is special about the dreams are that they are as episodic as Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan. Also please note Jaggu's subtle ode to Satyajit Ray's Sonar Kella here and flirting with the classic debate over rebirth. The princess reinvents a new CPR technique which involves disrobing the woman's upper garment and hugging the dying male. This stable boy-rich Lady taboo love affair reaches unimaginable unidirectional proportions though when the princess decides to sit quite pretty on a carriage about to slip away to oblivion as Jaggu ties himself to the carriage when he is interrupted by a sword fight seeking enemy soldier.

Like every great story, The Myth also has a femme fatale - the irrepressible Mallika Sherawat with her chest that shares the same quality. Essaying the role of the rustically foxy and curiously named Samantha - a character who exclusively forces the story to move to a South Indian village with heinous extras who could crack mirrors with just their looks, brandishing shiny swords like children's toys. Incidentally, they do not use alarm clocks in rural South India. Men wake up to women practicing some form of suggestive aerobics style dance routine in minimal robes. The script did not explore how women wake up. Samantha's other vocations include teaching an elephant called Lakmshi how to give her a bath by spraying her with water and making a case for Ms. Sherawat as an entrant for the Miss World Wet Tshirt pageant, and emulating Reena Roy's Nagin dance moves. India is shown to have progressed from being a country of monkey brain connoisseurs in Temple of Doom to flying sadhus in 2007. The most memorable scene of this landmark film for me was an action sequence on a tarred floor in which Ms. Sherawat first strips herself partly and then Jaggu helps her finish half the job - all in the name of saving her life. Don't get me wrong. The scenes have been very tastefully shot, as every fan of Ms. Sherawat's assets will vouch for, because Jaggu only makes movies for the whole family.

Jaggu ends the movie with odes to two cinematic greats - Kulbhushan Kharbanda and George Lucas. The villain of the movie dons what can only be deciphered to be a Chinese version of the bandhgala that Mr. Kharbanda was wearing in Shaan as the inimitable Shakaal. If rumors are to be believed, Surf Excel has approached the actor playing the villain's part as he miraculously manages to maintain the whiteness of his attire after beating up half a dozen good guys in mud - the sight of which would be enough to elicit inconsolable scolding from all mothers around the world. The last half an hour or so of the movie pitches the charm of science fiction in a historical setting - something even Lucas had not dared to explore in his Star Wars series. Jaggu borrows the climax straight out of the general script of Priyadarshan's comedies but colors it with a serious touch. The combination of all the influences produces scenes never before seen outside the Bhojpuri film industry - a flying villain, clay horses, temperamental gravity and Jaggu's very own constipated facial expressions.

2007

2007 has been probably the most cathartic of all my years. It had the ingredients of the quintessential blockbuster - an utterly difficult and redundant course, love, crazy phone bills, fulfilled cravings of my wanderlusting soul, job frustration, theater, cricketing shame, transhumance, heartbreak, regular blogging as a result of heartbreak, altering senses of fashion, comparatively extreme workout, cricketing history, friendlessness, frustration again - job and present company related, and then finally a little sunny hole of hope to escape the mundaneness of it all. Oh, and it was punctuated with more movie watching than ever before.

The year began with a mistake - a course I didn't need to take whatsoever, but took anyway as if my bank balance was looking too pretty. Salvation appeared in terms of a love affair that was threatening to bloom for a while, but was hesitating like a diabetic with chocolate. Anyway, it bloomed and so did the telephone bills. May saw me sunbathing in Daytona with a few college buddies and reveling in the apparent triviality that is born out of four years of familiarity.

On returning to work, I wanted to be in a warmer environment, and I am not just talking about the weather. The Men in Blue trashed a billion fanatical expectations and the neighbor's coach lost his life. What followed was a personal ban on anything crickety. Lack of exciting hobbies generated a sudden love for theater followed by a lot of theater attendance and even a little bit of rehearsal of a gravely existential role. The role was cut short by an alarming change in zip code but not before I got high secretly in terrific twin religious ironies sitting in the makeshift pavilion of a Pakistani cricket team somewhere among the peaceful mountains of Salt Lake City.

The India trip was the crescendo of the personal life, sandwiched with a beautiful trip to a little village called Tarkarli on the wet West coast of the country, but the destination hardly mattered. True to the sinusoidal nature of the rest of the year began a period of introspection, supposed philosophy and helplessness as the flower was nipped. As the purists say, no regrets and if anything, this period made me want to classify the heart and the mind as senses. Blogging became an almost embarrassing regularity. People other than friends or cousins started reading White Noise, doing amazing things to a hurt ego. Denial saw me going for James Dean slim straight jeans rather than the previous boot cut favorite and running rather than making others run on the racketball and tennis courts.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni did a Kapil with cricketing minors and I will never forget that three way ecstatic, unbelieving hug with the W and Prof as Misbah found the Mallu on the field. Memories of friends who shared the other half of the year with me kept bugging me at times, especially with the gross ability of the new one to small talk. The environment was warm, but still not satisfying, ushering in a certain life altering madness, which will be fulfilled the coming year. Here's hoping all you readers have a rocking '008 and keep coming back to White Noise :)

Snow Bite

Just saw Fargo and on a day when the Californian sun is putting on teenage pop sensation airs and hiding somewhere behind the somber gray canvas, I can't help but admire the nonchalance of the cast in bounding about in more than ankle deep snow, from under my comforter. The 'true' story is set in Minnesota and North Dakota in the peak of winter, which couldn't have been too comforting for the Hollywood cast more at home sipping lemonade under the shade of tall palm Los Angelian trees.

Since moving to this 'promised' land, I have received copious grief from my fellow countrymen (mostly countrywomen actually) for not appreciating snow. Granted I lost my snow virginity as late as the first year of college, but the experience and the few ones after that that I have been through have failed to warm me to frigidophilia. Maybe it has something to do with that 3:00 am phone call I received on my barely functional dorm landline from a friend 'lucky' enough to be studying for a next day test in the library. Grumpy at first, and then shaking from the cold and the anticipation of the first sight of snow, I tittered my way to the window to be greeted by one of the most depressing sights since the visuals of Schindler's List. There was a lot of precipitation, which actually looked like the feces of a diarrhea afflicted herd of birds, falling from a surprisingly unnaturally lit sky, which hurt my sleepy eyes. I flopped back on my bed and snugly fell asleep under my warm sheets. The library friend was cross with me the next morning for not sliding down the frozen Hill in the middle of our campus, holding her hand (yeah yeah OK... I embellished the hand bit to spice things up) along with scores of other Asian students.

After graduating, I moved to this watershed (or should I say iceshed) of nothing of a place, much like the locales showcased in Fargo. No, I wasn't hiding from the FBI, but had landed a decent job there. At work too, I was hounded by apparently romantic Indian coworkers and called heartless and non appreciative of all those Yash Chopra Switzerland song sequences. The only thing worse than walking in the snow is driving in the snow, especially if your car is a rear wheel drive. But before you can drive, you have to scrape the windshield with something that you would rather use on 'romantic' coworkers at the time, while you let the engine heat up. If you think it's safer to take the highway home even though its a longer route, think again. Cars will crawl at a velocity of not more than 20 mph, yes on the highway! Snow tires are too expensive an option for a place that receives sporadic precipitation as 'legend' has it that it used to be a desert 200 years ago. And apparently, ensuring roads devoid of snow is also an expensive option for the state government, more expensive than the lives of a few paltry inconsequential drivers.

I am glad to say that I had to contend with only one winter there, and today aside, winter hardly feels like its cold self here in California. Winter here is more like the one you would find in Delhi, albeit a few degrees lesser. I have lesser demons with that than with that white slushy poison flowing through the heartland of the country. So, if any of my prospective future brides is reading this by any slim chance, you can forget about that honeymoon trip to Vienna, or that Alaskan cruise, or even that shikara ride in the Dal Lake, honey.

The Door in the Wall

You stare at me as I walk by
With the longing of a long lost lover,
Calling out with promises of unvanquished worlds
Of pavements of hope strewn with silver ladders,
And of virgin sun-kissed peaks of nearby mountains.

Age has robbed you of your magnet
And now you blend in perfectly
With those withered dead winter leaves
On the face of that murky deadpan wall -
The sole witness to the harshness of Time.

There have been countless dreamers
Who have walked up to you and
Taken the attraction a step further.
But there was your lonely beauty back then.
Why am I standing at your doorstep?

Maybe there is misery untold
On the other side of that murky wall
And you are contraception against the blackness
But I am a little fatigued from all this beige
And would sell my spleen to discover.

So I stand here and wonder
Whether you open inside or out.
And if my seemingly gutty spleen is worth it.
Your disclaimer is announced in guttural creaks
As my lips turn with your knob.

12/26/2007

A Piercing and Musings

At an age when most male Engineers hunt women in clubs and cram for the GMAT in order to make it to the Ivy League business schools, I seem to be caught in what can only be termed as a late liberating explosion. Most men grow their hair and explore surrealistic poetry in college, but I was too busy trying to graduate too quickly, maybe for my own good. The semesters flew by too quickly for me to stop and gaze at the birds and think about their journeys and destinations.

The hair's longer now than it has ever been for maybe twenty years now (there is photographic evidence of a pony tailed young me trying to stimulate some inactive big hairy teddy bear). Mind you, this post is in no way an advertisement for the upcoming Rambo movie, but I can't help but envy Stallone for his equine dark mane from the 80's. Sources claim that he copied his from Che's, but since he was a Badass All American hero kicking Communist derrieres through Vietnamese humidity and Afghani dryness, this copyright infringement had to be hushed up. If all the different hairstyles under the Sun, were on display in Walmart in some parallel universe (then the Sun would have to be replaced by the central star of that universe, of course), I would undoubtedly squeal like a little girl and pick Rambo's hair.

Why the long hair, you ask me? I can assure you it has nothing to do with any fascination I harbor for Rockstar looks. Nowadays, I have started believing that cutting your hair is going against nature's order. Of course you are going to say that I should do away with shaving as well in light of that argument, but facial hair makes me look older (and wiser?) than I am, which is against the natural order of things. Yesterday at some point during silence filled rides, my glances at the W's rear view mirror told me that what lacked the visage was a little metal transparent moon peeking out from within the Ramboan locks. A full circle that represents life in totality with me only on the cusp of it all (hopefully).

So, I went and did it, or rather got it done. Trying not to betray my emotions to the jewelery store salesman, I asked him as matter of factly as I could whether the piercing would hurt. Wary of any lawsuits I might be planning in case my experience turned out any way other than exactly his prediction, he seesawed his right palm. I debated mentally for a minute and then with an exasperated 'Bhat the haell!' asked him to drill the hole. He then explained that I needed to wear a stud for a minimum of two weeks before I could wear the little moon, since the gun would drill the shiny substitute into the vicinity of where my right right sideburn ended. So, I had to choose the least bling of them all. This one isn't completely gold, nor is it completely silver, but it twinkles under the Californian sun.

If you are a visual person, please consider the following lines in slow motion punctuated by shots of me shaking my hirsute head a la Bachhan in Hum. I closed my eyes in anticipation of the sweet pain. After what seemed like very long four or five seconds, I heard a gunshot. Granted this was only eleven in the morning, but I wasn't in a very safe neighborhood. I opened my eyes to make sure the jeweler's safe was err, safe. Then it came, as if meekly ushered in by the bang, and lingered strongly for a couple of seconds before rushing into the background. And just like that, I was, I mean had, a stud. I had now officially joined the exclusive club of men whose smile is matched by the brilliance of their ear pierce, and the even more exclusive one of Desi men who are pierced.

Thank You

Just saw The Kite Runner (yes, I am sure the book was better, but I haven't read it) and it has brought memories to the surface otherwise kept bottled up somewhere deep inside, maybe for the best, well, at least emotionally speaking. Most infants first conjure up the images of only two people in their first couple of years - the two people responsible for their existence. As far back as I can remember, I was under the impression that all kids are in close contact with three people. I thought everyone had their own version of Tapan Kaku.

He isn't a blood relation, but was at some point closer than most blood relatives can ever come to be. His uncle was a full time homemaker for our family when Papa was growing up. The uncle was succeeded by his elder nephew, and ultimately by Tapan Kaku from Mednapur, which happened to be just 6 months before I came into the family. So you could say we started pretty much at the same time. With his arrival and quick grasp of Amma's expert training, especially in the kitchen, Mum could now afford the luxury of working in a 9-5 job. My grandparents were Kaku and Kakima to him, my parents Dada and Boudi and my aunts Mejdi and Chunidi. My cousins called him Tapan Mama.

Many of the photographs of my childhood albums feature him in his constant pose - standing to the corner in his off-white pajamas and smiling shyly through his stubble, whether it be a birthday party, or me playing cricket, or even admiring the flora of Amma's garden. Over time, he perfected the ingredients in Amma's patented recipes like the right amount of coconut in her narkoler mishti, or the precise quantity of oil that would fry the potatoes just the way Papa likes it with his khichuri. My favorites were his Aloo Postho and Shujir Payesh. He also became our in house electrician, by simply observing visiting ones at work, and later on the in house mechanic for the family car, much the same way.

When it was time for me to attend school, his penchant for perfectionism came out with invigorating fury. There are stories of aghast bus conductors looking on as he proceeded to give me an earful for procuring a 9/10 in dictation. Teachers would inquire about him to Mum when they met her, since he would quiz them on regular intervals regarding my performance in those juvenile classes. My swimming instructor felt marginalized by his enthusiastic poolside presence.

Over time, he followed in his elder brother's footsteps and landed a clerical job in the company where Dadu was some kind of big shot. Then we moved to Muscat when I was 8. I remember wetting many a pillow cover in those initial few months after the move, remembering him, among other people. We kept meeting on our annual trips back home but over the decade the meetings reduced as we got busy in our respective lives. I remember being really scared this one summer when he got sick and had to be admitted to the hospital, but that didn't keep him out of action for too long, and he continued to bring me those mind-numbing sweets from Ganguram, which is next to his office.

He is married now and has a couple of school-going kids, with whom he lives in the house he has built, somewhere on the outskirts of Calcutta . His curly hair has thinned at exponential pace, and he has a slight paunch to go with his new pencil thin mustache, but that doesn't stop him from coming over on Sundays to keep a tab on my octogenarian grandparents. He still bakes his famous Inframatic butter cake on Sundays when I visit. He asks me to visit his house every time and I blame the tight schedule and say 'Porer Bar'. Recently, we had the rare opportunity to catch up on the phone. I had called to extend my pronam to my grandparents on the occasion of Bijoya. No one was at home. We didn't recognize each other's voices and with realization came a few seconds of shameful silence at either end, before we both resorted to usual Bijoya greetings and small talk.

I have never once thanked him, for anything. Maybe, I will just take the convenient route and blame our anti-sentimental society for that. All I can do now is slip him some money asking him to buy something nice for his kids when both his hands are busy washing some dishes, to refuse the compensation, which in any case is too little for all he has done. I know he will never read this, but this is my way of saying "Thanks for everything, Tapan Kaku", maybe more for myself than for him, before I break down again.

Lennon's Arrogant Wetting of Capitalism's Existential Bed

I wet my bed the other night. It's not what you are thinking, or even you, alias changing commenter (henceforth known as ACC). I was merely quenching my thirst (again no pun intended, ACC) when I sneezed and I just happened to be physically near my abode of nocturnal rest, thus rendering the blue sheets with their galactic objects moist, which is pretty ironic since hydrogen and oxygen, the parents of water, haven't actually been proven to exist in space yet despite the color of my sheets.

Lennon seemed to look down from the wall with his usual calm, though slightly amused at my Laurel and Hardian ways. He has been ignoring me since the day I stopped rocking my weeping guitar on my lap, despite its rich dark brown beauty with an ethnic green circle in the middle reminiscent of tanned Indians before Columbus brought the plague here. I had Lennon placed there so that I would wake up each morning and read the lyrics of Imagine etched right next to him. Little did I imagine at the time that my eyes would completely open only when I had to drive to work, and sometimes not even then.

Talking of Columbus, Bhatija informed me today with almost as much pent up frustration as most Indian men harbor on the day before their wedding, that cnn.com had results of Britney's sister's pregnancy test in their index page, and that they had been OD-ing faithful readers such as himself on much Britney news over the past month or so. The W feels its one of the evils of an exclusively Capitalist economy and that a balance is required, fearing the worst for the Wall Street Journal since it has just been purchased by that obscenely loaded murderer of socialism - Rupert Murdoch. As always, I didn't really care deep down inside, but made some seemingly intelligent economic comment about demand and supply.

The Dell printer, forever a symbol of aggressive marketing of its maker, had arrived like most guests at an Indian wedding - uninvited (Don't ask me why all the metaphors have something to do with Indian weddings today). For once, listening to my kindly heart, I had taken it in, nurtured it with many a cartridge over the two years - color as well as black and white, but had never really used it that much. The thrill of using company stationary had always offset its use, so much so that the ink began to dry like Bhuvan's cricket-virgin land. Now it just stood mute without any apparent sense of purpose like those decorative couch cushions that you have to deal with after (sh!@ here I go again) marriage. However, the secret is that it does have a purpose. Objects like that always have a purpose in middle class homes (yeah, OK, apartments). In this one, it serves to keep the malfunctioning switch of a three story lamp in the reluctant on position. My god! Sartre would have been proud of that existential reference, no? Am I turning into an arrogant prick? Maybe everyone is arrogant, but the ones that are called arrogant are just bad at hiding the arrogance. I am going to define arrogance as the lack of ability to make small talk. You don't agree? Oh well, I am too arrogant to care.

Arrogance is the reason I will skip Welcome and watch only Taare Zameen Pe this weekend, as it would be insult to the latter to even juxtaposition the two in one's schedule. Arrogance is the reason I am trying out this no meat policy because the damned chickens, lambs, cows or goats of this world are not bigger than my bloated ego. I don't really care how badly they are treated in slaughter houses. Ms. Manekha Gandhi, if you are reading this, you will be glad to know they have gyms solely for dogs in NYC where overweight members of the canine species run on treadmills. Yes, some people literally go to the gym to check out the bitches. You can try taking that up with the BJP for the next elections, who I am sure would prescribe gyms with equal facilities for dogs of all religions and overlook urbanity or rurality in building these. Arrogance is also the reason an octogenarian is the head of the opposition in our great land. Arrogance is the reason I claim to readers who have no way of checking that my Xbox, oh sorry Xbox 360 has gathered more dust than the books on my bookshelf. Arrogance is the reason I tip like a royal at the shadiest of restaurants. Arrogance is the reason I distribute part of my wealth at the poker table after winning a handsome pot. Arrogance is the reason I like my Scotch "on the rocks, with very little ice". Arrogance is the reason I flaunt my middle-classness with as much eagerness as I flaunt my long sideburns to effeminate Chinese men. Arrogance is the reason I am going to end this post with utter abruptness.