A post i did not want to write

I have always considered myself as a brainy b@#$%^d, and my totally remarkable ability to come up with one line philosophies that were so awesome and cool, did not help tackle this problem.

once i started on the age old topic of my mom's and luxury's oil and water relationship. i gave a big lecture on how my mother was obstinately refusing to accept any form of luxury that money can buy for her and her fanatic drive to save. my mother asked me to be happy about the things we have that people poorer than us do not have. i came up with the classic, "Always count the people ahead of you"

When we moved to chennai from calcutta, we got a place in mylapore, undoubtedly one of the most popular neighborhoods in chennai. it is a place with a history that far outruns the age of chennai itself. today mylapore especially the part we used to live in, is a place of rapid development. we had everything in that area, malls, music academy, a majestic temple, a landmark road, book stores, eateries, this, that and everything. i loved mylapore. it was a classy area.

after my twelfth boards my mother decided to shift to our own house in ashok nagar, a locality very near to t nagar and in the south-central part of the city. i hated that area. ashok nagar too had its share of pizza places, large roads, eateries, etc, but the thing i hated most about this place was that it has no history. it was created in the 1960's and there was something about this place that does not click with me. i guess it is like comparing an original with a duplicate. everything about this area stuck me as artificial, loud, cheap, wannabe-ish.

this summer i have had plenty of time to let this resentment grow and explode into a deep hatred of this area. plus i went to places in chennai which have a history to speak of, places like mylapore, adyar, besant nagar etc. places which will come to mind when someone mentions chennai. and this resentment grew. soon i started finding faults with my home. i found it too dirty and un-planned. i found my tv too loud. my couch too hard. my bed too small. my clothes too silly. my fridge too empty. my car too old. my ps2 too stupid. my hair too foolish. my face too long. my body too thin. my voice too girlish. my phone too this. my books too that. i started finding fault with everything i had. i started fighting with my mother and sister everyday. people who know would think i am a very self-satisfied guy but actually i am not. i wanted a cleaner house, a new computer, a xbox 360, a new tv, a new car, a softer couch, a classy area etc. things went bad at home. my mother and sister were busy planning for my sister's wedding and they did not have any time for my lamenting. their patience grew thin and relations were strained. then i had the opportunity to chuck my mobile phone for a few days.

every day i caught a bus to some part of the city and i walked. i walked through roads i knew and roads i have never heard of. i saw homes, parks, eateries, restaurants, malls and everything that chennai has to offer to her residents. i saw the same things everywhere. the Reebok showroom in anna nagar or adyar is no different from the one behind my home. the same people buy the same things from nilgiris or spencer's daily, no different from the things we buy in the nilgiris or the spencer's next to our place. people drive flashier cars and live in flashier homes but they are all just the same. they are as dumb as the ones in the not-so-flashy homes and driving the not-so-flashy vehicles.

people who live in adyar, besant nagar and the surrounding localities have this chant about the beach being next door. initially i fell for the beach charm. i scolded my mother for having shifted from mylapore which is very close to the beach. one day i drove along the beach right from burma bazaar to tiruvanmiyur beach and i understood how dumb i was. true the beach may have nice places for an 18 year old to hang out but that does not make it anything great. it just presents a lot of opportunities to blow our parent's cash. all that beach air bull shit is farce. it is nice at the end of a hot day, but i would rather enjoy my ac in my room without being disturbed by scores of beggars, eunuchs and dirty kids. it is embarrassing. i have decided not to sit along the beach and chat with my friends. i do not know how they manage to take all that. one thing i have found out about ashok nagar in the year i have spent here is that there are no beggars in this area. i have seen a few near a temple that is some distance from my place. but apart from that there are no dirty kids and certainly there are no eunuchs around this area. people living in the above mentioned classy areas have this air around them, the air of living in so and so area.

recently i spoke with a school-friend of mine who shifted from adyar to a place quite close to my house. she said that after living in adyar this place seems like nothing and that she found this place to be ina different city. i must say i was hurt.

moreover the people living in these classy areas seem to have a deep ignorance about the less-classy areas of chennai. i have lived in chennai for only a few years of my life. but i seem to know more about this city than some who have lived here all their life and the funny part is that every time you mention something about your home they will all highlight their ignorance of my less-classy area. to most of them the only thing they know about my area is that A R Rahmann lives here. a pity. i guess they are too busy congratulating themselves on living in their classy areas to notice places like ashok nagar.

i realized how dumb i have been. i am what i am. i lost my father when i was eleven. probably with his financial support, today i might have been living in one of those classy areas, driving a flashy car and living in a flashy home. but i am not. so its cool. i have a nice place to live. i have a mom who is more charismatic than anyone i have known. a sister always willing to blow cash on her brother. a car that runs and responds to my every turn. a tv that shows what i want to see. a couch to sit on. i have everything that i need. i have been provided with everything by my mom. for a single earner that is more than i can ask. the classy things are absent and my views are very samathhu (my friends will vouch for that), but i do not have an option. thanks to my dad's death, i am a generation behind most people i know. it is my job to get the classy stuff, not my mom's.

being happy with the things i have is probably the only useful thing i have learnt this summer. things are already much better at home. i am now helping my mother with my sister's marriage preparations and i am enjoying it a lot. last night she told me that she has decided to buy a new car and a luxury one too. :)

so there i stand at the end of a 6 weeks of holidays.

/*

this is a deeply personal blog where i have yielded to my thoughts. i am sorry if i have hurt any of my friends sentiments in this blog. i am not accusing anyone of anything. i have written down everything the way i saw it and the way i perceived it. sorry.

*/

Burma, Piracy, GrappoFizz and Class

The other day myself, ankur and nitish went to the world famous pirated goods capital of South India - Burma Bazaar. I would be lying if i were to say i was not excited. I had once watched a movie about a gun racket in Burma Bazaar and well, my expectations were high. Now, i did not exactly find gun toting goondas there but i certainly found myself staring at every movie ever made in Kollywood, Bollywood and Hollywood. I was confounded at the collection of movies, many of which i have hardly heard of!
I decided to stay in vogue and watch yesteryear Hollywood classics( well thats what all my friends seem to be doing) and decided to buy three movies - valkyrie, the Tom Cruise World War II flick( which turned out to be some Shreya movie At the End of the Line! That thieving scoundrel!), Citizen Kane - the greatest movie ever made according to Time and the Guns of Navarrone - an old adventure movie.
That night i settled down in front of my TV( as always with nourishment at hand) and started watching Guns of Navarrone. To say i was mind-bogglingly, fantastically, unbelievably amazed at the flick would be a gross understatement! Seriously a classic has class!
The story line is remarkably kiddish, a typical David-Goliath War story about a handful of guys going on doomed mission. The special effects are well.. non- existent. but what makes the movie tick are the characters and the way they grow into a team. Each character of the six member team is at one side of a hexagon. they differ on many issues but finally realize that ultimately everyone wants the same thing - the end of the war.
Apart from the quintessential Captain Mallory, one character which has had a profound impact on me has been Prof. aka Miller. He is the injured major Franklin's best friend and he confronts Mallory when he decides to exploit Franklin for accomplishing the mission. His dialogue, "You are a remarkably ruthless character, Captain Mallory" is sheer brilliance. He is actually the comedian of the team, but his dogged arrogance and defiance of Mallory does not affect his comic antics, one bit. All credit to the guy who played the role. i don't know his name.
This movie is a sharp contrast to another adventure film i saw recently, Indiana Jones Skull Island. Spending millions of dollars and using the best technology of the age cannot make a bad movie any good. In the end it is the people who make a difference.
I wonder if the same conclusion extends to everything. if that be the case, it is good. This is an awesome movie and i strongly recommend everyone to watch it!

BREAKING NEWS wrecking havoc!

i am a part of the educated 'intelligensia' of our country's fast exploding upper middle class. in fact i am much smarter than the average joe. a fact which i am sure the people who enjoy the privelege of my company will gladly affirm. just like any other responsible 18 year old i do relish spending my long eventless afternoons catching up on the latest news from across the globe, all thanks to the tv news channel boom in the country. i am spoilt for choice! i have CNN-IBN, Times Now, Headlines Today, NDTV-24/7, something called News X and so on. if desi flavor leaves me too hot in the cheeks, i have the bland BBC and CNN spewing out news from Africa to Azerbaijan. No wonder i am so well informed and such an asset at the dinner table.

anyways, as you, a well informed person yourself, would have realized by now, this blog is NOT about my knowledge of the world and my remarkable ability to keep in touch with every issue that threatens to hamper the bubble of static existence that we desire greatly. this blog on the other hand is about the agents of this information revolution, TV News Channels.

What is their problem in life?!

far from spitting out the news and sitting pretty in their flashy studios, they are now spending all their time and effort on singing their own glory and taking a dig at other channels. the recently concluded General Elections seemed to be a grand stage for these self-aggrandizing TV maniacs, each channel screaming out its supposed 'authority' when it comes to issues such as elections and politics. each of these channels has a nice well educated dude who once upon a time did a half-decent job of reading the news without looking like a pretty stuffed doll with a tape recorder behind the back. nowadays these guys are there doing the same job at the all important 9 o clock news! little do they know that the indian janta is far over these gimmicks and enjoys healthy entertainment such as the baas-bahu serials at 9!!

again i am getting diverted. where was i... ah yes.

these poster boys( or rather poster men, they are not so young) wear nice suits and try to put their guests( usually some b-ring politician badly in need of the public eye) in a spot of bother by asking uncomfortable questions. initially i was awed at the sheer guts of these suited-up agents of enlightenment, not afraid to hiss the un-thinkable and consequently the un-askable, to the Indian Netas. thanks to my ablity to logically break down every piece of information, i understood that these guys are actually chickens.

instead of asking ' dude, whats ur poll agenda?' , they love putting it across as,

'Mr.So and so, your party's past performances have revealed that it has the remarkable ability to stay in touch with the pulse of the Indian public. in this context, how do you plan to continue this association which is so fundamental to your political future in the ever-dynamic sphere of political struggle in the largest democracy in the world?'

now, our netas are not the smartest dudes in the country. but thanks to these suited up agents of free and 'fair' information, they seem to have learnt their words well. a typical answer of an indian neta to the confounding question above would be,

'the party has taken important decisions in the general meeting held recently. under the stewardship of shri.so and so 2, our party will free the country of this govt/party.

now, hani would have a back question to this reply, 'oh you think you can do that huh?'

our suited up dudes cannot afford to play it so simple, when the neta has reached the country part, the anchor will shout above him and say ' but, but mr. so and so ' to which the neta will add 'so and so 3 let me finish, let me finish'. the actual reply would be lost in the resulting pandemonium.

now a last issue which threatens to exponentially increase the cases of heart attacks in the country is the BREAKING NEWS phenomenon.

A particular channel, which goes by the name of ....(T**** N**) seems to find every X,Y,Z news in the country to be of 'breaking importance'.

technically speaking, a news can be called as breaking only when the particular instant of its occurence and its occurence itself will forever change the course of life for millions of people. its impact will be so profound that mankind has the right to know it immediately and it takes precedence over everything else, like bass-bahu serials or reality shows. it is the instant of time when all mankind risks putting on the thinking cap to undergo the ardous task of deciphering what it means to him/her.

now frankly speaking guys, please tell me, how does Dhoni saying that he would like rohit sharma to open given his form, classify as BREAKING NEWS!

a fat lady who takes over during these BREAKING NEWS! session will immediately GO OVER to some extra SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT in some part of the world and this is how they talk. if i were to call it hilarious then i would be demeaning humor.

'Your Channel T**** N** has just received classified information from our most well placed sources in the Team India dressing room in South Africa that the hot water tap in the bathroom HAS malfunctioned. this has caused a great deal of discomfort to the players and many of them are reportedly refusing to bathe.'

'In this regard let us GO OVER to our SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT So and So 4 who has been tracking all the updates in South Africa'

(some girl wearing a sleeve less top will come up in a window. she will be mostly tinkering with a ear phone.)

'So and so 4, we are to understand that the hot water tap in the Team India dressing room bathroom has malfunctioned. can u give us the latest on this?'

So and so 4 will nod her head for two secs after the fat lady has spoken and then will say,,

'yes fat lady, we have found out that the hot water tap in the Team India dressing room bathroom has INDEED malfunctioned. a special enquiry commision is going to set up.'

then the fat lady will say,

'As you can see there our SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT there saying that it is INDEED true that the hot water tap in the Team India dressing room bathroom has INDEED malfunctioned and plumbers are on the job AS WE SPEAK. '

in the next ad break, a nice animation will come up,

'FIND OUT! At 9 30 pm today

how the Hot Water Tap issue is going to affect the performance of Team India in the Test Series with our expert panel of So and so 5,6,7.'

GUYS! GIMME A BREAK! ENOUGH of BREAKING NEWS!

sometimes i have to agree

Ignorance is Bliss!

Nirvanavum naanum

Holidays are dangerous for mankind. everything that mankind stands for or has strove to do so over the million odd years of our existence is put under an incredible test during the 50 odd days of freedom that every school grants to its creatures. 

no wonder we have the popular saying "an idle mind is a devil's workshop"

now, i do not intend to flatter or aggrandize myself by referring to my mind as His workshop, but during the last 10 odd days, i can safely say that i have been up to no good.

my  longtime feeling that life is dumb has been strengthened, re-vitalized, re-energized and re-affirmed by the long hours of during nothing. 

whats the whole point of this?!

07 45 hours  : sis before leaving for office. "Jicks wake up! Jicks wake up!" 

07 45 to 09 00 : exact timing depends upon whether a response is given at 07 45

     my blanket vanishes.

     my fan stops working

     earthquake aka mum trying to budge me awake 

09 00 hours : mama before leaving for office. "Jicks wake up! Jicks wake up!"

10 00 to 10 30 : The waking up rituals begin.

10 45 : Brushing time. Colgate. that white color flavour.

11 00 : the elixir of life - coffee

11 00 to 11 45 : newspaper the Hindu, the times of India, the economic times

12 00 : bath. 

12 30 : lunch

13 00 : movie

15 15: afternoon siesta

16 00 : afternoon cup of coffee.

      contemplation of what to do in the evening

16 30 : Book- fifa 09 

18 00 : Hit the road! sucks

20 00 : back home.

20 30 : dinner

20 30 to 00 00 : TV

00 00 to 01 15 : book

01 30 : shut eye

this has been my average day over the last two weeks. in this period i have considered everything from suicide to mass murder! 

This is MADDENING!

As the wise old man says enlightenment is just a stone's throw from madness.

yesterday while i was enjoying my evening dose of gutter juice also called my grandma's crap coffee, looking at the school next door....it suddenly struck me! a wave of understanding lashed across my parched soul and i achieved nirvana. the concept of the human, the thing people call athma, the reason behind this, that and everything.... i knew it. i knew it all.

the answer was always there in the back of my mind. i was amazed, appalled and intrigued by my failure to read what was right under my nose and tickling it too. 

well all 's well that end 's well. 

now that i have gone to the higher plane, you should try it out too for that is the whole point of peer pressure and this jobless blog.

remember 

3 important conditions for dummers to achieve Nirvana

1. coffee that tastes like gutter juice

2. school next door

3. hot girl in std 11 who sits by the window. 

i am planning to write a book soon, nirvana for dummers. if you are interested please book in advance.

so long earthlings.

ps : after achieving nirvana you will feel ravenous, so please ensure that you have a McRenetts closeby.

Bay of Bong

She was wearing one of those designer sleeve-less blouses, which have become a rage amongst the burgeoning middle-class of kolkata. The woman noticed my eyes on her blouse and glared at me. I hastily looked away at a Bula Di AIDS campaign poster. Bula Di was pompously declaring the wonders a condom does to one’s sex-life. I have seen this woman. Her feline eyes, thick lips and long black hair are very familiar indeed. I look around and realize that that description could describe just about any Bengali 20 year old. She is just a co-passenger in the Metro. The same I have been taking for the last 15 years from Chowringee to RAbindra Sadan. I see these faces every day. I recognize the balding weak dadu and his irritated funky grand son. I instantly notice the clerical babu making his way back home from the crowded dingy offices of Strand road, Park Street or Chowringee. I know them all. They are almost like family.

The thought of having such a large diverse family momentarily uplifts my sagging spirit. My blood family on the other hand is a deprived, depressing entity. I just have my Mrinamayi, my wife. A childhood sweetheart and a distant cousin. There was great rejoicing in the family when our parents came to know of our ‘thing’. A young and upcoming banker with a beautiful and philanthropic angel.

Many years have since passed. The young and upcoming banker is now a good for nothing banker who has been warming the same seat for the last ten years. The beautiful and philanthropic angel is now a dominating leader and aggressive leader of ‘Matitharaya’, an NGO for the rehabilitation of widows and orphaned girl children. Her physique seems to mirror her NGO s presence in Bengal - exploding every year.

Our highly hyped ‘love’ has also long breathed its last, crushed under the untenable weight of a failure of a banker and a husband. We have no children. Mrina’s womb was declared as being too weak to carry a baby. It was early in our marriage. My mother was adamant on my marrying again. I stormed out of our ancestral home in Howrah. Even today I do not venture to that part of the town, mostly due to shame of an inexcusable failure of a life. I am a man who has been caught in the vicious orb of mediocrity. A life of The Telegraph in the morning, 5 sets of shirts and trousers, 2 kurtas, yearly metro pass, savings account in SBI Tollygunge, 800 sq. feet apartment near the slums bordering the Rabindra Sarobar Lake, and now I am suffering from the most dangerous disease for my kind, Monotony.

My metro reaches Rabindra Sarobar metro station. A wave of humanity, my family, rush out of the carriage into the platform and shuffle towards the exit and merge into the sea of people, dogs, cats and the rest that call this southern part of the city of joy, their home. I buy a pack of Jal Murri for Rs.5 and trudge towards my apartment, A3, Prajyothi Apts, once a fashionable building in an upcoming locality. Now, a gloomy three storey building, badly needing a fresh coat of paint. My wife was away on one of her never-ending funding trips. Nothing new.

I make myself three rotis and eat it with acchar. I put on the television and browse through the news channels. Bandhs in Kolkata, strikes in Murshidabad, famines in the plains of Bengal, sun stroke in the coastal villages, CPM winning yet another election. Nothing new. Nothing ever changes in this state. Once a upon a time, it used to appeal as endearing. Now it just proves my conviction that Bengal is a god forsaken state, living in the past. Fighting yesterday’s battles and rejoicing past victories. It disgusts me. I switch of the television, tie the milk bag on the outer door and retire for the night. I sleep in the living room. I have long been banished from the bedroom. ‘Matitharaya’ journals and economic charts occupy my half the bed. As I drift into sleep, the old grand father clock strikes ten times. I hate that sound. I sleep.