benitez and the art of ululation

Rafael Benitez told the press today that the reason Liverpool lost the FA cup game to Everton was "bad luck". It completely pissed me off.. He ll be saying it was the gnomes burrowing in the field next. Why cant he just accept that Liverpool played badly and proceed to duly fix the damn team, instead of blaming luck and assorted fairytale creatures! He's like the headstrong kid in galli cricket who will simply not give up batting when he is bowled out clean, just because the bat belongs to him. Dumass..

There.. some of the steam is let off.

I believe that over the last few days I have witnessed something that everyone must at least once in their lifetime. A Bengali wedding.

The wedding was at my ancestral village. The place isnt a real village. At one point of time it was a thriving industrial town, where the officers club served amazing chicken rolls and fish fries. However, it was "Singured" long before Ratan Tata hatched his evil Tata Nano plan. The town has, since then, settled into peaceful and sure decay.

I had been to bong wedding before, but being a secondary (or worse, tertiary) relative of the families and the people involved, I had satisfied myself with munching down tray-loads of fish fries and bucketfuls of mutton Kosha. This time though, the relation was more immediate and I had some actual responsibilities apart from being the guy who ll take care of the leftovers. I was, thus, a close, and many a time shocked, observer to the myriad rituals of a bong wedding.

Firstly, I met many of my relatives who I didn't even know existed. They all knew who I was, my mum had told them I presumed, and I was thus embarrassed as a regular feature when an uncle or aunt hauled me up and demanded I identify them. Roaming around aimlessely in the biyebari (wedding house??.. I dont think theres an english parallel) I was time and again accosted by relatives who were apparently very pissed me asking, "Keyechhish!!!???" (Have you eaten!!!!????). The first time I said no I was near bodily dragged and put down near the eating area. Thereafter, I usually said yes, and if circumstances (like the presence of a nearby relative who knew I had been lolling around all morning) I followed the no with several reasons as to why that was. It was all very cool, meeting cousins and others I had never known. I found out I even have nieces and nephews who go to school!! Sigh! We all played friendly games of Family Cricket: a sport bearing a vague resemblance to the sport from which it was derived (dont even think of the Hum Apke Hain Kaun version - this was much much cooler - played on the ghats of the Ganga as it was, and no doggy umpires either, no umpires at all actually. Why have an umpire when an elder will do?). Teams were made of people ranging in age from 5 to 75, and it was such good fun that the resident elder was caught fielding at silly point when he had wedding businesses to perform.

The wedding itself was a spectacle to me. That it involved a fish (dead or.... dying I think) dressed up in a red ghaghra, nose rings and assorted finery is all one really needs to know. I have a sneaky suspicion that the purohit was inventing up rituals spontaneously for the bride and the groom to perform. There was also intense ululating for every time anything of significance happened, like the groom closing the door of his car on the way to the brides place, or when the bride and groom completed successfully the ritual involving the grindstone. I was tempted to ululate mightily, but chickened out due to stage fear. (also, ululating is the preserve of the bengali woman, men have no business ululating. Unfair, I think.)

I think I ll practice in private.

Field Boy

I have had my resume on the internet since the beginning of last year. I therefore get emails from all sorts of job search engines, many of whom I have never visited or even heard of. I routinely get offered jobs with titles such as Front Desk receptionist, Accounts manager, HR Reviewer... you get the idea. I usually get a slew of emails on monday - sort of jobs for the week. I open them, or sometimes not, and press the spam button.

Today morning I see an email from the new kid in town (apparently) BRV Jobs. Respectable name. Not trying to sell me junk. I therefore open the message and see what its about. As I press the spam button, I see something unbelievable towards the end of the mail.

The mail has since gone into spam. I go into my spam folder, open the email and look the job offering in all its glory. I wonder at the potent algorithm for matching jobs to resumes that BRV Jobs must possess.

I realize that I have scaled a new height today.

I am not sure I am qualified... actually. This is definitely not good for my Monday morning blues.

Maybe its a sign.

I reproduce the page here.




The recession has truly hit India.

It you are in office and cannot see the image above click here to view the posting.

Joy and Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

The last few weeks have been especially tumultuous . My parents have decided to move on (for the time being) from Hyderabad, and a few weeks ago I dropped off the last of my family in Hyderabad at the airport. Sort of overseeing the transition. All grown up. Hmm.. well... during this trip I visited Gitanjali, my school in Begampet. Since I have been away on college and work for a long time, I find that my memories of Hyderabad have increasing become also the memories of my school days. I hadnt been there in a long long while, and decided to poke in.

The school looked exactly the same. Nothing in the building had changed too much. Same old three storey pile of bricks and window grills that it used to be then. But, for the entire time that I was there, I was extremely aware of the vast extent to which I have changed. I guess it helps when you are at a point of reference.

The school building that inspired such awe in me back then, was just a plain old building now. The vast playing field of my memory now seemed like a much smaller, rather cramped yard. I remember flying out of class with my cronies back then, during lunch break or PT.. or on toilet breaks between classes, running down the stairs, across the stage where assembly happened. I remember the feeling of absolute joy when we cleared the stage with a leap - jumping into the field and running across to play our game of raggedy football. I felt a bit deflated that this was all it really was.

But maybe it wasn't. As a few days have gone by the memory of my recent visit has faded away, but I still remember the vast sunlit field that I ran across a several hundred times - where serious friendships and rivalries were played out everyday - away from the censure of adults. The vast brown field will always be more real the rather cramped yard that deflated me.

This post is however, not about the lost joys of childhood. Its not, really. I have recently come to realize what I think I have known for some time now. The opposite is also true. This post is, therefore, about discovering the joys of adulthood.

I had tried reading Rushdie a few years ago when I was in college, urged on by a few of my friends who were Rushdie fans back then. Midnight's Children annoyed me, I remember. I found his process of story telling too tedious, too roundabout. I wonder if there is a saying somewhere that some things in this world one enjoys better with age.

I had managed to go through my relatively sparse but rapidly expanding bookshelf of my home in Bangalore. During a visit back to Hyderabad, my grandmother, a reader with a voracious appetite, handed me Shalimar the Clown. Fueled by my memories of Midnight's Children the book spent a fair amount of time being neglected before I decided to give it a go.

In Shalimar.. Rushdie goes on talking endlessly about his characters, their thoughts, there routines, the story is made to seem almost incidental. An aberration to their daily lives. Is that not how any story really is?

I have never been to Kashmir. I have heard it being called "Paradise on Earth" before, but I have never been imaginative enough to really understand what that meant. Rushdie told me in Shalimar... He also told me, with immense sorrow, how Kashmir has been smashed between the two heavy grease coated metal plates of the Indian Army and the Pakistani terrorists. I feel a sense of loss now. Kashmir had ceased to be a paradise long before I was born and I, thus, could never experience what I envied the characters in the book for having experienced.

The book made me at once curious to visit Kashmir and see it for what it is today, and apprehensive of visiting it in a way. I was afraid, sorrowful at having lost what I never had.

The book starts off magically. And holds on to the magic until about three fourths through. It degenerates into a mere story once Kashmir has efficiently smashed. Once the iron mullahs have forced the women into wearing veils, the army has started using rape as a tactic to demoralize the population, a pogrom against the Pandits of Kashmir goes virtually unnoticed...... the magic is lost. Its impossible to hold on to it... no?

Maybe I will visit Kashmir one day, and compare what my eyes see with what I saw in Shalimar the Clown. In the meantime, I am overjoyed at the hope that there is an antidote to discovering that your childhood palaces are merely modest houses built into life.

Vanilla

I am currently on a trip to what must be the Vanilla ice cream of all foreign Locales. The US. In fact one hardly even feels like calling it a Locale. This trip though, thus far, has been pretty interesting. For one I have experienced first hand what people assured me I would once I started working - Corporate seduction.

Now that the fantasy has formed in your head I must disappoint you.

A car, for myself, was awaiting me at the airport. A hotel room, plush in its comforts awaited me at the end of the car journey. I couldnt help but contrast it to my time as a student here - getting ripped off by cab drivers, trudging a mile every day through ankle deep snow with my nose completely frozen, sleeping on a ball on the floor... I now admire the snow covered landscape form the window of a heated automobile and instead of muttering choice hindi gaalis when the snow comes down, I say "How quaint."

A short visit to my university was also squeezed in. I feel like I have made my peace with the place. My departure was very hurried, I was out of the country before a week had passed after my Defense. I hadnt even got my degree then. So going back, after such a short time, felt good. Said goodbye to two of my favourite restaurants - had two lunches - something I hadnt done in the brouhaha of relocation. Young chow still makes a killer Black Pepper Chicken. Also felt great going back to my Lab. The place is the same, as messy and paper strewn as it used to be. It was fun meeting up with the guys, everybody is very excited about something new that is being researched. Felt good.

However, the most awesome experience of the trip (unexpectedly, I must admit) relates to my present job and I am glad that it turned out to be so. I drove a vehicle that runs on hydrogen. And it didnt have any funny dials and spewing gas ducts and it looked absolutely nothing like the Batmobile George Clooney drove. It was just like a vehicle you drive to work everyday. I knelt down near the exhaust of the car and took a deep deep breath. Even stuck my tongue out. It was water vapour.. steam - the kind that comes out of the pressure cooker - only a bit cooler.

I can now bask in the (ill directed probably, but who cares?) glory that I am doing my two bits to save the planet. :)

More about Fuel Cells - here.

As an aside, I also did see the Batmobile that George Clooney drove. It was an exhibit at the Henry Ford museum here - as you can tell I ve been soaking in the Detroit auto culture. Put in the circus over the election of Barack Obama and the current drama about bailing out GM,Ford and Chrysler from bankruptcy - its been an eventful month in the US.

Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.

The Indian Empire and Irom Sharmila

How does that sound? How about Indian imperialism..?

I am back in India. Finished with my Masters and back. Thats right. These past few months have been quite whirlwind, and coming back to the blog feels good. Its also nice that I m back in Bangalore (or Bengaluru as the regional language Nazis have renamed it). The only only thing I miss about the US are the relatively empty roads, when I watch life pass me by in the hours of evening traffic. I guess I didnt really want to have only half a story to tell.

Over the past few months I ve been reading voraciously. I spend two hours a day cooped up in bus to office. And I pass the time with a book, some really good ones (Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi), some pedestrian(...). But it gives me two assured hours of reading. And thats nice.

We Indians are, some would say rightfully, very proud of a free media. Ours is a third world country. We may be on the way out - but its a long winding route. It would be presumptuous of me to comment on all the poorer nations of the world. But I think it is accurate to say that amongst these, the relative freedom our media enjoys is admirable. I read a rather obscure book named "Goodbye to Gandhi" by one Bernard Imhasly - that has made me put that opinion to rest.

How many of us have heard of the woman Irom Sharmila? I hadnt and I watch the news fairly regularly. I m no news hound but I guess I am about as aware of the state of affairs in our country as the next educated 24 year old.

Ok then. This is the load. I guess we are all aware that theres some trouble in the North East. Those guys dont really somehow feel connected to the rest of India. Mighty difficult too, seeing that they are connected to the rest of the country by a strip thin enough to be an umbilical cord. And we all know what happens to the umbilical cord. In any case, my (idle) impression was that things have gotten better over the past few years. I had no idea what better was.

There is an act, named very vaguely the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). It is an act that was instituted by the British to curb the violent factions of our Freedom Movement. And it is active today in Manipur. It allows the army to curb "violent" factions of Manipur as brutally as the British would have had the authority to. Indian army (allegedly of course - since these charges have not been, due to AFSPA, put to court) gotten away with untold brutalities - rapes, murders. Rape is not an uncommon word in Manipur, Imhasly says. It is often used in conjunction with the word "Army".

Irom Sharmila is a Manipuri woman who has been on a hunger strike since the 2nd November 2000. She started the strike protesting the mass murders perpetrated by the Assam Rifles. They shot people waiting at a bus - stop.

She has been arrested by the Govt. of India. And has been imprisoned. No violence involved. India - whose most hyped export to the world is Satyagraha - has arrested somebody who is practicing it.

We are all familiar with this bit. When Gandhi did his Satyagraha he was arrested all the time. Irom Sharmila has been imprisoned in a Hospital. And she is being fed through a tube that is attached to her nose.

I dont remember hearing that of Gandhi - do you? The British clearly would not dare to do such a thing. While his death would be disastrous -the news of someone force feeding him through a tube would probably have had consequences as well.

We of course dont hear about Irom Sharmila. We have no clue. The 24X7 news channels do not have a story on Sharmila. Neither do any of our "vigilant...whatever it takes" channels. I guess they are too busy covering their self congratulatory award ceremonies. Our media clearly is not as free as I had thought it to be. Any claims to Integrity will also have to be put in the garbage.

Also I wonder. Would India treat some one from Bengal or Andhra Pradesh in this fashion. We hear about bogus hunger strikes all the time. I dont recall any body being arrested when they declare one. Is India really ruling over Manipur? Are we ruling over Kashmir?

I would like to believe otherwise - but I cant for the life of me think of another explanation.

To know more please follow a few links - here.

Champagne Supernovae

I have no idea why I choose to name this post so...first thing that popped into my head...much like the title this blog carries.

It really is a pity when a band that makes good music goes out of business - or transforms into something else. Guns 'n' Roses is a famous case in point. Did you know they still existed?

Well they do.

In any case, its a real shame when a band that could have been great just gets disbanded. They didnt even get to release a CD.

It was the cultural fest at Pilani and band was called Antaragni. The lead of the band was this guy called Raghu, who 's now trying to make it on his own. In any case he had some real fun stories to tell about his past experiences in Pilani. All bands I ve seen live try to do this - I guess it makes them a little more accessible to us, the audience. Hell.. in a Dream theater concert in Buffalo, we found out that Mike Portnoy's father passed through Buffalo once - to full throated cheers.

Im sure he did.

In any case this band was for sort of an "take two one free" deal with Parikrama - the guys famous for "But it rained"(or was it Mother Jane?). The anticipation in the auditorium was therefore befitting - most people were there just to ensure that they got a seat reserved for the Parikrama show.

They played for 2 hours - I think. And they were simply smashing. It wasnt a real band yet ...nuthn full time. It seemed like, correctly I learnt later, an experiment a few very talented people were trying - away from their main jobs. They had a violinist, and lead and rythm man(Raghu), a lead guitarist (who looked from far like Slash, leather and everything), a KICKASS bassist (Josey John - famed to play for every indian music director, except for Rahman (!!??!!)) and a drummer who played the drums standing up. They were dressed in saffron lungis n stuff...really trying to project their music as a mix of the Indian and the western - known in certain cycles as the Fusion genre these days.

Listen to Indian Ocean - you ll know Fusion music has a future.

In any case, the music was amazing...much better than anything else I have heard live since. I remember Raghu saying that they were on the verge of a record deal - and urging us to buy the record when it did come out.

I prayed hard for these guys...and hoped they would come out with a record. I was certain it would be a smash hit. Well you can judge for yourself.

Heres a youtube link someone benevolent has posted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMfzTgZQxO4

And here a folder that has a couple of their songs...my favorites that day at the concert

http://www.esnips.com/web/sujan83/

Sometime back, one of my friends wrote Raghu, to ask for a link to download Antaragni's songs from. She learnt that the band had broken up for good. They never did come out with a record.

Too bad..really! badshit! as they say in certain circles.

Update

Happily, they arent gone forever. Oja and Goyal - Thanks!!

Drug Abuse and hair cuts

Nowadays I ve taken to reading a few new blogs regularly. I also visit the ones listed on the right hand side of this page... The thing about most of the blogs that are listed is that they were created at about the same time as I created this baby, and some of the authors have lost the "new and fresh blog" enthu that comes along with a new and fresh blog. Most of us have moved progressively further away from Engineering College lives... and I guess out here in the Real World there isnt as much time to while away. Not that I am one to judge - my posting record looks like Ajit Agarkar's economy rate or strike rate or batting average- dismal i.e.

heh ..some Agarkar bashing alwas turns up the sunshine a bit.

My well documented laziness comes in the way of pulling up the scary HTML code that I have to modify to make the new links appear on this blog...So I ll take the easy way out..

One of these new blogs is Scott Adams' blog. He posts with great regularity - being a millionaire who has to doodle a cartoon a day helps with the free time I suppose, and writes about the whackiest of things. India features fairly often too... our overall general whackiness provides Adams with enough fodder - and whacky Indian news is surprisingly well reported in the western press. Hm

I came across this post a few days back on his blog. The post is really about how konked off Adams is - but the part that grabbed my attention was the part about methamphetamines - a drug, not the crocin kind - the cocaine kind. I try to keep my blog fairly "modest" - but I encourage you to read through his post to find out more about the various pleasures and pitfalls of "Meth" abuse.

Then let me draw your attention toward the following pictures (Link from Adams) - they are "before" and "after" snaps of Meth abusers - you know like the mangy and then (OH my god!) hairy scalps youve seen on Dr Batra's adverts in newspapers.

http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugIssue/MethResources/faces/photo_9.html
http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugIssue/MethResources/faces/index.html
http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugIssue/MethResources/faces/photo_8.html

Done? Go ahead..take a look..its just three clicks and back buttons away. If you are using Meth you should know where you are headed, and if you arent feel happy and shiny.
The pictures may horrify the more sensitive of you. They are clearly of unhappy people with loads of problems - and theres something about this kind of unhappiness that makes your eyes widen and throat gulp.

Hm.. so what was the first thought that went through my head when I was looking at these pictures? I ll tell ya...it was was "WHAT on Gods Green Earth is wrong with their Hair!!!". Did you notice..the three pictures I linked to each have perfect nice crew cuts and steps cuts and whatever... in the before snap - and in the after snap their hair..well looks like theyve just been treated to shock therapy. Maybe they had..who knows. Picture 8 even plumped for an "overgrown skunk caught in a dryer" hair cut - while she spent her time racked by all the serotonin or whatistshname. So is there something about drug abuse that relates to bad haircuts..a curious passerby might wander.

Now all this is not merely existential stuff...its goddamm personal (As Mike Corleone would say). The reason why my mind flew off at an enraged tangent at this gross misrepresentation of messed up hair - is that I have been a proud owner of some for most of my conscious life. Combs have always looked like instruments of torture to me, and since the time I had grown too tall for my mum to grab a handful of my hair and yank my head towards a comb (quite while back I may add) I have sworn never to get near one. And since I am experimenting with long hair, I could totally identify with the "after" snaps. I also vaguely recall noticing - though the early morning haze that surrounds me when I reach my lab around noonish - vague passersby looking at me with a certain melancholy and nodding sympathetically into their coffee. Couple of times I even recall sympathetic noises being made as I pass by. It all clicked into place in my head and of course I am devastated and bloody enraged!

Would it really have hurt the photographer to give the hair a once over - I m sure the head was within yanking distance. Or maybe take the photo after the hair had settled down after all the shock therapy.

And could it be possible that the sympathy was directed at the Graduate student who walks in groggily at noon and uses his lab key on the refrigerator door?

Hm...