the move

everybody's got a favorite move. that lil bit of slickness that moves mountains, seduces the virgin, nourishes the barren. the kind that makes others swim across shark infested waters and brave hindi flicks. yeah, that kind. i've got one of those. my favorite move is coming back to mumbai. i think i'm one of those guys to whom mumbai means more than bombay just coz of the 'when' my last move took place. bombay was the place that i saw in all the movies. big, beautiful and close to perfect. mumbai was where i grew up. big beautiful and far from perfect. and i loved it. i liked the independence, the money, the beach and all that jazz but what i loved was the pressure to be. the pressure to be good, bad, smart, stupid, whatever. everybody's waiting on you to figure it out. and that's good. you don't wanna be 40 and confused. and i did.

its good to be back.

the week that was

shit that hit the fan-
lehmann bros
merill
aig
mangalore
bihar
orissa
pakistan
north korea
palin's mails

resulting in-
prices, economic slowdown, unemployment, insecurity, fear, intimidation, military confrontation, nuclear threats, potentially leaked government hoo-hahs. plenty of fodder for the writers of the bond franchise. they've done korea already. and they did a media mogul so that leaves out anything related to business based shenanigans. that leaves two topics: intolerance and imprudent governments. Maybe they could weave both into one tight little script. now, how would something like that go? a minority government tries half heartedly to stop a bunch of politically motivated ultra-nationalistic zealots from mopping up the paddy fields of a poverty stricken country with a bunch of zealots of another kind. enter bond. an aston martin, a drink and a tumble with a bollwood actress follows and then he's down to business. He liaisons with a call center employee who accidentally discovers that the government intends to do nothing about the 'threshing of the paddy'. while being beaten up by a riotous mob that thinks he's an american trying to corrupt the neighbourhood's fair maidens, he has a vision where he learns about a red button on a control panel in a cave in the himalayas. a brief stint in a government hospital, a bout of malaria and a fetching nurse later, he's snowboarding his way to a cave right at the top of everest. finds the button. presses it. goes home. goes to a beach.

doesn't work for you?

maybe it'll work better with superman in it.

trippin' in tn

dime bored

boredom knows no boundaries, no friendships, no loyalties and certainly can't read time. lasts almost as long as Dynasty did. Here's to boredom.

Staring at your monitor all day,
The excel sheet from hell.
Looking for amusement in a monochrome world.
Everything is white.
And then I see a colored object flitting around, a butterfly.
Next day I walk in,
I see smiles, laughs, pats on the back.
Why?
I've got pink sox, a green shirt, yellow pants and reflecting shades.
You see color, you smile.
I see a different monochrome. Not bad.

travelin jim

wheels, crank shafts, nitro. ah, the stuff of life. means to an end that never comes. you get on and you don't get off. but what for? coz your papa was a rollin stone? coz your brudda was a turtle egg smuggler? coz your uncle transported minors across state lines? or is there more to that bug up your ass? why do you wanna see the last of mohicans? or did you miss him? I did. what about you? did you stuff that saddle bag and giddyup at all? yeah? good on you mate. i need to buy my outfit. six horses (can't ride them too hard you know. gotta worry about the terrain and shit) oughta do the trick. and then where do i go? to the next county? drink with the rowdy cousins at the saloon, pick up the local floozie and then canter back home feeling all good and sprightly? no? that's not what its about? gotta sow your oats a little father away? get away from daddy's shadow? not a bad idea, but how far away is far enough? is that far enough away? so then what is it? just get on and go. go for the sake of moving. maybe not even that. go for the sake of being in motion. now we're getting somewhere. and that my friend is why travelin jim is a travelin jack.

blast from the past

deja vu. i guess that's all i have to say about the blasts that shook the very foundations of Bangalore's mediocrity today. they're all the same when your ass isn't on the line i guess. if you've seen one, you've seen them all. they're preceded by a bunch of signals dudes catching a conversation in mid air about lighting one up in a busy street and then wanking off on it. then comes the exciting part, the closest thing to hollywood that real life can offer. There's smoke and bangs, yeah? and then there's another bunch of guys that walk through the rubble with dogs that probably fight the urge to whiz on every broken block of cement in sight. and then comes the politician and the sympathetic to victims/tough on terrorists speech which I think is a pre-requisite to get a vote-everyone's got the standard issue. what follows is a lot of tapped phone lines and some wishful thinking about a crackdown on another sleeper cell. Well, there might be a fake arrest or two, but wtf, that's like page six news. soon people forget about it. the cops give up. the bad guys move on, get fat, get rich and get dead. well, some of them talk too much in bars and get nailed but that's to be expected. There's no discipline in terrorism these days.

like i said, same ol same ol. but not quite. not this time. none dead yet. which is saying something. So what's the point? What are they trying to say? Maybe its time to listen. this time.

de wish

back to the beer. after 5 outta the last nine weeks in bed. after rediscovering my family. after finally making the decision to move on to the other side of the fence on a meadow on the other side of the planet (man i hope that ain't astroturf). which is to say i've finally figured out life. what more could a semi-demi-almost there god want? World peace maybe. and also in the balkans. or is there peace there already? how about in Sudan? there's gotta be a war borne crisis there! or should that be crisis born of war? funny when you think about it, was always told that the only thing that comes from war is grief. come to think of it, have also read that the US economy has always boomed on the back of a good old fashioned war, thats excepting this time but that's probably coz Dubya doesn't have enough fingers to count how many billions he could make for his friends in business. man, those republicans are money grubbing cold hearted beasts in grey suits. don't they look a lot like those guys from IBM? Or did those money grubbing cold hearted beasts in grey suits wear blue? didn't IBM stand for International Business Machines? maybe all those IBMers have evolved into Republicans. Alright, I'll admit it, maybe the evolution hasn't exactly been the way Darwin would have guessed. Surely the Dems are better. After all they tried to discredit an AA and Chick with equal American fervor. Doesn't that show that a country that cares for its minorities will care for the rest of world? Surely, those dudes that were open enough to vote for a woman are cool enough to vote for a dude from the wrong side of town. So what if his daddy wasn't 'good old American made'? Weren't the Kennedys Irish? Umm yeah, but isn't Ireland, like, within drivin distance of Boston? Hell, as long as BA's daddy wasn't a born again christian, that's all right! What was that? He wasn't christian? Not even a catholic?

Hmmm, didn't those new age IBMers stop the first Gulf war? Maybe McCain whose learnt how not to kill in Vietnam can show us all. Vote McCain! For peace in the Balkans. I would if I could. Man, that grass is GREEN!

rundun

waal, the run's ovah. its comungon. dun 5 instada 10. shit happens. whatchu gonna do? except try and run harder next time. there's always a next time. sometimes.

the 'i'm back' post

for starters, gotta get this off my chest- the word association thingie was to test the following hypothesis:

Ho=XXXians are hypocritical wanks

based on the results, I have come to the following conclusion, which may in future be validated by means of a slightly more evolved psychometric test:

XXXians are too superficial to realise that they're hypocritical.

talk about taking controversial positions. I'm glad nobody reads this damn thing. anyhoo, here's my justification for it. Analysis of self is a concept that is alien to the average XXXian and that self often hides a two headed beast. perhaps it is a reflection of what it means to be in a society that is evolving on several different tangents due to its much celebrated diversity. tradition and modernity. religious morality and corruption. power and humility. cosmopolitanism and the virgin bride. We want it all. And that is the reason for our troubles. It would be far easier to pick one destination and go where the road takes us instead of worrying that the journey is the reward. There'd be far fewer gleeful shrinks if there was more simplicity in the way we lead our lives. We'd be the masters of intellectual masturbation if masturbation wasn't such a societal boo boo. How does that relate to XXXians being superficial? Simple, we are learning to see what we want to, not what is. Not because we are unable to but because we choose not to. Perhaps we are now conditioned not to. but that's another issue altogether and better tackled when I have a longer break from work. Not a single XXXian can deny that his pride in being from XXX takes full cognizance of the fact that we still have one of the largest impoverished masses of people in the world. 220 mil last count. we know it. and yet we don't. we see it. and yet we don't. we feel it. and yet we don't. coz that's what we do best. ignorance is bliss. and ignorance is blessed.

uh oh.

I just realised that I just proved that Indians are superficial because they're moving away from hypocrisy to plain, simple cynicism and callousness. It's a virtue to play the game the way it wasn't meant to be played. And that's the way to get a move on for XXX.

Oh well, it was written in the stars.

gedda grip

what did you do on the weekend, huh? laid around the house, watched telly, read a little and that's about it. two and a half things in the only free time you got all week to accomplish whatever it is that you're moving onto. 'but i did everything i wanted to do during the week', you say. 'besides, aren't weekends just about chilling out?'. It's not just about homework. its about not doing the same thing every sunday. should sundays be as familiar as socks? are you ready to get comfortable? coz if you are, you one happy boy. and if you not, there be hope for you yet.

run forest run

always hated running. its boring. its hard. i was never fast. neither did i have endurance and that was frustrating. have no beef in my calves. end result: was always a middling runner over piddling distances. my best running days went with the loss of the advantage of longer legs in class four. moved onto to other stuff where i was more competitive. did pretty good too. was the meanest defender on almost any basketball court i stepped onto. they even had a name for me. 'Stagger' they called me coz that was what I did best. I'd strategically place my head right at the shooting elbow of the slower point guard and sooner or later induce a knock that'd put his off his game. painful, but it worked. and then i'd walk into a few more elbows, and sure enough we'd win. very painful, but it worked. the point i'm staggering towards (couldn't resist that) is that i followed the advice my momma gave me which was: so what if you suck at math, make up for it in science. I moved onto things that i was suited to and figured it worthless to pursue that which i knew i wasn't naturally good at.

A little aside: Writing's a nice thing, isn't it. I just juiced up a sweet way to say that i took the easy way out.

Anyhoo, i guess at some point in life you realise that a) specialization is for the worms and b) sometimes the battle is worth the cause.

I've gone back to running. gonna run 10k at a race in two months. i can run 2 now. i can run 10 in two months time.

word association exp-1

you say potato, i say potahto;
you say tomato, i say tomahto;
and so on and so forth with syllable twisting and tongue twirling.

I liked the song the first time i heard it in a kevin pollak movie. and i'm convinced that my fellow sambar and paratha brethren would love it too. not quite so much because of the hummable tune but because of the special significance of the lyrics. they won't be able to explain why they like it but i'm fairly certain that most of them would figure out what the song means to them when they dig a little. or in this case, when i prod them a little. and what better way to do it than through the use of the tried, tested and abused tool for the disabusal of the mind-word association. and why am i performing such a meaningless exercise? to validate a theory. bear with me willya? save the rancor for when the hypothesis and the validation are revealed. later fellas.

to participate, use this link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=PPQqQtoQMFKoP1KVJY0rHQ_3d_3d

the denial post

no, i do not have writer's block. i might be deficient in enough ways as to keep dreams of a hacienda in guadalajara and a 'beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, witty.....'woman's company just that, but no, i am not letter deficient. I'm just too stupid to put two and two together (the twos float around you see. it's all part of the 'why two and two isn't the only way to get four' conspiracy, but that's another story.)and make a funky ass story that'll grab people by their balls (grabbing people by the eyeballs is so icky, don't you think?). So now that that's all sorted, later peers and pervs.

ash to ash my ass

ash to ash, dust to dust. is that all you're made of? you don't carry anything with you when you kick the bucket. and trust me, that's one dented bucket from all those dead 'uns having given it their best shot to take along their goodies. so, is it worth being a lennon, an ali, a jordan? "of course", you say. "what kind of a fool question is that?" but hey, what's the point? do you do it for those that you leave behind? are you a hero of some kind? a saint? no you don't. so you do it for you.

Lennon left behind his songs and a wonky woman called yoko. And Ali will leave behind plenty of butterfly and bee stories of a slightly atypical nature. Its the legacy, bitch.

So, these guys did their shit for themselves. But they left behind something for the adoring public. But they probably didn't give a damn about them. Do you think Ali loved that honky boxing expert that still talks him up on ESPN 2?

performance demands acknowledgement. They... demand... respect. Not because they gave a damn about the people that give stars their shine, but because every action of theirs in public is a challenge to all comers. "Bring it on", they said. "I'm invincible. But I can be beat. I am the red queen". Did you hear Marion Jones say it in her car on her way to Balco?

Whatever their thoughts on immortality, none of these people thought 'ash to ash, dust to dust; reduce to CH4 we must.' leave that mark you idiot. you bum. today is not just another day. it's not even the first day of the rest of your life. that started yesterday. so do what you gotta do. then you find someone that can take you down. and take him down. and then you do it again. and again. sounds boring, right? a waste of time? don't knock it till you've tried it. coz that way, your legacy in place, you can go to work at being a legend. why? coz the chicks dig it.