Oracle but not clairvoyant

Game of life

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Another attempt at writing fiction.

Yang Chol-pak steeled himself up as he looked into the mirror, his dark black eyes piercing through his taut image. His neatly parted hair seemed to quiver just a tiny bit as he put on his first pair of thin flesh-colored latex gloves. He would put on another pair just to be sure that any fingerprints he had left on the first pair that he had touched with his bare hands would not betray him. He was about to play the game of his life; victory assured him an uncertain future but loss would mean slow and torturous deaths for him and anyone who shared even a strand of DNA with him.

Yang Chol-pak hailed from an illustrious family with a distinguished track record of patriotism. His grandfather had been a special confidante of Great Leader Kim Il-sung; a gallant commander who had singlehandedly shot down over thirty American fighter jets. The Dear Leader Kim Jong-il had sparred with Yang's father in Taekwondo sessions and had commissioned him to write forewords to thirteen of his treatises on Juche – the Great Leader's fearless development mantra that had spurred the noble workers of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to achieve hitherto unheard-of strides in self-sufficiency, technological prowess and mastery of literature and the fine arts. Twenty nine years ago, when the sparrows had congregated in a heart-shaped formation beneath the rainbow on Paekdu mountain, and little Kim Jong-un had blessed the workers of his great Republic with his charismatic and cherubic smile for the first time, Yang's father had been bestowed with the greatest honor of them all. In three years, he would move to Geneva as a diplomat, taking little Kim as his own son to study in an elite private school. The Dear Leader wanted his successor to get the best possible education; to be aware of the evils of Capitalism by witnessing the havoc it wreaked on the very people who had foolishly welcomed it with open arms. Seven months later, Yang was born.

Yang of course did not know the true identity of his brother Kim (who used Yang's family name). He always wondered why Kim had the bigger bedroom and his own TV set. He was perplexed when they studied the principles of Juche together, for the private tutor seemed to favor Kim all the time, chiding little Yang for no reason. Yang hated it that he always had to do the dishes after dinner, while Kim got to go to his room with a big bowl of ice cream, playing video games. He wondered why Kim would go for private vacations with the Dear Leader every summer, while he, Yang would have to be content to take the train with his parents from Pyongyang to Myohyangsan to view the same old gifts the Great Leader had supposedly received from international dignitaries. Kim would always come back from his trips and boast about the game he had nabbed, both in the wilderness and later on in his bedroom at the Dear Leader's summer palace in Wonsan. Little Yang would learn the truth much later, at the ripe old age of nineteen.

With tensions escalating between the two Koreas, and Kim Jong-un threatening to bomb America, the boys at Langley had decided that it was time to neutralize the new despot. Their chief operative for the mission was Jason Lee, a thirty-five year old Korean-American agent, with special training in covert ops, electronic spying and smuggling of arms. Jason had chatted up Yang at a bar in Paris and the two had hit it off. As Yang had gotten drunker and drunker, he had slowly revealed his resentment for his “brother.” Jason had found his hit-man. He made sure that Yang flirted with Eunice Park, a svelte spy and a seventh Dan in Taekwondo, who was sitting a few tables away. She followed him to his room.

Yang and Kim had gone on to study economics, political science and applied physics from the prestigious Kim Il-sung University, where the latter had shattered every academic record, having written stunningly innovative research papers that had given a fresh breath of life to the nation's economic and weapons' programs. Kim Jon-un, now using his real identity, had come into his own. Though he scorned the loose morals and the hedonism of the West, there was one aspect of their avaricious lifestyle he had fallen in love with – video games. He simply loved video games, and had Play Stations and Game Boys, along with the latest titles sent over to him from Beijing, Moscow or Paris. He had also cultivated another obsession – Laser Quest.

Kim Jong-un had first encountered the game of Laser Quest at the age of fifteen, during a class trip to Zurich. He had continued his passion throughout his days in Switzerland, roping in his bodyguards and the children of other diplomats to play with him in private sessions. They would always form two teams – Kim leading the noble Koreans and Yang commanding the cowardly Americans. Kim kept the commandos; Yang had to make do with the children. One of the younger kids once had the temerity to shoot Kim in the back; he and his parents were never heard of again. From then on, the other diplomats had the good sense to make the arena manager deactivate young Kim's sensors.

The Glock 22 would contain only two bullets – the second one was just in case the first shot failed. It would be cocked and ready for action. Christian missionaries operating at the border in Dandong, China would smuggle the weapon across the Yalu river from where a few defectors would carry it to Pyongyang. It was important to use a foreign pistol; inventory controls were increasingly strict in the cash-strapped North Korean military.

Kim could not bear the thought of giving it up in Pyongyang. “Wasn't the temporary cycle of death and rebirth espoused in Laser Quest an embodiment of the Confucian ideals his grandfather Kim Il-sung had so deftly woven into Juche?” The idea of a dark room, with flashing suits of sensor-laden armor and laser guns testing his survival instincts enamored Kim so much that he would have to build his own Laser Quest Arena in Pyongyang. With his acute knowledge of electrical circuits and advanced optics, he had given detailed instructions to a skilled technical crew to build a massive 8000 square-foot Laser Quest arena in downtown Pyongyang. The Koreans would now decimate the Americans every Friday evening. In a flash of inspiration he called it Juche Quest.

The weapon would be located at the northwest corner of the Juche Quest arena, under a loose floorboard. The exact location would not be revealed to Yang – just in case there was a double agent somewhere in the scheme. Jason had been concise in his instructions. “Search for a blob of white paint carelessly spilled on the floor. Then slowly lift up the floorboard there and approach Kim Jong-un from the back if possible. Do this in the last five minutes of the session. Avoid being seen by anyone, least of all your own teammates. The commandos on his side will be too scared to speak out against you. Shoot him twice in the head and drop the weapon. Do NOT aim for the chest – though ineffective, the armor may accidentally protect him. If he survives, all hell will befall you and your family! Continue with the game as if nothing has happened. The gun is ultra-silent; nobody will hear you.” The CIA had promised to engineer a coup that very night, and install Yang Chol-pak as the Supreme Worker of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

They had arrived at the Juche Quest arena. The protocol was the same. Everyone except Kim Jong-un had to go through a thorough strip search. Even Yang.

Yang found this procedure extremely humiliating. “How dare Kim distrust me!” he thought. “Haven't my parents raised him like their own? Haven't we eaten at the same table for almost two decades?” And then he remembered, with a slight pang of guilt, what he was about to accomplish. Should he go on a cruise with Kim's girls or should he find his own? Should he celebrate by personally executing Kim's biggest sycophants? That would probably be unnecessary. They would defect to his side anyway, once the Americans crossed the DMZ. He thought about the irony of the situation. He had played an American every Friday for the last fourteen years of his life. The prophecy was about to fulfill itself.

The room darkened as the thirty minute battle began for the last time. The strobe lights flashed and the music was loud as the gallant Koreans began their final rout of America. Yang walked around slowly, keeping mainly to the northwest. He had found the blob of paint and almost wet his pants as the silhouette of a player passed him by as he bent down to retrieve the weapon. The Glock was with him now.

The fateful moment had arrived. He had found Kim alone. Taking careful aim, he pulled the trigger. “Click, click...click...click...” There were no bullets inside the damned weapon! The lights came on, the music stopped and two burly commandos dragged Yang Chol-pak away.

Pak Su-gil had found the golden escape route when the defectors approached him with the Glock. A brilliant engineering mind who had graduated summa cum laude from Kim Il-sung University, he had been frustrated in his role as the Chief Engineer of the Juche Quest arena. He now had the perfect opportunity to prove his loyalty to his Leader. Pak had informed the authorities about the assassination plan and had spearheaded a vicious counter strategy. The gun would remain under the floorboard, but the bullets would be removed. He had also set up a network of infrared surveillance cameras to catch the perpetrator red-handed. Now watching from his control desk, Pak heaved a contented sigh of relief. He would be rewarded with a spacious new apartment in Downtown Pyongyang. He hoped to be transferred to the weapons' program soon.

Some data from the Indian Railways

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 17:11:00 +0000

Without comment, I present this chart that I plotted based on railway employment data (from www.data.gov.in) and railway mishap data (from knoema.com). Data for railway mishaps are available only from 2002 - 2009. Nitish Kumar was the Railway Minister up to 2004, and was succeeded by Laloo Prasad Yadav up to 2009.

I have not presented railway employment numbers post 2009 (when Mamata Banerjee took over from Mr. Yadav, but the employment numbers continued to reduce).

Update: Here are some correlations (in case you think that the figure can be misconstrued)

Between death and employment: -0.90
Between injury and employment: -0.91
Between (death + injury) and employment: -0.93

The Chess Player

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:00:00 +0000

It is a gloomy day in Manhattan, and it shows on Nashon’s face. Business is slow, and his throaty challenges to passers-by do not elicit many opponents. There is a light drizzle, and any tourist willing to play this withered old hustler is either comfortably ensconced inside one of New York's many cafés or busy lining up to scale the Empire State Building or another one of humankind’s unending attempts to defy gravity. I am watching him from a few tables across, smoking one of New York’s highly priced cigarettes in clear violation of the umpteen no-smoking signs that I have somehow missed.

Washington Square Park symbolizes the diversity and quirks of New York’s residents like no other place. One can find rich NYU students and bankers sipping lattes from Starbucks, clowns performing for mesmerized children, kippah-clad men reading mothballed texts, gamblers playing cards with money from yesterday’s crack sale, and of course the umpteen chess hustlers commandeering the chequered tables in the southwest corner.

Nashon is a wily old cat. He immediately sizes up his opponent, playing him rather than the board. He employs tactical anomalies that serious players would scoff at. And to make sure the mark gets full bang for his buck, he intersperses his game with trash talk, expert analysis and sometimes lessons on life as well. He charges extra for photos. His alert eye misses none; he beckons to me after relieving some poor sod from Canada of his ten dollars. “Come here man,” he says, “let’s play a game.” I demur, knowing full well what the outcome will be. “Sorry, I can barely play, man.” He is a veteran of persuasion. “Brother, you are from a land of warriors. Warriors of the mind and warriors of the body. Your ancestors invented this game!” His voice is hypnotic. His eyes are gleaming from behind his cello-taped glasses. “Haven’t you heard of Anand?” He is referring to the Indian chess legend Viswanathan Anand, gentlemanly conquistador of the sixty-four squares. “Yes, I have heard of him,” I find myself stammering. “But I can barely play,” I insist again. “Be a man, be a warrior!” he bellows. “Unless you dare to do battle, you will remain meek and submissive as you are now.”

His words have found their mark. My entire life flashes by me. Of the time the school bully had made off with my ping pong ball. Of the time the union president threatened me, being displeased with an article I wrote for the college paper. Of the unscrupulous professor who had appropriated my hard work. Of worse things – where I had shied away from confrontation. I had seen it all, and had never put up a fight. Nashon is right. I am meek and submissive. Submissive enough to play Nashon?

A petite young girl walks by, with a surprisingly large bosom. Nashon smiles at her, gesturing at me to wait. She unzips her coat in front of my bewildered eyes. Out comes a little dove, specks of red blood dotting its immaculate white exterior. “Poor thing flew into a window pane,” she explains. Nashon takes charge. He is clearly the lord of Washington Square Park. He gives her detailed instructions on what kind of bandages and ointments to buy, how to prepare a sling for its broken leg and how to keep it warm and dry. I try to smile but manage only a feeble grin.

I wonder about Nashon. He could be anywhere between fifty and seventy years old. All his possessions seem to be with him; one large backpack, a chess set and a worn out timer that had probably been rewired to keep time in his favour. He also owns a rickety old bicycle. Where does he live? Probably in one of the low cost projects nearby if he wasn’t homeless. Has he fought in Vietnam?

What if Nashon had not been Black? Would he be a suit in Wall Street? A professor of anthropology? Bobby Fischer? Maybe not. Nashon’s rapid Queen thrusts and tactical artifices qualify him as a patzer – a derogatory term used by chess experts for players like him.

“Hey Anand, give me one of your cigarettes man!” his command shatters my reverie. I part with sixty cents of my hard-earned money. “Let’s play for ten dollars. You win, I pay you. I win, you pay me.” I check my wallet. We sit down. A few tourists gather by. “This is so cool,” I hear a middle-aged lady tell her husband. She takes a photo, and then looks surprised when Nashon asks for his dollar. She pays up. I hand her my phone and ask for a photo. My picture is free. The crowd swells; it’s not often that one gets to see an Indian twenty-something play an old Black man. I play White.

I do not know any strategy. I cannot centre my pieces. I know nothing of point values, gambits, castling or defences. My moves are sloppy and unsure. Nashon, on the other hand, is a showman. He pretends to be flustered by my meaningless checks and foolhardy pawn sacrifices. An old man titters; I may have set myself up for a brutal decimation, but Nashon wants to play to the gallery. His moves grow bolder and bolder, as he picks up his pieces and lays them down with audible thumps. He flips the switch on his pocket radio, treating us to some good old jazz music. At one point I think I have his Queen; excitedly I take it with my Knight. The crowd jeers. I have not noticed that it is preventing his Rook from taking my King.

Concentration has always been my problem, making me a sitting duck for games of any kind. I would score a few points in ping pong before my smashes went all awry. After an eighty point bingo in Scrabble, I would inevitably settle for low-scoring three letter words. I would beat the batsman with a screamer of an outswinger before bowling three half volleys at his eager bat. In chess too, I would start off with a flourish and then give up my Queen in an oversight that I would immediately rue.

The sun begins to peek out of the clouds. The drizzle has stopped; I observe a cellist playing a beautiful melody somewhere in the distance. I have never seen a cello before, and the sight fascinates me. “Yo Anand, watch your clock!” I snap out of my daydream once more and see that I have two minutes left. I am down to my King, two Pawns and a Rook. Nashon has lost only two Pawns, and still has his Queen, both Rooks and a Bishop. He is close to promoting a Pawn. It’s a lost cause, but I soldier on. The crowd has mostly dispersed, disgusted with my utter ineptitude at the game of my forefathers. The inevitable happens. “Checkmate!” I verify his claim. He has a sad smile on his face as he reaches out for my money. The cellist reaches a crescendo.

“You are a promising player, Anand,” says Nashon. “But you made some crucial mistakes.” He proceeds to deconstruct the game move by move, pointing out the various times I had committed hara-kiri. I had moved too many pawns, made too many losing exchanges, been too greedy early on, and dropped my Queen as usual. I nod sheepishly. He offers to give me lessons for just forty dollars an hour. I tell him it’s my last day in the US. He nods his head ruefully. “I could have transformed you into a warrior fit to conquer the world, man.”

I slowly begin to walk away, when I hear him call out. “Hey Anand! How about one of them cigarettes man?”

Being Multilingual

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:01:00 +0000

This is an essay that I wrote for the Prof. Barbra Naidu Personal Essay Contest conducted by the English Department of St. Josephs College, Bangalore as part of its literature festival Meta 2013. It won the first prize in the Open category. I have rectified some typos, redundant words and grammar mistakes that I discovered after I submitted it.

I met Ali, a Pakistani vendor of pornographic DVDs on a beach in Mykonos. He was a profound man, even though he was a radical and functionally illiterate. After unsuccessfully trying to make me buy “Sexy Time in the Parthenon – IV” for only five euros, he decided to wax eloquent about life and philosophy (not before berating me for eating a pork souvlaki). He claimed that he had traveled on foot from Pakistan to Turkey via Afghanistan and Iran before landing up in Greece. His next destination was Italy, where he would “…smuggle himself across the border to Canada.” I did not have the heart to correct him. “I am a perpetual traveler,” he said, quoting some Sufi mystic I had never heard of. “I will keep discovering new lands, and be buried wherever I drop dead.” At that moment I was grateful that I did not have to face sweltering heat or icy blizzards to fulfill my wanderlust. Apart from his native Punjabi and Urdu, I was impressed that Ali could at least speak a smattering of Greek and English.

Throughout my life, I have grappled with new languages. Born to Bengali parents in mofussil Howrah district of West Bengal, I started speaking well past my third birthday. That was Bengali. I was admitted to an English-medium, supposedly ICSE school; Playway Nursery (fondly referred to by alumni as “St. Playway”), though I had never heard a single teacher there ever utter a word of English. Howrah was like that; the Principal of St. Thomas School in Dasnagar had proudly declared to my parents that all his teachers were “Cathelete” nuns.

When I was five, my father was transferred to Bombay. I would later learn that he was also suffering from an advanced stage of leukemia. He would live only three years more. Bombay was a total culture shock. We lived in tony Pali Hill, where everyone else had stashes of black money, drove around in Mercs and spoke English and pidgin rich-Sindhi Hindi. The kindly Father at St. Stanislaus asked me several questions, none of which made any sense to me. Finally, smiling exasperatedly, he said, “sing a song.” My father translated. I jumped off his lap, flashed a broad smile and broke into “EK DO TEEN…” while humping the air inside the clergyman’s somber trophy-filled office. I was accepted at another school that interviewed only my mother.

I do not remember when it happened, but one sunny day I woke up, went to the playground and found myself confidently speaking English. Soon I could read Enid Blyton as well. I was not that lucky with Hindi. I could barely understand the language, let alone speak it. To make matters worse, I had to learn Marathi at school too, though nobody in my vicinity spoke it. Then my father died. Our world came apart. We moved to Bangalore. School principals discreetly started suggesting that they needed funds for benches and stationery, money which my distraught mother could ill afford. After some strings were pulled, I was temporarily admitted to a school I hated. Nobody spoke English, and even I spoke better Hindi than the Hindi teacher. Classes were informally taught in an alien language – Kannada. I did not stay there for even a year.

People at my new school spoke English in class, but preferred Kannada in the alleys. It was a struggle picking up this new “idli-dosa” tongue (as expat Bengalis loved to call it – some had stayed in Bangalore for over four decades without learning a single word). Teachers made concessions, but even then I had to memorize entire passages from the Kannada textbooks just to get by. Most of the time, I had no idea what they meant. It was about three years later that I realized that I could actually speak Kannada. I chose to hide it, getting away with murder in Kannada class, by making seemingly innocent but outrageous utterances to the teacher, and getting more marks than I really deserved. Thanks to a workshop for spoken Sanskrit, I had gained some fluency there as well. Our Sanskrit teacher swore at us (in Kannada) when we asked him how people cussed each other in the language of the Vedas. Some of us then made a spirited effort to amend the apparent absence of abuse in the argot of Adi Sankara.

With my erratic academic record, I was lucky to land a seat in the pristine beachside campus of the Karnataka Regional Engineering College at Surathkal. Alas, the hostels were anything but pristine. That is where I learnt Bengali. “Wait,” you say? “Wasn’t that your first language and mother tongue?” Yes sir. I see you have been paying attention. However, I spoke Bengali only with people much older than me, or my sister. I did not even know that slangs existed in its pristine parlance. That was until I met Maharaj, my roommate who blasted Anu Malik on loop, and like me, rarely soaked his clothes in a bucket inside our room for less than three days. We also made sure never to bathe on the same day. Maharaj quickly became my mentor in rectifying in one day, the debilitating effects that eighteen years of Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray and Kazi Nazrul Islam had inflicted on my brain. And I learnt Hindi yet again.

The undergraduate days presented another linguistic tussle for me. Fulfilling my dream of being a thoroughbred Brahmin IT professional (who enjoyed the occasional beef roll whenever he passed Johnson Market) meant that I had to learn programming too. So I decided to learn the C programming language, a herculean task for someone who barely knew how to use a computer for anything else other than shooting bullets onto black and white pixelated UFOs. I could barely locate the characters on the QWERTY keyboard. And I was majoring in Chemical Engineering, whose syllabus was such that my programming skills would be useless until three years later, when a few companies chose to interview students from “core” engineering branches. The gamble paid off – I landed a job with a Fortune 500 company that made commercial applications that helped other companies manage their data. This meant that I had to grapple with a whole new set of exotic languages – SQL, PL/SQL and Java. Then I complicated my life further – by leaving a cushy job and enrolling in a master’s program, again in Chemical Engineering. This time I had to pick up MATLAB, TCL and LaTeX as well. My second job added Visual Basic and VB++ to my resume. I have forgotten most of these. But I can type pretty fast now.

SRK was my French teacher in college. I had joined his course hoping that it would attract the girls – but alas, I had paid up for the class only to realize that there would be none. I was soon to realize why. There was something pathetically repulsive about SRK – he was a foulmouthed pervert in his early fifties who thought he was a standup comic. He would offer to loan us his porn collection (provided we returned each DVD within a week), talk about his daughter’s friend’s curvy posterior (she was a final-year student at the same college) and brag about how he had banged his maidservant a few months ago (he had to increase her monthly pay by a hundred rupees after that). His proudest boast was that he had made up a dirty joke that was “…appreciated even in IIT Bombay!” To make matters worse, he barely knew French and spoke it with a strong North Karnataka accent. Thus, when I found myself in graduate school in France eight years later, it was an unwelcome shock to me that I understood nothing. In fact, I think I would have been better off without SRK’s pedagogy than with.

I was struggling with a new language once again. After successful conquests of Bengali, English, Kannada, Hindi and even a smattering of Tamil and Sanskrit, my brain seemed to be saturated once again. Few people outside the school spoke English in France. The pronunciations were bizarre – the R’s sounded like sputum-laden coughs and syllables were arbitrarily silent. Commas served as decimal points and every noun had an arbitrary gender. The few Indian-looking people around were actually Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who spoke no English and whose Tamil was absolutely alien to what I was familiar with back in Bangalore. I was truly in a strange land. I resorted to my old modus operandi once again. I made friends who taught me slangs and swearwords. I watched English movies with French subtitles. I joined a French course but dropped out as I did not want to know useless things like “The weather is fine today, Madame Garnier. Are you having a good day?” Finally I got it. I needed to join courses where the instructors knew no English! I signed up for Salsa and Taekwondo lessons (I still suck at both). Harry and Jean-Noel knew absolutely no English. Now I can comprehend strange phrases like “hold her hips and turn her!” and “kick his face while maintaining your center of gravity!” Other than once mistakenly picking up “langue de boeuf” (almost-raw cow’s tongue – yes, it tastes just like your own) in the school cafeteria, I must say I have managed to survive quite well in France. And the little knowledge of French that I have, affords me all kinds of street cred on the boulevards of New York, Lisbon, Tallinn and Bangalore.

I realized that I was not too different from Ali. True, I had acquired several degrees on paper and never had to face a blizzard or sandstorm unprotected. I never had to resort to paying bribes to border patrol officers to look the other way. Unlike him, I did want to go back home someday, something that he can probably never afford to do. But we shared the same wanderlust. We shared the same travel sores as we traipsed ceaselessly across continents. And in the process, without realizing it, we had both become multilingual.

Excerpts from a nightmare

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:31:00 +0000

Do you remember scenes from any of your nightmares?


When everything is over (Cemetery, Auvers-sur-Oise, France)

The Faraway Tree (Parc Guelle, Barcelona, Spain)

Evil lurks beneath the calm (View from Neuschwanstein Castle, Hohenschwangau, Germany)

Possessed (Somewhere below the Acropolis, Athens, Greece)

Modern Odyssey? (Syntagma Square, Athens, Greece)

Waiting for redemption (Roman dungeons, Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France)

Educational Premier League

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:40:00 +0000

Inspired by the success of associating cricketing milestones with brands in the IPL, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India has decided to do the same with key concepts in all subjects in its curriculum. It is anticipated that such a move will bring in the much-needed funds to improve basic education.

According to reliable sources who attended the policy meeting, all text books, question papers and educational support material will be upgraded to reflect these new changes. Teachers will be trained to incorporate these new terms in their classes, and students failing to quote relevant brand names in answers will be penalized. Some examples quoted in the memo include:

Mathematics

Given a function y=acosx + bsinx, find where it attains its DLF maximum if it exists. What is the value of this DLF maximum value?

Chemistry

Explain the principle of Karbonn Kamaal dating. How is it used to determine age of fossils?

History

Describe the Moneygram Money Transfer Quit India Movement.

Physics

Archimedes had a Citibank Moment of Success when he noticed that he displaced his own volume of water in the bathtub. How can this principle be used to assess the purity of gold?

Geography

Write a short paragraph about the currents in the Sahara Indian Ocean.

Biology

Draw a neat diagram of the Hajmola digestive system. Label all important parts.

Ragekumar

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:14:00 +0000

Eef you come today...

Cricket Rage

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:06:00 +0000

Before you correct me, Sreesanth is a proud alumnus of Florence Public School, Bangalore.

And yeah, he is better than some of the worthies mentioned above.

Mall-eswaram Rage

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:14:00 +0000

The times, they are a-changing. Malleswaram, once a staid old place is now ironically known for the hottest new mall in town.

Bishen Singh Bedi is Probably Right

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:08:00 +0000

After Murali retired, Bishen singh bedi called for a ban on the "doosra". His logic was that

"I strongly feel the ICC should take action to ban the doosra since it just cannot be bowled legally. Ashley Mallett has said the 'doosra is nothing but chucking' and Australian spinners, including Shane Warne, have raised an alarm against coaching it in Australia."

Read the full article here: http://is.gd/u1LZrA .

I was not so convinced about this till I saw this Pepsi ad, which "traces" the origin of Harbhajan Singh's doosra (Harbhajan had been called for throwing in the early stages of his career. But, after corrective action, as well as new definitions of chucking, he is deemed clean.).

See how he grips the ball (at the 22s mark). Now, get hold of a ball, and grip it exactly the same way, and try to bowl with a straight arm. Could you? The only way to bowl (and I mean it in the old way, not the post-Murali-controversy way) with this grip would yield one of the following

A dislocated shoulder
A feeble dead ball or a lollypop delivery begging to be hit into the stands
Knuckles bruised beyond repair

Now, try to bowl the with the same grip again, but bend your elbow just a little. Voila! You have suddenly launched a vicious missile that flummoxes all except the greatest batsmen!

Thus, my contention that Bishen Bedi was right. Harbhajan no doubt has a clean action, and the few doosras he bowls go unnoticed. In fact, to my biased eyes, the delivery shown in the ad itself is chucked!

Can you bowl a vicious doosra with a straight arm?

The Infinite Set of Zeros

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:18:00 +0000

Proposition: There exist an infinite number of zeros, and some zeros are greater than others.

Imagine you were playing Russian Roulette with a gun that, instead of having 6 bullet slots, had 666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666 bullet slots. And one bullet. Would you be scared? The chance of being shot by that one bullet is very low, in fact, so low that it is zero for all practical purposes. Now, suppose the same game were to be played, but with six hundred and sixty six bullets instead of one. Your chance of dying goes up six hundred and sixty six times, though it is still practically zero. Now, imagine that the shooter opens up the gun in front of you, and removes EVERY bullet. Then, he proceeds to play Russian Roulette with you. Would you be scared any more?

I do not know about you, but I would be most scared in the second case, and absolutely not scared in the last case. The reason is obvious enough: we do know that the odds, though practically zero in all cases, are different in each case.

Georg Cantor was a mathematician who proved that there exist an infinite number of infinities, and some infinities are greater than others. The crux of his work is explained very lucidly by Steven Strogatz here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/the-hilbert-hotel/#more-48595

Cantor [proved] that there are exactly as many positive fractions (ratios p/q of positive whole numbers p and q) as there are natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, …). That’s a much stronger statement than saying both sets are infinite. It says they are infinite to precisely the same extent, in the sense that a “one-to-one correspondence” can be established between them.

If many infinities exist and are unequal, their reciprocals, which are zero must also be unequal. That is, if X and Y are two positive infinities such that X<Y, then 1/X>1/Y. And there are an infinite number of such infinities. Thus, it must follow that there exist an infinite number of zeros, which are the reciprocals of these infinities. Each of these is different from the absolute zero, denoted by 0.

Note to readers: There is probably a fallacy in this argument. Do let me know your views in comments...

If Real Cricket Were Like Street Cricket...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 12:14:00 +0000

There would be no LBWs, hit-wickets, byes, leg byes or overthrows.
Chucking would be legal and bowling illegal. Deliveries that are too fast would be declared dead balls.
The non striker would double up as the umpire. He would either be empty handed or hold a stick.
No runs behind the wicket. Also, any nick behind the wickets would be out.
Every third wide or no ball (in lieu of every wide or no ball) per over would yield one run.
Every team would have 4 members. Both sides would field.
There would be a joker who bats for both teams, and fields for both teams. Usually the weakest player, unless he owns the equipment.
There would be one bowling end and one batting end. Batsmen would change after every over, and not the field. Also, both batsmen would use same bat (see 3). The batting end would have 3 stumps while the bowling end would have one stump. Stumps would be placed in a stump holder, and there would be no bails.
The ball would be a modified tennis ball: Cosco Cricket, Pacer or Vicky. Both innings would be played with the same ball.
There would be no sixers. Any shot clearing longest boundary would be "six and out." In case the ball is lost, the six runs would not be given. Also, shorter boundaries would exist, for "1 declared" and "2 declared" in case of an asymmetric field.
If the batsman were beaten thrice in the same over, he would be declared out.
The owner of the most pieces of equipment would play the role of match referee, opening batsman and bowler of the second over. Except this minor change, a team's bowling order and batting order would be exactly reversed.
Only clean one-handed catches after one bounce would dismiss batsmen. However, catches after one bounce, if two-handed or fumbled would not be valid.
The winner of the toss would always bat first and win by obscene margins.
A batsman would be declared out on playing either a switch hit or a shot with the back of his bat.

The Chanakya Formula

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:43:00 +0000

The latest book by Dan Brown will be released next year. But the story synopsis has been leaked by an employee of his publisher. Here it is:

Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is in New Delhi to deliver the keynote address to the graduating batch of St. Stephens College, New Delhi, when all hell breaks loose. Biman Chaudhuri, the legendary economist, management guru and dean of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, is found asphyxiated to death in his office. His white board has three cryptic symbols, a broken egg, a diamond in a heart and a map of undivided India, along with Robert Langdon's name.

Meanwhile, a dangerous fanatic hired by revivalist think tank Atanu and Sandeep Society (ASS) is on the prowl, desperate to get at the secret which could alter the very landscape of the world economy. Langdon, must run from the police and save the global economy, with the help of his brilliant, idealistic and young admirer, Ishita Sharma; an Economics lecturer and former gold medallist from St. Stephens. Their chase leads them all over India, as they must unravel clues hidden in the European architecture, fully equipped gyms, free wi-fi and well-stocked libraries of IIPM's numerous campuses. Can they uncover what the great ancient philosopher, economist and statesman had hidden in the Mauryan age? Read The Chanakya Formula to find out...

Vizzy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:47:00 +0000

This is one of my numerous attempts at being a fiction writer. I had submitted this to a contest without any success.

Howrah station was hot, squalid and crowded. From afar it was a majestic red Victorian building, the custodian of the nation’s lifeline. In the days of the Raj, the Railways had been the place to work. A job in the Railways was the ticket to respectability and a good dowry. My grandfather had worked in the Railways – his favourite boast was that he knew all the abbreviations of the station names as a Control Room operator. His father had used his friendship with the local Burra Sahib to get him that job. Now the station was just dirty. Paan stains dotted the walls, as the faint stench of urine pervaded the entire place. The presence of ten baskets of fish packed in ice and straw didn’t help too much either.

It was mid morning and I was looking forward to catching the train. Business had been good, so I was treating myself to an air-conditioned ticket ride home. I looked up at the sky – filled with crows searching for the fish they could smell. Hawkers and porters were everywhere, coexisting peacefully with the vagabonds, the homeless and the several rats that scurried past the sleeping villagers waiting for the train home. “One day I shall fly”, I promised myself. For now, I anticipated the cool confines of the AC III-tier coach with the liveried attendants to hand out blankets and pillows.

My reverie was broken by the shrill sound of the train’s whistle, and the ensuing melee. What had once been a languid trance had in a moment transformed into a free-for-all, as the mad rush began for the general compartment’s elusive seats. People flung bags, handkerchiefs and babies towards the doors, as the porters bulldozed their way past the hapless jeans-clad newly-married couple trying to find their compartment. The elderly couple seemed unfazed by all this, while the voluptuous American girl went stocked up on her mineral water. I waited, safe in the knowledge of my reserved air-conditioned top berth, as I scanned the passenger list to find out who my companions for the next thirty six hours would be.

The train was moving. The voluptuous American girl was not an American girl. She was probably from Sweden, and as tall as me. Her name was Helga Larsson (F24). She was very beautiful. I had to impress her. I took out my new Nokia phone with mp3 and camera, and made a call. “Sell all thousand Reliance shares!” I barked in English for all to hear. “I need to offload some shares at peak value,” I explained to Mr. Mehta (M46), hoping to start off a conversation. He had a nice-looking daughter too, Shreya (F20), and she was staring at the cover of the Richard Bach book (Illusions) that Helga was reading, while her mother Kanta (F40) was busy unpacking lunch. The sixth member in our cubicle was Rustom Merchant (M47), though that was not his real name. This story is really about him.

Though I rarely read anything but the business and sport pages, I had read Illusions a few years ago, and I was glad for that. I hated the book, but now I could be the brooding philosopher debating the existence and purpose of God himself. She was in the last few pages. Good. Scope for an interesting evening chat, over salted mangoes, peanuts and Pepsi, I thought.

“What do you do, son?”

My reverie was shattered by this question, which was asked in Bengali. This was Mr. Ghoshal (M54) on the side berth. He was short, bald and had a grey beard. He was travelling with his son Sumit (M17), most probably to admit him to one of Bangalore’s numerous colleges. Like me, he too had studied the passenger list and picked out the only fellow Bengalee near him.

“I am an investment banker,” I said, with a discreet glance in the direction of Helga. She didn’t flinch, but Shreya sure seemed impressed. Investment banker. I liked the term. Now you may be thinking what a hot-shot investment banker like me was doing on the Howrah-Bangalore train, instead of jetting to London or San Francisco club-class? Well, I roughly did the same things as most investment bankers did, but worked for myself and only myself. I managed a portfolio of shares. I studied the stock market as thoroughly as any wunderkind on Wall Street. I had my clients too, who trusted me with a lot of money and I used PowerPoint slides on them with devastating effect. My office was a garage and I didn’t have a projector to show my slides (I used my monitor), but my clients trusted me to make their money grow. Why, the other day, Mr. Kesavan had entrusted me with half his provident fund! Heck, to the outside world I was a mere stockbroker, but I preferred to call myself an investment banker. We achieved the same results, albeit on different scales.

“Uncle, what firm are you with?”

Damn Shreya. She may have looked nice, but was an obnoxious little twit. She called me uncle! If only, like me she hadn’t checked my age on the list (M31). Anyway, does a gap of eleven years make you an ‘uncle’? And she had to bring up my past.

“You can call me Raj. That’s what most people call me,” I said with a smile.

“Actually Mr. Raj, I am in my third year engineering and am seriously preparing for CAT. Can you give me a few tips?”

I looked at her blankly. Then I looked at Mr. and Mrs. Mehta. They were smiling benignly at me. Mr. Ghoshal was preparing his next question in his head, while his son was slyly stealing glances at Helga’s voluptuous body.

“She is very good in studies you know. But we are business family. Not much education. She wants to do MBA and pursue investment banking career.”

The conversation had switched to Hindi. Helga had finished Illusions. Now she was reading a fat Linda Goodman book on astrology. I was losing hope. Here I was amidst two beautiful women, but one was in her own world, while the other, the apple of her parents’ eye, was in reality a horrid little wench, hell-bent on raking up my past.

I have no past, at least not a past worth talking about. When I make my first billion, I’ll have to hire one of those spin doctors to build the legend. No rags-to-riches, riches-to-rags, family intrigue or tales of passion. I had been a mediocre student, and had somehow managed to graduate with second class. No fancy business diplomas for me. I had a bit of money with which I started trading in the stock market. Nothing spectacular. Business had been steady, and I had never worked too hard or lost sleep on trading. I was content making small but steady margins and the occasional loss. Slowly, the news of my prowess at day trading spread in my neighbourhood, and a few local uncles, real uncles, asked me to manage their savings, which I did for a small fee. Business was now growing steadily.

I never had a girlfriend or an affair. Many of my friends did, and I envied some of them. I, however, was content to be in the company of guys similar to me, discussing the merits and demerits of every girl we knew. I had invented a nice definition for ‘girlfriend’ – a man’s future ex-wife! Age was, however catching up with me. I was thirty one, single, and secretly dreaming of the lifestyle of the Greek shipping magnates that more than one book described. As of now, I am yet to go on a date.

Helga was now dozing off. Her ample bosom heaved, but I couldn’t look. Neither could Mr. Mehta or Mr. Ghoshal. Rustom Merchant seemed to be oblivious to everything around him. He was doing nothing, and had a blank look on his face.

“I don’t believe in fancy stuff like MBA. I am a self made man, and have my own firm. It has no name, and my clients trust me.”

I couldn’t believe what I said. Here I was, trying to justify myself to the precocious twerp. She couldn’t have cared less anyway. I bet she was busy in her own world of SMS, college fests and boyfriends. Pah! How I hated such females back in college! They never spoke to me.

“Do you believe in astrology?”

“This existence is all Maya. I am here in India on a spiritual quest for Karma.”

Sumit Ghoshal, had managed to strike up a conversation with Helga Larsson. He had a strange shit-eating smile on his face. His obnoxious little father and Mr.Mehta family seemed to have formed a tag team to keep me away from Helga though. The man had started bombarding me with questions in Hindi, all for the benefit of the Mehtas.

“How do you deal with the stock market fluctuations?”

“Do you chase the IPOs?”

“I want my son to do MBA too, after his biotechnology.”

The little twit. He surely was enjoying his journey. Shreya had climbed to the top berth now, where she was playing with her cell phone. The spoilt brat! I mumbled my way through these queries, listening to the sweet lilt of Helga’s voice.

“Swami Paramananda’s teachings have showed me the new meaning of life. I believe in the Oneness of Purpose and the Multiplicity of Paths”

“Is it better to join ISB or go for foreign MBA?”

“I don’t know; I am not an MBA.”

“My daughter is interested in going to foreign…”

“My son is very brilliant and hard-working. Bangalore colleges have good placement no?”

“Should I sell my Reliance Gas shares before it’s too late?”

“Why don’t you come to the virgin beaches of Gokarna? They are clean and unspoilt, and it’s a real spiritual trip down there. I am planning to go there next month”

That was Helga talking. Suddenly there was silence. Mr. Ghoshal had a smile on his face. He was obviously not the conservative father. Far from it, and worst of all, he turned to Sumit, and said with a broad smile

“Yes, Sumu. Why don’t you go? At your age I remember that I went to Puri with my friends and got high on the beach with some hippies. What an experience! Ha ha ha! Nearly got arrested by the police….sigh…those were the days…”

I could have choked myself and dropped dead right there. That lucky bastard! Here was his own dad asking him to go on a wild trip to nowhere with the prettiest white-skinned woman with the loosest of morals that I had ever set eyes upon!

“Of course, you keep my little secret and I shall never mention this to your mother…ha ha ha…she will divorce me and go off to Gaya forever…ha ha ha!”

If Mr. and Mrs. Mehta were a tad uncomfortable they were trying their best not to show it. It would’ve been different if Shreya was in Helga’s place though. For the first time, the stoic Rustom Merchant, whose story this really is, seemed to have a smile on his face.

I was feeling drowsy, and a niggling doubt had begun forming in my mind. I had seen Rustom Merchant before. No, we were not acquaintances. I believe he was someone famous. Where had I seen him? Page 3 of Bangalore Times? Bombay Times perhaps? No, he didn’t seem to be the party animal. Was he a famous sportsman? Arjuna awardees were had lifetime Railway passes, I think. Surely he was not a cricketer, so what sport did he play? Hockey? No, he was a bit too short for hockey. Swimmer? Possible. But there were not too many male Indian swimmers who would command a place in my memory. Athlete? Possible. Bangalore was home to the Sports Authority of India, where most serious athletes trained.

I dozed off, but couldn’t sleep. No, he was not a sportsman, on second thoughts. What was he then? A businessman? Certainly not a hotshot – they didn’t travel by train nowadays. A politician’s spoilt son? I couldn’t recollect a famous Parsi statesman. Business it had to be. I jogged my brain; the idea of not being able to recollect something at the tip of my tongue was killing me. Ratan Tata, Ness Wadia, Russi Modi…only the big names occurred to me. Nope, Rustom Merchant was not a famous businessman.

“What happens when an IPO is over-subscribed?”

Sumit Ghoshal’s wanted to know all about stocks and the stock markets. I wanted to request him to fuck off, but tamely humoured him.

“I think they have lotteries for the retail investors, and try to give most of them at least a few shares to keep them happy. They return the remaining money, but make a killing on the interest during the few days they have it.”

“Why Sumu, you should concentrate on your studies now. The stock market will come later.”

Ghoshal was at last talking sense!

“No Baba, it’s always good to know stuff…I was just asking.”

I hated Sumit Ghoshal. I looked up. Little Shreya Mehta was reading Cosmopolitan on the top berth. So much for CAT and the IIMs, I thought. When I was much younger, I would always sneak a Cosmopolitan at the first railway station after the train left. There were women around me now. I was dying to read about sex tips and the latest trends in negligees, but sadly had to pass up on this trip. Besides, the mystery of Rustom Merchant was literally eating me up by then.

The eunuchs had arrived. I hate these cross-dressing goons and their weird chants. Do the math and you realise that most of them earn more than the average software professional. They were ruthless as usual. My friend had once stood firm with a six-foot all, muscular eunuch. Many pleas were tried. His body was compared to the six-packs of Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar by the doting she-man. My friend had refused to budge. Curses inflicting impotency followed. My friend laughed, secure about his manhood. Next had been the body grope, where he had received a brief massage below the waist. My friend pretended to enjoy it with a benign smile. Then the strip-tease had begun. The pallu of the saree had come off. My friend looked the other way. He finally gave up when the second hook of the blouse had come off, and parted with fifty rupees and a lot of cold sweat. I know what you must be thinking right now, but I swear it was really my friend, not me. Anyway, I had the ten rupee note ready, and so did the Ghoshals and Mr. Mehta. Not too many people challenged the eunuchs, and they in turn seldom troubled women or old people.

Rustom Merchant didn’t pay. A eunuch nudged him. He gave a cold stare. The eunuch seemed flustered, and the entire gang backed off. There was something in Rustom’s eyes that scared me, and evidently the she-males too, for they didn’t try any wise tricks, but just carried on, blessing me with a beautiful wife and three bonny boys. Mr. Mehta was promised a rich son-in-law, and Sumit Ghoshal would grow up to be the next Amitabh.

Was he a criminal? A master forger? An art thief? A stock market scamster perhaps? Was he on the run from the law, maybe after defrauding investors in his chit fund? That was it. I hoped he wasn’t a murderer or a feared mafia don, because that was not a pleasant thought. Was there a reward for turning him in? I could do with a few lakhs. What happened to whistle-blowers? Did the gangs come after them? Would I regret turning him in? What number do I contact? All these thoughts came in a flurry, though the important question remained unanswered? Who was Rustom Merchant, for that was obviously not his real name.

Helga seemed very attracted to Rustom Merchant, for she kept stealing furtive glances at him, from behind the new book she was reading. Rich Dad Poor Dad. I was not surprised. I had read somewhere that the women are attracted to the bad boys. They have the charisma and the animal instinct ingrained in them. I was evidently not a bad boy. Would she make the first move? Was he playing the playboy to perfection? The brooding man waiting to pounce on the vulnerable and lonely woman?

The answer struck me like the Courtney Walsh bouncer that had found a gap in Manoj Prabhakar’s helmet’s grill, and it chilled my blood to the bone. Sitting in front of me was no brooding Parsi trader or ill-paid sportsman, but one of India’s, no, the world’s most dreaded fugitives. I was sure as hell – Rustom Merchant was none other than Jacky Carneiro. Yes, the same Jacky Carneiro who has toyed around with the Indian, Portuguese, Greek and Thai police for over two decades. The same Jacky Carneiro who had earned the nickname of Carneiro the Carnivore, for his ability to seduce beautiful women on the beaches of Goa and Greece, before beheading them. The same Jacky Carneiro who engineered three perfect jailbreaks in three different countries. The same Jacky Carneiro whose real-life exploits would make a Jeffrey Archer character seem like a bumbling school kid. The same Jacky Carneiro was sitting opposite me, sipping a mango drink from a tetrapak now. I had recently read about him in a magazine and I knew that Interpol was willing to pay a lot of money to get him.

What was I to do? What number did I call? Did I have to identify myself? Would they note down my name and address? More important questions. What if Jacky managed his fourth jailbreak? How did he deal with people who ratted on him? Would he behead me once he escaped? I was not a gorgeous woman, and I didn’t live close to a beach, but who knows? What if I called the police? Would the average police phone operator know about Jacky Carneiro? How would I collect the money? Would it be tax-free? Maybe I could buy a large number of shares in the next major IPO. Maybe real estate was a better bet…

The train stopped at Vizianagaram; a short stop, but I needed some air and exercise. I got down and stretched my limbs, before proceeding to the tap marked “Drinking Water”. I filled up the two bottles I had, and boarded the train as the whistle blew. The Mehtas were asleep and Mr. Ghoshal had gone to the loo, probably for a quick smoke. His son was doing the day’s Sudoku. Helga and Jacky were gone. In their places were Mr. and Mrs. Reddy (M50 and F44) respectively. They had reserved tickets up to Bangalore.

Placebo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:37:00 +0000

It was a beautiful afternoon at the Parc Buttes Chaumont, one of the prettiest green spots in Paris. I was lying on the grass, taking in the fresh air, chirping birds and the beautiful people lounging around. In short, it was bliss. After an hour or so of absolute laziness, I started eating a crepe I had bought in a bakery nearby.

The man had a diabolic scar under his right eye. "Salaam," he said to me from a few metres away. "Salaam," said I. He was about thirty five years old, and was apparently picnicking with his wife and a few other girls in their late teens or early twenties. Probably sisters. Or sisters in law. Or just friends. They were certainly too old to be his daughters. "Good day, isn't it?" he said, in heavily accented French.

Why was he trying to be friendly? He took out a bottle of chilled Heineken beer and offered it to me. "Never accept food or drinks from a stranger, especially if he looks suspicious," my childhood training kicked in immediately. "I don't drink alcohol," I blurted out in my barely comprehensible French. I lied. It was a very hot day, and I had just been kicking myself for not picking up a beer before entering the park.

"Ah, religion!" he smiled. Clearly he was violating one of the tenets of his religion. The atheist and the wino in me were squirming by now. The women in his life were looking at me with amused smiles. He then took out a 1.5 litre bottle of diet coke and offered that to me. "Coca?" he said. That's what the french call their coke. I pointed to wards my stomach and made a grimace. "Desole," I said in my pidgin French. Sorry. His wife started laughing. She poured out an orange drink in a plastic cup, held it out and said, "Fanta?"

It would be really rude to turn this down. I weighed the situation. It was 4 pm, and I was thirsty. My water bottle was almost empty. I was craving beer, or at least something cold. There were hundreds of people around. The man was there with his family. What was the chance of him wanting to mug me? And what would they gain from poisoning me? I accepted the Fanta with a smile, and slowly drank from the glass.

The thoughts of being drugged still lingered though. My stomach felt queasy, even though my brain tried its best to convince me that nothing was wrong. I lay on the grass for another half hour, battling my prejudices. Finally I got up, and slowly and unsteadily staggered out of the park. I felt giddy, and desperately searched for a public toilet. The first one I found was closed. I walked around in a trance till I found the second one, where I vomited out the entire contents of my stomach. Damn you, placebo effect!

The Golden Age of Punjabi Pop

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:30:00 +0000

It was way back in 1999. Mohammed Azharuddin was back as captain of the Indian team, after the disastrous reign of Sachin. Karan Johar had made a spectacular debut in Bollywood, Himesh Reshammiya wasn't the viral sensation he was soon to become. Internet access meant dialling an always-busy number and listening Ashoke Kumar cough his way to death on the modem, to access sites like www.uthplanet.com (who promised to make the first ever crowd-sourced film imaginatively titled "Kaiko Kare Pyaar"). Star Plus was what the "in" crowd watched. And I still did not have cable access at home, for my 10th standard final exam was coming up.

It was a bright evening, the birds were chirping, and there I was, cooped up trying to disseminate the life stories of Dr. Ambedkar in three different languages (the English one written by former president Venkatraman had indelibly added "amelioration" and "eschew" to my vocabulary), when the tornado struck. It was on DD Metro of course, which, till then was playing Sonu Nigam and Anup Jalota on infinite loop, that I first saw the Musical Sensation of the New Millenium! That's right.

It featured an early Shiney Ahuja, watching in bewilderment as Sandali Sinha (then the reigning queen of indi-pop videos) emerged out of the ground, wondering when he would be able to afford her as a domestic help, and in the process, revealing to me a whole pantheon of music gods, not just from India, but also Pakistan, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Canada. While others my age were discovering the worlds of jazz, metal, rock and rap, that classic tune by Sardool Sikander uncovered the magical world of Punjabi pop for me.

You may have been a die-hard fan of Baba Sehgal, but have you experienced the magic of Baba Khan, his lookalike across the border? His iconic number, "I want to see you only" was a favourite of the babus at Prasar Bharti, and they ensured that every trailer program on DD Metro played this video of sailors dancing on the Baby Titanic at least three times in a span of half an hour.

Another all-time great of those days was Harbhajan Mann of Canada, who was such a sex symbol in those days that hot girls would brave slow dial-up internet connections to type www.harbhajanmann.com on their browsers to access streaming videos of their dream man(n), as this video evidences (it was also used in the iconic movie Papa the Great, starring Kishen Kumar, Nagma and Shatrughna Sinha).

Harbhajan, however was just one of many Manns who dominated the Bhangra scene back in the late nineties and early 2000s. Gurdas Mann, Gursewak Mann and Babu Singh Mann all achieved varying degrees of fame as well.

At this stage you must be wondering if all the best Bhangra talent is based outside India. For those cynics, I give this classic by Surjeet Singh Bindrakhia and Atul Sharma. It features Amit, who uses his unique charm to seduce gals at a bowling alley (a phenomenon that was just taking off back then).

Yes, its true. Punjabi Pop wasn't all about those garish and tuneless Daler Mehendi. It certainly isn't about those industrially manufactured beats of Punjabi MC or Rishi Rich, featuring Caucasian girls dancing to mind-numbing synthetic beats. It wasn't aout those Karan Joharish "Shaava Shaava, Rabba Rabba" either. The real soul of Punjabi Pop belonged to the Manns, the Baba Khans of course Jassi. I leave you with his memorable song "Channo."

Change is inevitable. Needless to say, with my TV addiction, I did not top my class. I went on to join a coaching factory, and soon got cable at home, with an avalanche of trailer channels (ETC, CVO, B4U, etc). DD Metro started its slow but painful journey to oblivion. Star Plus went all-Hindi. Azharuddin was banned. from playing cricket. Himesh began to be seen as much as he was heard. Saas-Bahu dramas started invading our drawing rooms like the mythologicals had in the mid-nineties (on Doordarshan). I went to college where everyone pretended to love heavy metal. And the DJs invaded the Punjabi Pop scene. Killing the genre forever.

Holy Cow!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:14:00 +0000

Along with several jackpot payout notifications from Microsoft, Shell and Yahoo, and offers to launder millions of dollars by fugitive Princes and corrupt ministers, I have recently been the lucky recipient of two issues of a revolutionary new magazine called The Vedic Times. Written by Kiran Kumar B, an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, two thought-provoking issues have given me a fresh perspective on many, many issues. I feel it is my duty to share these issues with as many people as I can; so I have uploaded them online, for public perusal:

For example, the "Cows" issue reveals this startling fact, that six years of training in chemical engineering (including two years in the author's alma mater) failed to teach me:

Cow ghee, when poured on burning cow dung cakes, it produces phenomenal amount of oxygen and clears contamination from air. Studies have proven that pouring ghee on cow dung can fight pollution effectively.

And here we are, trying to reduce emissions and causing tensions among countries, squabbling over greenhouse gas emissions! We are even concerned by the greenhouse effect caused by bovine farts. The solution is simple. We need to collect and burn their shit, adding copious amounts of their own ghee, and voila! End of global warming. And more oxygen for all of us.

Another money quote:

Cow urine is useful in acidity, stomach disease and many other illnesses. According to Ayurveda, cow urine removes leprosy and other skin diseases. The cow and cow products are incomparable in the eyes of Ayurveda.

Apart from the obvious medicinal uses, I wonder if cow urine can decompose crude oil. The USA is currently facing a massive oil spill crisis off the coast of Louisiana. I was wondering if a scientifically determined combination of cow urine, ghee and dung, with appropriate combustion levels, could check this ecological and socio-economic disaster.

The advice, however comes with a warning:

Do not hate cow urine and cow dung. Never eat cow meat. By following this advice, human beings can become prosperous.

I have decided to immediately stop eating those succulent beef rolls, the Kerala beef curry, the tender beef chops, the rare steaks and the fragrant biryanis. I hereby eschew the delights of chilli beef, beef spring rolls and beef kababs. No more barbecued beef, beef stew or grilled beef for me. Heck, I shall even give up beef manchurian, beef rumsteak, beef noodles and beef kheema; from now on, all my drinks will be laced with cow urine - all in my shameless pursuit of material wealth!

In fact, I think Shri BS Yeddyurappa, the Honorable Chief Minister of the State of Karnataka has taken the right step in banning beef in his territory, thus ensuring economic growth in the years to come. I implore other states to follow his admirable example.

I was wondering if cows could solve some of the world's other problems, and came up with the following conjectures. After considerable literature search, I came up with the following revelations:

Cow urine can be converted to high-octane fuel (using vibhuti as catalyst at standard temperature and pressure - and the best part is that its a liquid phase reaction) that can power petrol and diesel engines alike. It burns in ordinary IC engines with a 99.7% efficiency. Furthermore, it prevents no fire hazard whatsoever, as it can only burn in enclosed spaces.
Cowdung is the most complete source of nutrients, and a 5 gram tablet of dried cowdung, washed down with a glass of cow urine provides an entire day's nutrition. This is because of the special enzymes present in the cow's intestines, that convert grass and roughage into vitamin complexes and proteins. In fact, a single day's production of cow excreta of the city of Varanasi can feed the entire population of Somalia for a year.
Cow urine is a proven antiretroviral agent; injections of cow urine in cultures of HIV-infected T-cells have significantly reduced the population of the pathogen as compared to control samples.
Rancid ghee (got by leaving a 40.2%-vol mixture of ghee in water in sunlight for 24 hours) can absorb noxious fumes of sulphur dioxide from the atmosphere. Research is on, to harness this reaction for municipal use.
Cowdung, if powdered and spray dried at 18000 Kelvin and 300 atm, yields superconducting and self-assembling nanoparticles. A single such particle can store 1024 times the information that all of Google's servers together can hold today.

Thus, we have excellent growth potential, and we know which animal to thank for that!

Uniquely Indian Scams and Crimes

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:12:00 +0000

Indian scientists may not be creative enough, and our movie industry may be filled with plagiarists galore. However, our scamsters and criminals distinguish themselves by creating crimes that bear the singular stamp of our great country. Here are some uniquely Indian crimes and scams:

Khap killings - An obsession with incestuous relationships makes the words "m****c***d" and "b****c**d" as ubiquitous as the "namaste" in the wheat and dust bowls of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan. No wonder that their society has come up with a unique cause for honor killing: the crime of marrying someone with a common mythological ancestor. However, we all know that pop music (especially of the rap genre) is an outlet of rebellion against societal norms. The youth of Haryana have chosen to rebel through music, asking the elders to go away and mind their own business, as this excellent music video shows
Stamp paper forgery - Abdul Karim Telgi is the criminal's criminal. If crime were to be compared to batsmen, Dawood Ibrahim would be the equivalent of Sachin Tendulkar: adaptible to all situations, with a wide repertoire of strokes and a man for all occassions. The naxalite mastermind Kishenji is like Rahul Dravid, underrated but consistent. Harshad Mehta would be more of a Yuvraj Singh, a maverick, hard hitting batsman who takes no prisoners while he is in form, but fades away with a whimper when he is not. Telgi, however is a dream amalgamation of Brian Lara and Michael Hussey: an all-time great, an artistic maestro with a propensity to inflict little cuts that gradually bleed the victim. His greatness lies in the fact that he managed to screw the government of several millions of dollars while flying completely below the radar. And the quality of his forged stamp papers is so good (he even used the same ink as the mint itself) that there is still no way to distinguish between his fakes and the real deal. Also, like Lara, he has faded into oblivion since his career ended.
Miracle workers - Another uniquely Indian scam, these geniuses have managed to con even highly educated and accomplished persons, not just in India, but all over the world. Sathya Sai Baba commands the respect of all dignitaries in India, including luminaries like Vajpayee, Abdul Kalam, Manmohan Singh and MM Joshi. Maharshi Mahesh Yogi, Deepak Chopra, Rajneesh and even Nithyananda are other examples of successful Indian miracle workers who have managed to con rich and poor, illiterate and PhD-holder with equal efficacy. Among them, they can materialize Rolex watches from thin air, leverage quantum theory in meditation, organize orgies, and a lot more.
Fairness creams - Less of a crime and more of a scam, these products explicitly exploit our inherent racism. There is even a new generation these that target men. Celebrities like Srikkanth, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone and many more, all endorse these miracle gels that promise you a Michael Jackson-like transformation in weeks. Even a well known victim and opponent of racism, Shah Rukh Khan has no qualms about being a poster boy for a fairness cream for men. A hugely profitable segment in the subcontionent, these are made and marketed by the world's leading FMCG companies.
Cash for riots - Pramod Muthalik was a hero. We believed that he and his army were selfless messiahs of Hindu culture, risking life and limb in beating up those who violated our ancient scriptures.

We were outraged when some misguided and loose women women decided to hurt our sentiments further by sending him offensive gifts as an act of revenge. Our world has come crashing down now, as we realise that behind the facade of the selfless crusader lies a venal mercenary, a thorough professional who commands a high price for his skills. Yes, Pramod Muthalik and his army are merely freelance professionals who will do your bidding if the price is right.
Porn doctor - Voyeur cams are popular all over the world, but trust the Indian masterminds to add a whole new dimension to voyeurism. Bedrooms and bathrooms are passe; one mastermind has instituted an altogether new genre of voyeur porn - the doctor's examination room. Dr. Prakash is truly a visionary. Starting with filming patients being examined, he soon diversified into more conventional categories of pornography, becoming the Indian Larry Flynt. He enlisted professionals and coaxed and threatened amateurs and innocents into performing for his camera.Unfortunately, the government was not amused, and he now cools his heels in jail.

These are just some crimes and scams which I believe have a unique Indian flavor to them. We have more than our share of terrorists, bigots, brigands, ponzis, extortionists, embezzlers, rapists, racists, murderers, forgers and and every other kind of criminal possible. But that is the subject of another, and probably more fascinating story.

IPL questions that nobody seems to be asking

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:42:00 +0000

The IPL has opened up a can of many slimy worms. It is undoubtedly a good source of entertainment, and a great opportunity to gamble, because the teams are so evenly matched that the overwhelming underdogs have managed to with both the first two seasons (in true ToI fashion: Team Jaipur in season 1 and Team Hyderabad in season 2). Though there are allegations of match-fixing being rampant in IPL, I personally believe that this would be an extremely foolish thing to do, as that would kill the goose totally, Since it is a fantastic way to launder money, it is in the best interest of everyone involved to keep the cricket clean. In spite of many angles being probed, including the media reports of tweets by absolute nobodies,here are a few questions that nobody seems to be asking, and I would love to know the answers to.

Why was there a clause in the IPL rules providing for confidentiality of team ownership anyway? With India being a hotbed for international crime and a terrorism, what is the guarantee that these elements don't control the IPL?
Players were bought in an open auction. Why wasn't the same process used to sell teams to their owners, instead of the closed bidding process? An open auction would probably have brought in a lot more money, with bidding prices known to everyone.
Has anyone bothered to investigate the share price history of Videocon Industries Ltd., and the stakes in Videocon by IPL functionaries? Since Videocon were apparently going to win the IPL bid, their share prices started climbing steadily from 31 March 2010 to a maximum on 9 April 2010, before beginning a steady descent again, corresponding well with developments in the IPL saga. On the other hand the share prices of the Adani Enterprises Ltd. ( intitially supposed to be a serious contender but later billed as an insincere bidder) rose from 31 March 2010 to 8 April 2010, and fell slightly, but nothing as dramatic as Videocon. It is now on an upward trend again.

Thoughts on Cricket

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:40:00 +0000

With the advent of T20, the face of cricket has changed drastically. While some people say that T20 is the future, we have purists arguing about the resurgence and importance of Test cricket. Most people seem to have forgotten the ODI, though Sachin's double century has brought it back into focus. So, the uncomfortable question is: are ODIs relevant any more? Should they be phased out like vestiges from a bygone era? Before you jump to any conclusions, take a few minutes to recall the following memorable events:

The Titan Cup in 1996. Not a marquee tournament by any stretch of imagination. Sachin Tendulkar has been foolishly run out by greenhorn Sujit Somasundar, who soon follows to the pavilion. India-Australia league match, with India staring at sure defeat. The stands are empty, since dejected fans have gone home. Suddenly, in the most incredible last wicket partnership, local boys Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble go berserk, and India scrape through. Most anguished are the idiots who walked out of the stadium.
The inaugural World T20 in 2007. India are overwhelming underdogs against the mighty Australians in the semi-final. Yuvraj Singh butchers the world's most feared attack for 5 sixers on his way to 70 off 38 balls. In the second innings, Matthew Hayden starts a predictable massacre before Sreesanth snares him, and the Aussies capitulate, paving the way for a subsequently historic World Cup victory for India.

Which one do you recall more vividly? My guess is the former (assuming you followed cricket back then). Even though fourteen years have passed, an insignificant ODI league match draws more recall than a recent epoch-making T20 World Cup match. And therein lies the power of One Day cricket. My guess is that people remember Rajesh Chauhan's last over sixer off Saqlain Mushtaq in Karachi in 1997 and Sanath Jayasuriya ending Manoj Prabhakar's career (though his final score of 79 off 76 balls with 9X4 and 2X6 does not seem that impressive anymore) in New Delhi in 1996 far more vividly than any T20 rampage by Yuvraj (barring his six sixers in an over against England of course) or Yusuf.

T20 matches are exciting, but have no character. One is just like another. While domestic tournaments like the IPL do give opportunities to a large number of promising players, the matches themselves hardly stand out. Almost every match follows the predictable pattern of wickets falling, one batsman going on a rampage before the tail pitches in. How many people remember anything from the two IPL finals we have had so far?

It makes absolutely no sense to have one-off T20 matches or even non World Cup T20 tourneys between countries. Domestic tourneys like the IPL and its regional variants are good enough to milk the cash cow for all its worth. International T20 should be restricted to the T20 World Cup (unfortunately its once in two years, though ideally it should be once in 4 years like the ODI or soccer World Cups, or the Olympics, to maintain its prestige and exclusivity).

ODI cricket could also do without the overkill. Test cricket is still the real cricket, and meaningless 3 and 5-match series and the Champions Trophy should be done away with.ODI matches should be infrequent tri-nation or quadrangular series that serve as gap-fillers between Test series, with the World Cup once in 4 years to crown the champions.

The goose does not lay golden eggs once it is dead.

Barcelona

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:46:00 +0000

I heard that Barcelona is a great city, and that's why I decided to visit it last month. Our flight was late, and we reached the youth hostel at 4 am, and went to sleep. When I woke up, I was welcomed by a magnificent view of Torres Agbar, a giant building that reminds every man of his shortcomings.

Walking down the streets, one was is struck by the gaudiness (literally of the Sagrada Familia), a scary church that is under construction since the 1880s, and might be finished within two decades!

As I was to discover soon, Barcelona is a city is very much like Bangalore; perennially under construction, with a bizarre skyline dominated by several cranes used in either construction or renovation.

The Parc Guelle, is a must-see in Barcelona, where the eccentric architect Gaudi went berserk with his creativity. It is like entering one of those fairy tales where the innocent young princess is lured by a wicked witch.

The park is filled with all kinds of people; tourists, amateur models, musicians and costumed superheroes.

The city itself is very warm, and has a beautiful beach, whose beauty could somewhat be ruined by naked guys. Some of the buildings have interesting graffiti too, though most have the ugly lettering you find in Paris walls.

However, Barcelona wakes up only at night. The real fun of Barcelona is in swigging copious amounts of beer at night, and sleeping at dawn. Obviously, I have no pictures of this vibrant culture. I do, however, have a few pictures from their museums.

Do not miss out on the Museum of Catalan History, which has such rare artifacts as a 20-year old computer and a 35-year old transistor radio, apart from this vintage car you see above. I was so awestruck by these treasures, that I was unable to photograph them.

Note: Do not fret if you do not speak Spanish and Catalan. Hindi works almost as well, since most of the convenience store owners, gift store owners, restaurant waiters and drug dealers are Indian or Pakistani. Also, do try the Paella, a local dish of rice and meat or fish.

Trapped in Wonderland

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:19:00 +0000

The Book (Le Senat, Paris)

Dawn of the Night (Town Square, Pontoise)

A Cry for Freedom (A street corner, Amsterdam)

Their Prophet (Another street corner, Amsterdam)

Open Space (Axe Majeure, Cergy St. Christophe)

The Road to Heaven (Path by the river, Neuville Sur Oise)

The Raven (Shakespeare and Co., Paris)

Their Patron Saint (Shakespeare and Co., Paris)

Melody in Motion (Quartier Latin, Paris)

The Middle Finger (Eiffel Tower, Paris)

Fodder for the Bookworm (Le Senat, Paris)

Adventure 50

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:09:00 +0000

Lok Paritran Revisited - Maybe I am a Clairvoyant After All

I celebrate my fiftieth post in a foul mood. Over two years ago I had made this feeble attempt at satirical humor:
http://oraclemania.blogspot.com/2007/07/adventure-21.html

However, that post had been inspired by the brouhaha over "educated" professionals, especially IITians joining politics. People were writing feel-good blog posts and news articles about the new wave of political reforms that would be brought about by two parties, Lok Paritran and Bharat Punarnirman Dal. I didn't feel too good though. Their websites and mission statements reeked of something fishy, and I couldn't quite tell what it was. Was it the radical and revivalist Hindutva in their mission statements? Their websites seemed to be full of the type of pseudo-patriotism that typifies their better-known Hindutva redneck siblings . That feeling of discomfort was heightened by the photographs of the members of these organizations. Somehow, they did not seem to be the erudite and idealistic scholars they claimed to be. Rather, they seemed to be, and certainly dressed like, the upper-caste Brahmins and landlords portrayed by B-Grade Bollywood movies. The kind that brought about the complex racism typical of India, millenia ago.The fact that there was a public outpouring of support for these political novices made me even more uncomfortable; the very fact that they could actually be the ones in power some day did not go down well with me. Thankfully the Indian electorate does not comprise of solely of IT professionals and engineering hopefuls at Kota. They rejected these pretenders who promised reform.

The Lok Paritran is now a party that has disintegrated into a morass of hatred. And sleaze. Take a look at their website.
http://www.lok-paritran.org/

Read each post fully and carefully. Savor the feeling of disgust that envelopes you. You might have believed in these guys, and they could have been in power. Be thankful that we had statesmen like Nehru and Ambedkar to put us on the track of some stability sixty years ago. Whatever their faults may have been (and I concede they had plenty), they prevented us from being another Honduras, Rwanda or even Pakistan. Be thankful that we have a person who is erudite, honest and pragmatic in the form of Dr. Manmohan Singh at the helm rather than a peddler of hatred and revivalism, as some of our states do. And be afraid. Very afraid. One wrong move at the hustings could precipitate India towards doom faster than you think.

If you are not yet convinced, here is the kind of hatred that's fostered among the brightest of India's brain pool.
http://telegraphindia.com/1070507/asp/frontpage/story_7744209.asp

Think twice about electing people who have spent their formative years in such cesspools of intellectual filth. Think twice before you embrace a change that might ruin you. Irreversibly.

Jai Hind.

Adventure 49

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:18:00 +0000

The CSIR Comedy

Read this post and the comments at this blog to realize why the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research will never be responsible for that next great breakthrough.

http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2009/12/unravelling-of-shiva-ayyadurai.html

I plead guilty for a few of the last comments. However, do my comments seem more retarded than the comments made by what is considered to be a nation's premier science brain pool?

Adventure 48

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:03:00 +0000

Open letter to Richard Dawkins

Here is an email I wrote to Richard Dawkins (to the email addresses available on his website), especially as he has provided a separate contact email address for reporting design issues.
Website URL: http://www.richarddawkins.net

to		contact@richarddawkins.net
cc		design@richarddawkins.net
date		Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:01 PM
subject		Please change your website design: Resembles a televangelist's website

Dear Mr. Dawkins

I have been very impressed by your talks and have read a little bit of your works. However, when I visited your website, I was grossly disappointed by its design. As an atheist and opponent of religion, especially religious fanaticism and chicanery of any kind, I would like to point out that your website has a very "American-Televangelist-Biblical" look and feel. It has your picture with an ocean and blue skies as a background, similar to a lot of fraudulent televangelists out there. Even the sidelines advertise your books in a way typical of several religious cults. For the world's best-known living atheist, that's not a very good thing.

For example, here is the site of Benny Hinn (whose name you must have no doubt heard).
http://www.bennyhinn.org/default.cfm
I hope you take my comments in the right spirit.

Hoping for a new-look website advertising your ideas,
Yours Sincerely
Prithwiraj Mukherjee