The Lows

As far as living conditions go, I'd say India is fairly good, given the sheer complexities to be managed. The institutions that have been built over the last 60 odd years are decently robust, if not always functional. But as L pointed out over a conversation, India is hell when things aren't going right. This is true of any "emerging" or "under-developed" country I suppose, but I wonder if there are many countries where a decent,stable income affords a lifestyle which can be considered "smooth sailing" by any standards while the whole system can turn hostile when things go slightly wrong.

The parameters to measure this hostility should be income,food,health,crime,corruption and political violence. Considering a middle class demographic set, I'd imagine income and food can be considered stable at all points, assuming a reasonably well-educated household which will not find it difficult to hold a job. The other factors, however, are beyond the control of even the middle to upper-middle class households.

Health is a particularly tricky route to negotiate given the absence of credible accreditation or awareness thereof. Even if you have the money, finding a doctor you can trust is largely a matter of providence. My anecdotal view of this issue has led me to believe that most hospitals retain patients even when fully aware that they're not equipped to treat the disease, just so that they can run up a bill and refer them to a "better" hospital at a later date. This, then, has an effect on people being amenable to seeking medical opinion given the amount of distrust generated.

Crime and corruption are, again, debilitating when encountered. Crime needs to be addressed by the state machinery and given the state of the reactive law and order situation, is reliably unreliable. Filing a police complaint is a largely an exercise in futility. This is something that police reforms can certainly address. Corruption, well, who can escape that anywhere in the world?

Given all these, I'm inclined to believe chance plays a very important role in leading a peaceful life here and the aim of the governance should be to help its citizens cope in the event of a black swan.

A recurring theme that keeps cropping up in my conversations with A is the considerable brain-washing that we believe is necessary for any one to put their life on the line in a war for a concept as nebulous as a nation. Yes, we all love our country to varying degrees but to sacrifice your life to save the idea of a nation requires a level of conviction unfathomable to me. One answer of course would be that the motivation is not the perception of a nation but the more tangible life of a fellow countryman's life.And perhaps it is so.

Is killing in a war universally acknowledged as morally acceptable? Here's one approach to answering why its deemed not-so-bad. Form your own conclusions.

This train of thought reminded me of a poem by Thomas Hardy that was part of the CBSE syllabus:

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because--
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like--just as I--
Was out of work--had sold his traps--
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.

For the record, I think Hardy's prose is insufferably morose.

Watching the Champions League quarterfinal between Manchester United and Chelsea, I started wondering about how the player wages came to be perceived as grossly inflated. And then, Van der Saar showed me why they get paid as much as they do.
The tie is delicately balanced at 1-0 in favor of United. Anelka is put through on goal (well, slightly wide of goal perhaps). Van der Saar, with barely a moment to make a decision as to whether stay put or come out to clear, opts for the latter. For a moment, it looks to be a calamitous one as Anelka runs past him with the ball. But a last ditch tackle by the old man and he manages to clear it, as Old Trafford heaves a collective sigh of relief.
Footballers are paid for moments like those.
A preliminary research shows that Manchester United made approximately 45.8 million Euros through prize money and television rights in the Champions League when they reached the QF last year. Progress at each stage means a huge increase in that receipt.
What I'm driving at it is that, that tackle probably earned his team a million euro or two. Well, in addition to all the vital contributions by his team-mates.
On a related note, it looks like not a lot of football clubs manage to turn out a profit. Follow this blog for some wonderful insights on how the business of football is run.
Quick. Guess which is the most profitable club in Serie A. Milan? Inter? Juve perhaps? The answer, surprisingly (to me atleast) is Fiorentina.

PS: I'll be trying out this new format of posting.Titles: Non-mandatory. Length:Anywhere between 0 and infinity. Focus: Anything that piques my interest.
Filching the idea from here.

Herds

I bought a Kindle 3. After much soul-searching than I normally do on those occasions when I buy something, I might add. Why, you ask?

I love books,always have. I love their weight, their texture and of course,their smell. Its a thing, shared by all lovers of books I suppose. If someone was generous enough to fund a study, I'm fairly sure they'd find a gene or a particular part of the brain which triggers this persuasion. Maybe they already have.

The primary mental block was abandoning a cognitive bias towards physical books. The 3500+ books stored in 2 GB of ephemeral memory cannot hold a candle to the joy of seeing a bunch of books neatly stacked.

So, why did I buy it?

Herd mentality. That's why.

I do not believe for a moment that, having bought this device, I will stop pilgrimages to Blossoms or Bookworm. Of course not. However, I do believe and hope that I will get a lot of reading done sideways. After lunch, in the bus, waiting for someone to turn up. But this hardly seems an overarching reason to splash 7 grand of hard-earned cash.

I, quite simply, was overwhelmed by the deluge of fanboy reviews that I came across. This for instance. Who was I to deny proclamations that every single lover of books that ever lived ought to own one? I tried resisting of course. I made and unmade my mind up more times than I care to account for. Futile, in the long run.

Why is it so comforting to choose what the majority has chosen? Why is it hard to stick out like a sore thumb? I wonder if the choices that humans make can be neatly fit into a Gaussian curve, with only a handful making choices in the outliers. The idea that my convictions can possibly be managed by the collective thought process of a group is hugely disturbing.

This article by David Rieff brilliantly captures what it is that's wrong with being in the herd.

I hope this bloody Kindle lives up to the hype.

Quote:"Individuality, like civilization itself, is such a hard-won, fragile thing." - David Rieff

NP:Colossus(Afro Celt Sound System)

Eulogy

The neon streetlamp casts a lazy light over the street corner. There is a strange bite in the chilly wind blowing eastwards. Thatha's tea-shop has reached End of Business and is quietly folding up. A few motorists whiz past, eager to reach home. Perhaps they've someone to go home to. Perhaps they don’t. In the distance, a couple walk at leisure,hand in hand, comfortable in the silence enveloping them. Sporadically but irresistibly, lights go off in apartments all around, if they haven‘t already. It is 12 at night after all.

It certainly helps that the two are perched on the parapet of the terrace. One, short, messy-haired,inebriated,22, is listening intently to the melancholic notes of "Torrent",trying very very hard to internalize it, stream into his consciousness as it were. The other, fat, tall,inebriated,22,lights up a cigarette and takes a thoughtful drag. Both gaze at the city stretched out beneath them. Looking but not seeing.

Memories of 18 years flit by. Some fresh, some forgotten. But all of moments irretrievable.

"Maga remember that story we made up about Chintan?
Chintan:Waiter, bisi yenide?
Waiter:Idli, vada, Masale, BisiBele Bath
Chintan:Ice-cream ilva?"

How frivolous. How despicably "low-level".How ineffably familiar.
Raucous laughter ensues. For the zillionth time.

The red pinpoint in the vast gloom soon goes out. Another smoke is indicated.

“Diamond District?”

“Sure. I can use some tea.”

The two hit the road. A stray dog follows them listlessly. The three now slowly make their way along the narrow path trying to side-step the accumulated waste of a city that makes wallowing in its own filth into an art-form of not insignificant pride.

“Do you think we’ll ever find people who’ll be on the exact same wavelength as us?”
“Yeah sure. Why not? All you need is a good enough receiver and a reading of our wavelength and a sample size large enough”
An exasperated glance.
“Typical nerd” mutters messy-haired.
“You must come down at least once a year. We still have to cross so many places off “putting trips” list”.
“Definitely. And we need to drink together. I doubt if the firangs look kindly upon Golconda and RS. God knows what I‘m getting into.”
“Nimmajji. I don’t think spirits will be one of the many things you’ll need to worry about.”

Silence.

More of it.

And some more.

And just like that, without preamble, the two start singing lustily. Woefully out of tune and disturbingly loud. The dog takes this in its stride admirably and proceeds to add its own two-bit of woofing and howling. A curious trio. If only they had Barbershop-trios. Nah, Barbershop-quartets sound better, don’t they?

The flyover appears in front of them, drab and foreboding. And the thing that they came for. Ganesh-anna is in his familiar corner beneath the flyover. And so are his delicacies. Oily things that shall remain unnamed.

“Yerdu half-tea, ondu Kings, ondu bajji”

They groggily rest their behinds on the “sidewalk”. The dog gets the bajji. The others split the rest. Bliss.

Happiness, sometimes, is half-tea and a shared cigarette at 1 in the morning.

We are gathered here today to mourn the death of a friendship. It touched so many lives while it lasted, spread so much joy around, made so many moments fucking unforgettable. May its soul rest in peace.

When a friend leaves, its always, ALWAYS like a death. Only difference is the wake stretches over several years, not merely a week.

*Grenade sized lump in throat.*

Stranger

This is an article i submitted for Vitruvian, the college year-book.


The milling crowd washed over him like the sea over the rocks, leaving behind a sickly scent of a curious mixture of sweat, cheap perfume and damp leaves. People, lots of them, made him nervous. As he looked around, a feeling of nausea swept over him, unbidden. He felt a strange sense of detachment from the consciousness of the crowd which seemed to him to be unremitting and unfeeling in its homogeneity. Soon he’d have to come to a decision. His faltering steps betrayed his anguish and the turmoil his mind was in. He diligently counted the precisely laid out cudappah stones beneath his feet as he thrashed forwards in the sea of humanity. It seemed important to him, somehow, to maintain a point of reference.

“Maga, are you looking for someone? Where is your mummy?” inquired the portly balloon-man kindly. Quite how he had reached the balloon-stand, he had no idea. But here he was, and he was glad for the company, ironic as it may sound in a place which was awash with humanity.

“Umm, I can’t find my mother. She was with me all along. Now I don’t know where she is.” Even as he said this, a grenade-sized lump formed in his throat. Acknowledging the situation he was in inexplicably made it horribly real.

“Not to worry. We’ll find her. We’ll go to the ice-cream parlor announcer. He’ll call out for her. She’ll be here soon.”

Desperate as he was to find his mother, trusting a stranger did not come easily at all to him. He remembered his mother’s endless instructions to approach strangers as if they were a communicable disease. Cloistered as he was all his life in the comfortable confines of his privileged little world where every adult he knew trilled in a fake accent and exuded plastic warmth, the simple honesty of the grubby looking man aroused his suspicions. But what choice did he have? He weighed his options; insofar his scared mind could and assented to this proposal.

The shamiana topped shack that was the ice-cream parlor was chock-full of people who looked as if the festive spirit had got to them and this manifested itself in the their clothes which were bright, to put it mildly. As they approached the announcer who kept mouthing inane hyperboles into his megaphone to draw custom, it was evident he thoroughly approved of this festive spirit. The balloon-man succinctly described the predicament of the “putta”, as he called him, and requested the announcer to intimate the mother of his whereabouts. This the man did, with much gusto and the habitual expansiveness.

When even after several minutes of impassioned pleading mother failed to materialize, the panic which had started as a little seed in his gut, slowly encompassed his worried heart. Hot tears welled up in his eyes, his tiny mind unable to comprehend the grief but dreading the unknown.

Vaguely, he was aware of the balloon-man comforting him and leading him by his index finger through the throng. As he peered around him, he found himself facing the Ferris wheel. The balloon-man paid for two tickets and led him to through the enclosure.

“Let’s see if we can’t keep you busy till we find your mother”.

The mention of his mother brought on a fresh wave of nausea but the curiosity of a 6 year old mind took hold. He’s never been on a giant-wheel before. Mother and wheel and jostled for control over his mind. Wheel won, barely.

As the heart-stopping sensation of suspended gravity swept over him, a scream of pure, primal excitement escaped from him, unlike any his baby-sat life had afforded him so far. What if his mother saw him now? Would she blow a fuse? Thoughts of distress slowly receded from his mind.

The balloon-man smiled gently, a satisfied smile of a job well done.

Soon it was time for the merry-go-round, the fluffy candy, bubbles-blows and eventually back to the ice-cream parlor. Entering the place, the figure he cut now sharply contrasted the one he did the last time he entered the shack.

Even from a distance he could make out the distraught silhouette of his mother in the corner.
Oh well, it was time to go back. He waved good-bye to the balloon-man, still a stranger.

Hello Multiverse!

Need to blog. Need to blog. Need to blog.

If only words had some power.

Oh,but they do!