Hero

Vir Sanghvi's too rich...
Indy's too much into history...

I need a new hero.

Raceday

Some guys have it all made.

I mean, lookit him, all chiselled and all, decked up in shiny overalls. Look at the strut, the gait as he walks on to his drive, waving to the crowds. Thinks he is the good ol' Schumi, I tell you. Fact is, he just a kid; a lucky one. The camera focuses on his ride; yup, he's got one there. Kid's got taste, I'll give you that. Kid wins a race, then goes on to that futuristic hangar (!) where that platinum blonde briefs him about the stuff he can buy, all the time flashing a million dollar smile. Some guys have it all, I tell you.

Kid's roaring up his engine. We know better. We as in Max, Fuller and me, patiently waiting for the hoot, ready to go when it's time to. Kid's good, and today it looks like he's got some chicks come by see him race. I can almost hear them fawning over him; almost. The noise that kid makes can drown out pretty much everything else. Show-off!

Vrooom... here we go. Max and Fuller fall behind, as they always do. It's me and the kid, for now. The countryside races past by, the wind mercilessly flapping at our faces. Kid's got this sideways grin pasted on his face; I dunno how I look, the cam never bothers about me. The track's pretty standard, all full of twists and turns at sectors and then straight-ups at places. We are at the straight parts; kid's driving too fast, he's got a thin lead over me but I know better. Everyone's gotta fall back when the sharp turns begin.

Yeah baby! smoke that, kid. Someone's gotta tell him that you can't burn up the tarmac when it's twisted so much, kid. All that testo ain't everything, a man needs some grey stuff up there to ace this. What'cha Kid? feels stupid to get all those girls come over to see me win?

I put miles between us. All right, not my day...yards actually. But I swear there were times me, Max and Fuller could beat this kid hands down. Those olden days the kid could hardly finish. We'd be waiting at the line, for the young harridan to come by and finish the ordeal. Now lookit him, he's got into winning, podium pics, champagne flourish and all. Yet he was always the camera kid. That dastardly cam's always been on him. Go figure.

We're almost at the last lap, Kid breathing my smoke. He ain't gonna let up, not today, with all those frocks awaiting him. One thing, he's got jolly good support; you can almost hear the girls egging him to the finish line. Must be cute girls; god knows what they are wearing. Dunno, don't get around much. God knows what they look like, smell like, taste like. I just race. It's just me and the beast. It's like I'm programmed to do only one thing in this life, to race. Thanklessly. Not for me the fanfare, the music and all. I race.

You can almost see the line. A draft of sense blows over me. Who am I kidding? He races therefore I am. He'd get the girls if he wins now; what'd I get? Another race? A dry, snorting, soulfucked laugh bellows inside me. I slow down, but not by too much to make it look suspect. Kid zooms by, still wearing the same grin. If I din't know any better, I'd have thought he's like that only.

The fanfare follows. Orchestra, lights, camera... champagne. We are there too, looking smug, filling up the podium like we are somebody's afterthought. Kid relieves us by opting for a race- this time in the sunny skies of California.

Awwright, Kid; buckle up. Winning twice in a row might mean you'll dump me for that bald old hitman. No kid gloves this time.

Overwhelming Senses

Me and death, separated at birth. This Chuck Palahniuk line is one of my favourites- typical of how creative (in an unorthodox way) the man can be.

What really makes our lives special? It could be the power of the senses- I like to travel very much, explore to different places, going back to the same place over and over again, observing something new every time; but the experience wouldn't have been the same without the visual treat. Without the power of sight, the green valleys of the Sahyadris would have been indistinguishable from the snow capped Himalayas. The ferocity of the Eastern coast no different from the deceptive calmness of the Konkan coast.

Music: though I'm not big into it, but I appreciate the audio experience as well. Life surely would have been much less worth it if unexposed to Rahman, Beatles, Dylan and the like.

Touch, well, makes it all feel real. The audio visual treat can perhaps be simulated in theater screens and the telly. The fresh drops of rain on your palm when it starts raining, the reassurance that one gets when checking out that the mobile, keys and the wallet are safe, the irrepressible confidence that exudes from a weapon (especially guns- I guess the feel that you can prey on someone from a distance brings forth the courage, ironic in a way) and the incredible warmth of love.

But it gets a bit overwhelming at times. At moments, when faced with indescribable sights, I feel the senses are sometimes an embarrassment of riches. Walking alone in the streets, I get lost in my thoughts, the sounds and the sights. Time just goes by, me losing track of all time and reason. This is how I meditate. You lock me in a room with overpowering silence for long, I'll scream out so hard, I'd probably rupture my throat. Leave me in a crowded street with the rhythms of life beating all around, I let my thoughts fly- a pity they don't go too far.

But lately I drown out the noises- I envelop my ears with a headphone. The auditory experience becomes more customised. And that has helped me see. Things I'd miss otherwise, I take keen attention to. A man sleeping with a weird pose on the street, a patch of grass growing out of nowhere, a fascinating zig zag pattern of mud or even oddly coloured curtains on windows.

Suppressing noise is something yearned for in the face of a beautiful sight. Though noise has it's own charms, I'll admit. A laughter out of nowhere in a seemingly lonely beach is a sensual experience in itself. It jolts you out of any reverie you were in.

Perhaps for someone with sight, suppressing noise comes forth. But I can imagine music without sight would probably a divine experience. I am not so naive to think that if I just blindfold myself and turn on a mix of flutes and violins, I will enjoy it as I never have. But if I do it more than a couple of times, give it a little time, I am sure the experience will be unforgettable.

Speaking to a loved one, yearning for the touch, but not getting any, can be an experience in itself. Definitely not a welcome one, but sometimes they say this makes the desire stronger.

The Need to Know

A professional life such as mine has many benefits. It has not yet started to sap all my energies, provides enough for a bohemian living and the reason for this post, puts me into contact with people and situations I wouldn't be involved with otherwise.

In the land of desktops, 4 day formals and free coffee, I have observed a certain pattern of trust. If there's a major reorganisation (or even in the worst case retrenchment) in the corp, the word is kept tight. The seniors are called in for a meeting, and the news is let out discreetly. The seniors are instructed to keep it tight, and not to worry, every one's going to know it all in due time. The seniors, armed with the knowledge, either act as instructed or flaunt it, by dropping some hints to drooling subordinates.

The rationale is simple. Or so they say. Seniors have earned the right to hear bad (or good, depending on the point of view) news earlier than the plebeians because they have able to exhibit the right level of prudence, commitment and responsibility in all situations, especially during change. Their work speaks for them and they are secure in their positions. A little change does not bring out the worst in them.

The plebeians are of course different. They are first rate gossip mongers, impulsive and prone to panic. Information cannot be presented in the raw form to them- that will only lead to chaos. Information needs to be filtered, sweetened and then let out in the appropriate hour. It's obvious: they still haven't earned the trust of the golf club.

Is this imagined chaos reason enough for such levels of trust? Maybe not. Maybe this trickle down of information is part of the compensation. The tip gets to know it early. The high ones a little later and then a palatable form is presented to the base.

It is this that riles into my nature. Why is it that we are so afraid of this imagined chaos? Why is that minimum level of trust not there? Why do we keep on justifying protecting and prohibiting flow of information so that there is order?

If it is a form of compensation, then say it as it is. Do not hide under the camouflage of order. The plebeians put in as many hours as does the golf club and if they undertake less responsibility they get a lesser pay too. As being more prudent and reliable, let's be honest: the headlines are made by the golf club, not the Goregaon dweller. The problem is far rooted in the nature of crassness. There is an addiction to holding onto knowledge that should be public. The irony is that it is also our nature to be interested in information that ought not be public by any social norm- who's sleeping with whom, which color of knickers that chick wears and so on.

Trust begets trust. If the tip cannot trust the base, it ought to be time the base stop trusting the tip.

Final Destination: I

He stared at the sun.

The truck driver leaned to clean up the ketchup on his dashboard. He took his eyes off the road, but onlyfor a little while. It was an empty expressway, and he was doing good. The only roadkill will be an unlucky dog.

RATM blaring on his headphone, he adjusted his eyes to the sun. They said never hide, and admired the sepia tones of his newly acquired Ray-Ban.

The bus driver licked off the ketchup. Finger lickin good. Oh shit.

He took a look to his left. The beat rose to a crescendo, "What better place than here? what better time than now?". His left hand had instinctively started digging for the IPOD, trying to change to the next.

The impact barely made the truck move. But the driver knew.

General Reflections

It feels as if the flu is into me, gnawing at the very essence of me, my mind.
Watched Hitch last night, and as with the other notable Will Smith movie of recent years, it made me question my existence as it is now.
Hitch and the Pursuit of Happyness both stress on the importance of living beyond the ordinary: to seek out and claim the most important conquest of them all, love.
Will of Pursuit led his life to secure the future of himself and his kid, driven by the love for his son. He could have just as easily fell into a vortex of guilt, rage and frustation and sunk deeper into depression. He could have easily been a bum who lives off the street and sings out loud when someone passes by; just to make the other guy know what he's been through and what he thinks of the world. But he did not. He chose change.
Hitch is obviously not even remotely comparable to Pursuit. It's a movie with a much lighter vein, based on the subject of tackling the modern-day cynicism in relationships. It could have dealt this more seriously but chose not to, and insteaddrowned itself in candyfloss. Not that I hold that in contempt. Somehow I've come to realise not every movie has to make a point and that too seriously. Hitch can make analert guy think. And then he's free to comment and reflect. It's an encouragement rather than a thesis.
It certainly made me ponder. It's been too long trying to be a lone wolf.
There was a time, not too long ago, when I used to fall in love with any woman I see. It still happens, if only for a glance. Then the realities sink in, and the differencesamplify and the longing disappears. What makes it worse that I've chosen to be aneccentric type, which makes it difficult for me to adjust to an ordinary life, which most women seem to like to live.
Get real. Which chick would like to run off to the Sahyadris every weekend?
But perhaps the issue is deeper than that. Why is it that I like to run away?

F***** up

At least I did something...
I noticed one thing today: I leave and come back to office on the same day. A mere innocous glance at my inbox was the source of this revelation.
What does this mean? I have transcended the christian boundaries of day and night. I leave and come back at the same day. Get it?
Perhaps baby steps at taking the system my way.
As Rant proved, maybe time is not so sacrosanct after all.

Wither

For all that RANT says, if you take a deeper look, nightimers did suffer- they were shot at, they were segregated and quarantined.
Only perhaps Rant escaped the dredge of time.
So that's all there is- only the leaders will thrive, because that is their destiny, their purpose.
The rest will always wither.

Beyond Help

It's all essentially about choices. Some choices you make, you live to regret. Some choices, when you don't see the other, makes you live on.
Maybe this is Monday- but I see no point in this facade. And I hate the fact that I have to live on...

There are many things in this world that still appeals to me: the sweet smell of the rain has not yet been doused by the gasoline.

Why am I doing all this? Imagine a world where there are no listeners. What good will be your gyaan then?
Do I read to be the know it all geek?

The painful answer is yes.

Yes, I am like an nineteen year old who has just discovered Nietszche. And I am from the Retard academy who refuses to grow up- embrace the responsibilities.

I dunno what I am doing here... I am not smart, as some of these people are. I am not devoted,as it seems some of them are.

I am just the scum who wants it all.

Nice try?

Sleaze and the sale are the only things that will draw the crowds in the future

Fancy Incarceration

Let's put it simply- This is nothing but incarceration. It isn't confinement by brute physical force but in a far more sophisticated manner. Its like a posh jail. Where you are made to feel good. You are made to feel important, you are made to wish for things you never knew or wanted before. The wishes pile up and you see the joy in confinement. You celebrate it and wish even more. Freedom is dismissed as reckless and unimportant.
What's funny is that people bitch and like it at the same time.

I need shelter, I need clothes and I need food. I also need an SLR, a videocam and a passport to visit the entire world. Fact is, if I were born a couple of thousand years ago, I wouldn't have even pined for these. Food to me would have been something burnt. Clothes some natural rag. Shelter would have been some abandoned cave. And I wouldn't have even known what I was missing out on.
Would I have lived an inferior life?

What you don't know can't give you a sense of deprivation.

Tis ain't that bad either

Burn the bridges to the past, be a new person everyday

This one I thought was cool enough

lies damned lies and conference calls...

Well ... I did try!

Everyone's trying to be cool, hot or themselves. Its infuriating to see no one trying to be crazy

For the Blogomaniac

Well, it'd take a blogomaniac to read my posts. This garbage pile never had a list of followers but I think my lack of profligacy in writing has had the effect of driving out the kind souls who used to browse this out of some sense of kinship rather than appreciation. Anyway for this dwindling list and the blogomaniac, I apologise if one notices that most of my posts get uploaded at one day. The thing is, the thoughts come as and when they are supposed to, but I only get time to upload them on the Sunday (mostly the other Sunday).

Hardly a chronicler.

Thought for the day

Competition is a basic instinct.

Trust Premium

Another day...
Morning time got wasted on the "trust premium" of relationships. Everyone knows relationships work on trust. However in understanding why relationships are so few and far between in India as compared to the West I made up this thing. My theory goes like this: In the West, the trust premium (or the faith premium) requisite for a relationship is much less than in India. So once two consenting adults measure each other up (gauge their trustpremiums, as well as other things) they take the plunge. What probably helps is the social acceptability of suchrelationships as well as the homogeinity of the population.
The first stumbling block here is the constraints to social acceptability. That demands a higher trust premium. If the society doesn't approve, the adults involved will demand a higher trust premium - since in case the relationshipflounders at a later date, it will be difficult for them to go back to their respective social networks. And since cross-cultural relationships (inter-racial, inter-caste, inter-religion etc) invite a relatively higher social disapproval, the corresponding trust premium required is even higher.
That explains why relationships are a rare thing in India (on an average I'd argue most Indian males and females have had only two/three relationships before marraige) and why it is even rarer to find cross-culturalrelationships.
Summming up, the incidence of relationships is linked with the trust premiums required, and the trust premium isinfluenced by the social acceptability of relationships.
However, this theory falls flat in explaining the relationships of the adolescents. In such cases, the socialacceptability is very low, leading to requirement of higher trust premiums and hence fewer relationships. But (again a hypothesis based on anecdotal evidence) I'd argue the prevalence of relationships in adolescents arehigher than in adults.
This hypothesis (the last one involving the adults) can be easily attacked upon. First thing is that at a specific point of time, adolescents, belonging to a different generation, will have a different social network as well as different worldviews as compared to an adult of that specific period. The adult may have peers and parents of a more traditional outlook. Hence we have higher social disapproval leading to higher trust premiums.
Interestingly, seen from a different angle, when the adolescent grows up to an adult, social disapprovals fall, as a consequence of changing values as well as for the fact that parents will be more comfortable with their sonsand daughters in relationships once they cross an age threshold. So it would follow that adults should be more willing to be in a relationship (and also more willing to be in a cross-cultural one) than adolescents. That is something I find hard to believe and anecdotal evidence is also contrary.
So what could be the key to the puzzle? One thing could be the peer angle. Social networks are not just parents,family friends, relatives and neighbors. Among peers, one feels cool to be in a relationship and also be radical- basically in a cross-cultural relationship. This suggests that trust premium is based on a complex measure of social approval, where ambiguous influences emanate from different sources.
Further, adults probably have much more to lose from social approval than an adolescent. An adolescent can rest on the assumption that any of his/her supposed misdemeanour may be interpreted as an "immature" act and hencewont be disowned or cut off from the inheritance or the network. But once you grow up, one has to own up to theirdecisions and can't claim to be "immature". Hence decisions are interpreted seriously and there's clear and presentdanger of being cut off. And not just relationships, this factor can explain why people are more radical when they're younger, be it in politics, substance use and so on.
In essence, social approvals have different bearings on age and so people, when considering relationships, get influenced by the factor of social approval differently based on their age.

Maybe

Maybe she was right...
Maybe even her astrologer was right...
Maybe I'm destined to be everywhere and nowhere, with everyone and noone and primed for a sad end.
Maybe I like pitying myself.