BITS Pilani - 2

"Hey you fresher, come here, you ¿#$*@?*.", a voice yells out to me from the depths of the dark hostel.

"But sir, I just got ragged for 3 hours.", I reply in protest, eager as I am to go eat and take some rest from this hooligan bunch of seniors all over the campus. I mean, those guys are like in the 3:1 ratio.

"Hey guys, come on over, this fresher is an extra special thadi [stubborn] case da. Let's straighten him out !", screams that nut hat senior.

With a dejected look I amble over to the dark dingy room, full of cigarette smoke. A few more of his cronies gather around expecting entertainment.

"Which state are you from you *&$%*" ? asks that guy liberally peppering swear words in a language only slightly familiar to me.

I give my answer. They burst out laughing and swear some more. I know that its Tamil, but the little Tamil I knew from my good old Tamilian friends of Hyderabad consisted of words used in affection, not the hostile kind.

"So you mean to say, you are not in solid state, but in some other state !" And the gang bursts out laughing. I roll up my eyes to the smoke infested ceiling, where an old yellow fan whirrs with a lot of noise. I start imagining how many revolutions has this fan made in its life ? Surely it looks a lot older than I am.

"Aye you fool, look at us when we talk to you." Some more swear words follow.

"You have two options you *&##@, either you can give a back massage to me or you can copy me the notes from my friend's notebook. They are notes from 5 classes which I have missed. Which is it ?"

Its a no-brainer for me. I dont want to touch no boy, let alone give that stinky dolt a massage. I ask for the pen and the notebooks. An hour later I am done and with a relief, I want to leave.

"Hey, you finished quite fast !", he compares the notes to find any fault that he can then he summons his cronies to decide my fate. I am hungry beyond reason now and the smell of food and burps coming from his cronies make me crazy. But those well fed punks want some more fun. "Sing us Twinkle twinkle little star", they say. I look up at that guy with disbelief. I mean, is he for real ? I say I dont remember it. They are also bored of me now, so they pour a bucket of water on me, howl with laughter at my discomfort and let me off.

That night, after dinner, I ask my fellow wingie [one who stays in the same line of rooms/wing of the hostel] who's from Tamil Nadu for help. I sit with him and ask him the Tamil equivalents of the swear words that I know in Hindi, Marathi and English. I mug up the swear words in Tamil and their meanings. Half an hour later, we are both beaming with glory. It has been a good cultural exchange. Next time he gets ragged by folks from North India, he will at least know what they are calling him. And likewise I will also know what the folks from TN are showering me with. And we both laugh at how the swear words are usually similar across languages, full of terms of incest !

It feels great to study in a university where people come from different states. The next 4 years should be interesting.

If I could...

If I could, I would start running now, just like Forrest, and would not stop till I reached someplace different, some place where they still live a life.

If I could, I would ride a bicycle into my childhood and hope for warm, sunny days instead of this rainy, gloomy, damp, humid, overcast weather of Bangalore.

If I could, I would have been a teacher at my alma mater, living the simple life in a small village.

If I could ...

Maybe I can, maybe I should.

Lure of the Lexus - 1

When I was a kid, the greatest joy I could have was to be able to rent a bicycle from the bylanes of the bakeries, close to our home, near the chicken and egg sellers. The whole experience would consist of craftily extracting the permission to rent a cycle from my parents, run as fast as I could to the cycle renting shop, brandishing the 1 rupee coin as a symbol of my joy all along the way and then breathlessly asking that old uncle to let me ride one of his cycles for half an hour. Another 50 paise would be spared for 2 cup cakes, those yummy and yellow bundles of delight, topped with the not so enticing gelatine globules. But the cakes were reserved for afterwards, when I had finished the ride.

Initially, I would not know how to ride a bicycle, but it was sheer joy to be able to walk the cycle and then tentatively run fast and set foot upon its pedals, albeit for a few joy filled seconds. Then I learnt the 'scissor' way of riding a cycle, but no sir, I would not rent a ladies bicycle. Even when the cycle shop uncle would warn me that he would not entrust his beauties to me after regarding my bruises and the dents on his precious set of wheels. It had to be a man's bicycle. Then when I learnt how to balance myself, that was the day I rode with the biggest smile upon my face.

From then on, my mind craved to have a cycle of my own. Steady pestering over 5 years got me my first bicycle. I had to settle for a Hero Hansa because the BSA SLRs were expensive, even though I had heard that they were lighter and rode much smoother. But once the cash was paid by my pa for that Hansa, it was the most precious thing on earth for me. I would actually look forward to going to school, because it meant that I could ride and go. I would wash and shine that work of art and emboss my name upon it with suitcase stickers. And diligently take it to the cycle repair shop to have its brake wires oiled. My road trips during the hot Hyderabad summers would consist of rides up and down the sparsely populated roads through the military areas of the cantonment.

Then came the harmones surging through and they took inspiration from the Yamaha RX 100 ads on TV which showed a fighter pilot coming down from his awesome fighter jet and his long legged girlfriend smilingly waiting for him besides his parked Yamaha. "Listen to the heartbeat ... of a Yamaha", crooned the voiceover. Yes siree, listen we did and then some. We 15 year olds were suckers for the Yamaha ads in those days. But it was not to be for me, not even a luna, not even a Mofa. I was desperate for a Mofa, that 3000 rs. cycle with a small petrol engine. Boys sniggered that the Mofa could not climb the flyovers of Hyderabad and that one had to dismount and push that thing up the road. But I did not care. I wanted a contraption which had a throttle and which could zip me through the roads, never mind the occasional reversal of roles between the pusher and the pushed.

Then came BITS and it was back to a cycle and in that quaint old town, sometimes having a bicycle was like living life in the fast lane.

Some years back I managed to get my first throttle capabale 2 wheeler, a scooter. I was the fourth owner of that oldie, but it's a powerful baby and though it's very generous with the petrol, it does what's expected of it and a lot more. It has helped me go to work, carry friends, colleagues and what not.

BITS Pilani - 1

Hail BITS !

A land of zero celsius winters and 50 celsius summers, where camels roam and peacocks dont think twice before wandering into the student hostels. That's Pilani for you. It churns out engineers and post graduates in science. In subjects ranging from Mechanical to Museum Studies. Somewhere deep in Rajasthan, close to Haryana. An influence of both. A tribute of the great (late) G.D. Birla to his hometown. But seriously, couldn't the Birlas have been born someplace else, maybe Goa ?

Where there is no train station and you have to make do with buses for going to Delhi - sitting next to beedi-puffing, stinky blanket-wearing jaats who'll blare cassettes of shaadi-music (wedding music), including the infamous 'gaali' songs (songs full of swear words) which are sung/flung by the bridespeople to the grooms' party in some North Indian marriages. Woe be to you if you understand Hindi, you can then understand the talk between the driver and the conductor and the unsolicited butting in of the passengers - you will refresh your knowledge of the nuances of the major incest implying swear words and the drawling way in which they are to be best delivered.

So you grin through all of those 'enlightened' discussions, none of which you wanted to hear anyways, and land with a thud in front of a dhaba and cycle shop and some bored looking cows near a derelict shed which passes for a bus stand. 5 rupees will enable a cycle-rickshaw to haul you and your precious material belongings to a hostel inside the campus. The entry gate always brings on a smile, it reminds me of the security procedure of having to write one's name in the register in case you have been gallivanting around town (booze shops to be precise) after 11 pm. And having written my 'John Hancock' there a couple of times, it was always with pleasure that me and my cronies noted that M.K. Gandhi, J. Nehru, Amitabh Bacchan had slipped into the campus just minutes ahead of us ! We were in august company !! So, I would also write 'Daaku Gabbar Singh' with a flourish and snigger my way through.

I know what you might be thinking, but trust me, in those days, during the late teens, this was perfectly good humour for us.

Booze reminds me of a Sardarji inspector of Pilani who ruled with an iron fist during my first year there. Now, regular, goody two shoes students would not have to worry about him, but for someone like me who felt like tasting a bit of the good old C2H5OH molecule twice a semester, it was a cat and mouse game of how best we could avoid him. There were morbid stories told with grim faces from fellow brothers of the grape, about how Inspector Singh would suddenly appear out of nowhere, gunning his jeep full of constables and screeching with a skidding stop near groups of inebriated students. He would then proceed to rain the choisiest of abuses and ask every one of the students to catch their ears from behind their legs, in short, the hen pose punishment. He and his jaat constabulary would then proceed to kick the crap out of the students, in the seat of the pants. Ouch. That would have hurt. But with even more gloomy expressions, the students would then tell with tears brimming their eyes about how the bottle of sin would be mercilessly snatched away by that inspector who would pass it to his khaki clad cronies and one could see the glint in the eye of those scoundrels, a glint which can come from the thought of free booze.

Of an art exhibition and random socialist thoughts

There’s this art exhibition in Bangalore, on MG Road, which I had a glimpse of today. There were umpteen stalls there, with painters and their paintings. There were lots of colourful works of art there, some done in fluorescent colours as well. There were good paintings, terrible ones, fake wannabe-art, paintings with a bad idea but great execution style and some which got it down all correctly. So I am walking along, taking in the stalls one after another and a work of art catches my eye … yup, that painter girl was a far better work of art than her own paintings. Goes to remind you who’s the best painter of them all, sitting cozily in the heavens above.

One thing is for sure, there is tons of talent just floating around. Maybe in the middle ages when the populace was far less, such artists would have been spoilt rotten under the patronage of the kings, but alas, we live in times where there are hundreds of thousands like us swarming the arena. I guess instead of tanning themselves in the hot sun, manning stalls which are not exactly frequented by buyers, this talented lot should do a lot of social networking and try to appear in page 3 of the rags that pass as national newspapers. Perhaps a bit of publicity would help sales. After all, we live in times when art is boiled down to how much moolah it can fetch per square foot of canvas and where a capitalist and a sell-out can conjure up an art factory which turns out x number of canvases in y period of time, to be sold to the filthy rich at a minimum price of z per sq/ft. Er, in case you are wondering, I am still talking about art, not real estate.

<>As I read somewhere, art has always been the sole purview of the rich and the powerful. Throughout the ages, the poor and middle class have been too busy “running around with their pointless lives” [‘Men in Black’], trying to earn a living and then some … who has ever had the time and money for art ? Today, art is conveniently packaged into shiny movies and stupid television fare. Art for the masses. Art that you can wear. Art that you can capture through shiny silver gadgets called digital cameras.

So after all this art on the street, I walk on to the British Library, which is housed on some nice road with lots of shade giving trees and some corporate ego-palaces. There are tons of fancy cars around with well dressed drivers (rimmed cap and all!) standing in rapt attention for the sirs and madams who come down and signal them haughtily to bring their car over for going out to lunch. Barely 20 feet away, I see two men from the municipal corporation submerged waist deep in a trench full of muck, trying hard to clean out the sludge, while two more wait around patiently, for enough sledge to be collected, so that they can then haul it away. What a difference in lives, how much disparity can there be in a span of just 20 feet ? Two sets of people, one who create muck and sell it as crucial software in computers for obscene amounts of money and another set who clean out the actual physical muck that society generates, but who get paid peanuts.

All those who criticize India’s initial socialist/communist leanings and wonder how communism is on the rise in some states, these people should have been there today, standing with me at lunchtime, near the British Library of Bangalore.

Freakin' cats - 1

I hate cats. There. I said it. I feel much better now.

I hate it when they go about their moaning and howling through the night and when you open the door to yell at them, they actually have the nerve to look up at you with irritation in their countenance. Damn you, you bunches of shit. If it were upto me, I would have banished you to the jungles so that foxes would eat you up as payback to the lions and tigers who eat them up.

But yeah, modern society and all its garbage brings rats, mice, bandicoots and similar vile things which only a nasty cat can relish. Can you imagine this ? I mean a stinking, dirty looking, ugly mouse is the food of relish of that even nastier cat. I mean, even a dog has better tastes than this to turn his elegant snout away in disgust from a dead rat.

Dogs have it all figured out you know - mice are good to chase, but no good to eat.

That's where the cats decided to fit in. That's their USP, their stroke of nirvana. If they werent out here eating the mice for us humans, I am sure our forefathers would have banished their dirty arses to the depth of the jungles. Yup, for the wolves to feed upon, as payback time.

So catty cat, eat the frickin' mice around, but do so in peace and for heaven's sake, dont hang around my pad making those obscene sounds. And when I open the door to yell, just vamoose, scoot, run ! If you keep standing there, giving me attitude, boy oh boy, one fine day, you will find yourself in cat hell, never knowing what was it that hit you. The only thing that prevents me to do this is the tradition in my religion which says I must provide a golden cat to absolve me of my sin (?) of getting rid of a cat.

And please dont lick your fur all the time sitting on the ledge of my place. Its irritating, reminds me that I am wearing a week old jeans and that the house is dirty.

And yeah, did I mention that you must stop giving me dirty looks full of attitude ? I mean, just because you stand there, all of 8 inches tall, and give me those looks, you are not going to turn into a tiger. No sirree, not happening. Instead, what might happen is what I described before. [Hint: it was about your passage to cat hell]. And in case you did not know, cat hell consists of mice in-charges who give it back to you. The whole deal.

So catty cats galore, we both know that we dont like each other. So make it a point to keep outta my way. And come to get them mice when I am asleep.

"You dont have to be anything !"

That's a beautiful dilaogue from the last scene of 'Pleasantville', a movie that I just love.

Think about it. We spend our lives comparing how we are doing versus our peers and friends and at times we moan and groan about what we should have achieved by now and what we should have been. That is the kind of cribbing which Tobey's mom does and Tobey gives her that disarming smile of his and coos gently (that ratty punk, I am sure he gets all the gals 'coz of this), "You dont have to be anything !".

Interestingly, there was an interesting article by Mahesh Murthy in Business World regarding peer pressure which can be read here.

Honestly speaking though, there are contrary thoughts from people as well who say that the moment a person stops benchmarking her performance against others, thats when decay sets in.

And its pretty damned difficult to keep a saintly disposition when people around you buy palatial homes and luxury sedans and then they pass on questions and hints to you, ever so gently about when you are going to be part of that club ?

Sometimes, entry to a friend (?) circle is decided based upon the kind of trappings that you have netted so far using the loans and EMIs as your hook, line and sinker.

Dilip D'Souza has set an example of how an alternate path can be followed, er, actually, how an alternate path can be created and walked upon. Bravo my BITS senior ! May there be more of you. And may I get the grit to do the same one day.

So there it is ... if you retract too much from the glittering trappings of modern consumerism, you can get renounced by others around you. If you swear by wealth and its charms, then there seems no salvation. So how much is enough and where does one go to find the middle path ? Or is there none ?

Good for many laughs

When its gloomy, Best of Craigslist can be a great stress buster.

You are warned, some posts may be offensive in all possible ways. But the titles are indicative and I dont venture near those ones usually.

But you do get some great and contemporary American humour at its whackiest best.

"All the truth in the world ...

...adds up to one BIG lie."
- Bob Dylan.

That is very much true sir.

They teach you lots of things in schools and colleges which dont actually hold in the real world. No, dont fret, this aint a post which is gonna groan about the inequalities and unfairness of life. Its more about how important it is to adjust to these things, take them in with a sack load of salt (a pinch of salt wont suffice, we live in times of hugely disproportional disparities)

Someone has taught me an important lesson - dont compare yourself with others and feel bad about what you dont have. It never leads us anywhere.

That someone also tells me about how situations are sometimes just not fair nor just, people with beauty get worshipped and not the ones with brains, that people who sin seem to do much better that the ones who follow the straight and narrow.

But complainin' 'bout all this shit dont lead us nowhere bro'. We got to take it all in, smile and move along.

And whatever happens, as only Jim Carrey can say it in his crazy style :
"Have a good afternoon, good evening and good night".

Vegas Junkie ? What's that ...

"Are you a gambler my friend ? Life's a gamble ..."

Someone said these words, dont know who and dont care either. But its true, we are all gamblers to an extent, we take risks for rewards. Some of us have less capacity for risks, some eat extra large portions of risk for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Who said that gambling was only about money ? Sure, that kind of a gambler also exists in most of us ... the kind with the lure of easy money twinkling bright in the eyes ... after all no one is a gambler till they have hit the casinos in Vegas. And they are still milky white pure till they have heard the clanging sounds of coins rattling down the coin shute in a slot machine.

Imagine this: You are nicely touring a casino, feeling all moralistic and hoity toity about yourself being morally superior to all the junkies there. Just for fun, you insert a couple of dimes in one of the slot machines. Suddenly your heart races. There's some flashing of lights and clanging noise. You think "What happened ? How come I got 100 coins by inserting one coin ? Can I repeat this result ? If I do it with bigger stakes, heck I can retire ... ".

That's how a gambler is born. A gambler is different from a junkie, ok ?

The pull of the bright neon, the refreshingly pure and cool air inside the casinos, you can smell money in the air.

Vegas is the ultimate tribute of mankind to capitalism at its purest, narcissistic best. Sins of all kinds catered to without any hangovers of guilt.

More on Vegas ... later.

Back to the topic: We are now talking about a vegas junkie. There are different kinds of them. What kind is me ? We'll cover that in the course of time ...