Marriage

Wife: How was the paneer curry?

Me: It was very good.

Wife: How good?

Me: Very good.

Wife: Better than my other paneer dishes?

The voice in my head: Don't answer that. Don't answer that.

No Genies Inside

So we were at this pseudo-antique shop on Commercial Street, going through grandfather clocks, oil lamps, brass compasses, rotary telephones and suchlike. The shop owner told me they had been manufactured recently but they all looked ancient.

I came across a basket of bronze lamps. When everyone was looking away, I tried to rub one to see what happens.

Clearly, I've seen one fantasy film too many.

Gandhi's Facebook Talisman

Fragility

Laurie Jupiter: (trying to convince her super-hero ex-lover to save humanity from a nuclear holocaust) You have to stop this. Everyone will die.

Dr. Manhattan: And the universe will not even notice.

— Watchmen (2009)

My Monday Mornings

Objective: To reach office by 10 am.

Step 1: Set phone alarm for 7:30 am.

Step 2: Wake up at 7:30 am.Yawn.

Step 3: Zo zleepy. Reset alarm for 8:30.

Step 4: It’s only 8:30. Yawn! Let’s wake up at 8:45.

Step 5: Wake up again at 8:45, set snooze to two minutes.

Step 6: Wake up at 8:47. Snooze. Just two more minutes.

Step 7: 8:49. Yawn. Snooze.

Step 8: It’s 8:51. Snooze. Just two more… Zzz.

Step 9: OK, eyes! Open up! Brain! Be alert! We’re getting late for work! No more snoozing! Move, limbs! Rise, body!

Step 10: Zzz…

Step 11: 9:15. Oh crap! We’re late! Spring out of bed!

Step 12: 9:30. Wet your hair! Make it look like you bathed.

Step 14: 9:45. Swallow breakfast. Fast!

Step 15: 10:00. Jump traffic signals.

Step 16: 10:15. Prepare excuse for being late.

My First Strand of Gray Hair

My Xth CBSE Hindi syllabus had this chapter about a middle-aged man expressing his bittersweet feelings after he noticed the first gray strand on his scalp.

His feelings got my goat. I was 15, and had already begun graying.

My first gray strand appeared when I was 14. The second didn’t take too long after that.

At the peak of my hormonal pandemonium, just when I was supposed to experience the highs of youth, I was dealing with my first sign of aging.

I don’t know — it was probably the hard water. Or my diet. Or maybe that I think too much. Way too much.

By 18, it was a full-blown epidemic. The temples, the scalp, the back of the head — the grays were gaining ground.

I might have been 19 when I had my grays coloured black — something I resorted to, once in a while.

What made matters worse that my hairline receded too. From worrying about premature graying, now I was thankful to have hair at all.

After college, I was admitted to a journalism school. Before I joined, I thought it’d be best to get my hair coloured to look my best for the first day.

A month after a joined, when the colour faded away, I realised half the class was gray.

That’s when I knew I was at the right place. And I never worried about my grays since.

Haven't We Always Been This Way?

Let's look at the bigger picture: humans have always been like the gun-toting boy here. If anything, I take comfort from the fact that man is, perhaps, a more tolerant creature than he was a hundred years ago.

You and I, we can get by in life. We want to trade, earn our bread, live in peace, and hope not to step on someone's toes. But there's always somebody out there who wants more. Pushed down hard enough, he will fight back: for elbow-space, money, land, oil, ideology, faith, love, or anything that's worth fighting — and killing — for.

This is what we've been. That's the truth. We've always fought and killed. History is constituted almost entirely of man's territorial ambitions. There's no end to this. The more we kill, the more we annex, the greater we are. Ashoka The Great, Alexander The Great, and so on.

As long as he exists, man will fight man. Bloodshed and war know no end. Let the loss of human life not surprise you anymore. There will be lazy politicians, there will be police lapses, Intelligence will continue to sit on its butt, and maybe someday you will be sitting on a park bench or at a film theatre when you suddenly become toast. This is small matter.

There's no end to this, and the only way to escape it all is death. I'm saddened by the incidents in Mumbai and I am in one of my skeptical moods. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

~~~

Devarshi pointed me to a Facebook search result for Mujahideen. My first thought was to have the groups reported. My second thought was, "Wait, everyone deserves a chance to speak." Then, I noticed some hateful comments in one group and decided to have them reported. My submission is just a drop in the ocean. Perhaps you can help, too.

Bored of Facebook friends becoming fans of this and that?

I certainly was.

So I decided to become a fan of fans.

Hope you join me there, too.

Id—what?

The problem with reading too much is that, sooner or later, you start getting a lot of ideas about what you ought to do with your life.

Unless, of course, if you have a great deal of time to execute those ideas. Mostly, you wouldn't.

Then, the weight of those ideas is your's alone to bear.

Sigh...

Love.



Lust.

Of belief and promises

Suppose you're the kind who never break their promises.

Let's say you made a promise about something to someone.

Let's say, you once heard a story about the benevolent nature of 'X', and it inspired you promise yourself to emulate 'X'.

But sometime later, you realise that the story about the benevolence of 'X' was false.

In fact, you have arrived to the conclusion that 'X' never existed, and the stories you had heard about him were baseless.

But you had made a promise to yourself. What happens to it?

And what if you can no longer get yourself to keep the promise?

Sometimes, when I am bored...

... I fool around with my Adsense account.

Business Plan # 37

UnTwitter

UnTwitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question...

What would you rather be doing now?

Man smacking lips

P-:

In case this emoticon catches on, you know where it started.

Update [April 11, 4.28 pm]: With credit to Anirudh, who came up with this:

(-:

St. Valentine's

I am not so much into festivals and celebrations, but if people want to celebrate, it is no skin off my nose.

To be honest I find most people who celebrate Valentine's Day a bit dense, a trait only bettered by the silliness of those who say "Oh, I don't need Feb 14 - for me every day is Valentine's Day."

After many tries...

It seems all my attempts to be happier by recreating my younger days will all be futile.

They f*** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f***ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin in This Be The Verse