you can't even cry

Guess

CH: Your wallpaper - is it a boy or a girl?
Me: You can take 3 guesses.

The Rise and Fall of the Tummy.

I have gained a lot in the past one year. 8 kg, to be precise. Or 12.5%. My weight had constantly hovered around the 63kg mark in my entire under-grad days. 4 months into my job, I had gained 2 kg, and another 8 months later, extra 6 kg. The progression is definitely more than arithmetical. (I haven't plotted it, but it might turn near exponential!)

I am not that scared of the current state I am in. I look as healthy as ever. But the rate at which the achievement was accomplished requires some rethinking on my part. There are signs: I am not able to wear any of the pants that I bought at the beginning of the year. And all this time, I have been trying to convince myself that my pants have shrunk in size. To make it worse, my uncles and my grandpa from my mother's side have not so flattering tummies. You never know if some miscreant of that gene decided to inhabit my body.

Therefore, for my own good, I intend to reverse what happened in the last year. I have just formulated a plan to this end. I am not setting any time-line as of now, though.

1a. Buy jogging shoes.
1b. Jog every morning for at least 3-4 km. This should be done on a different route everyday just to make sure I do not get bored!
2. Stop eating chicken. Eat chicken only one day a week. Eat chicken only when I drink beer, and one extra day in a week.
3. Eat just salad for one day.
4. Play football at least every weekend.
5. Weigh myself at least once every month two months and keep track of my performance.

Watch this space for some more interesting updates!

This and that

I have been encumbered by some heavy clouds of thoughts hovering over my head. It had to eventually rain. And what better place to rain it on than my fertile blog.

• Saw Tashan a few days back. I don't see why there's a big hue and cry about 'Size Zero' (courtesy Bebo). I can't fathom what's so cool about looking like a stick? A woman should look like a woman. This is not to say that people should start gorging on food and building on their fat. What's so difficult about promoting the middle-ground? I firmly believe that people should go for a healthy body, not anorexia or obesity.
• Sarkar Raj had me thinking. It was a bit different, a bit slow, and very RGV-ery. The question of displacing 40,000 people for the greater good of crores of other people is one worth pondering deeper. Is it moral/acceptable to completely destroy a village to save a country? If, in the future, it becomes necessary to sacrifice a country for the greater good of the rest of the world, is it moral to proceed thus? How can one define morality pertaining to these questions? The final answer, perhaps is 'survival of the fittest'. Sometimes, a species can be fitter than another by their sheer volume and number. So, the rest of the world effectively becomes fitter than any country singled out. Also, I remember reading in a book by Robert Pirsig (Lila, I think), that the more evolved a being is, the less moral it becomes to kill/destroy its existence. It is more moral to kill a chicken than a cow, and a bug than a chicken. Perhaps, it is also more moral to destroy a village than a city.
• The weather's pretty here around this time. Rain, wind, clouds. And then, a city cleansed. The feeling of getting completely drenched in the rains, streams of water dripping down, caressing your body. Then wiping your face for a clear vision. Slipping across the muddy ground for an ambitious tackle. Peace.
  
• Federer lost to Nadal in the French Open. Beauty lost to brute force, and that too in a humiliating manner. Everyone seemed to want beauty to win, but force fought like a wounded lion, even though it was the one who was wounding the other! More than the physical weakness it was his mental weakness that defeated Federer. Perhaps, he needs the kind of mental strength that some other greates I admire are made of - Schumacher and Kasparov. It is not just perfect skills that makes a sportsperson perfect, but needs a mental strength that can back up the skills, and the pressure it entails.

(P.S.- had written the post earlier but had left it un-posted)

The future is here...

First 35 to familiarity

• I think I can control my anger. And that makes me nervous.
• Sometimes, when things don't go my way, I try to think it is all a joke. But it doesn't seem so funny even when I try.
• I suck at keeping in touch with people.
• I have no explanation for that.
• I would prefer a quiet night in a park to a party with a multitude of people.
• I think life has been quite fair to me till now. It makes me scared.
• I think no one knows who/what I am.
• I am a better listener than a talker.
• I could kill for a good conversation.
• Telling people about myself makes me feel vulnerable. But not so much when i get to know as much about them.
• I dont know why I am writing this.
• Maybe to know myself better.
• But others may know about me.
• Anyway, it doesn't matter. Not many will read this.
• I am hungry.
• I am lazier than most people. My laziness is my biggest, well, negative point.
• I seldom fall sick. But I dont think I am healthy anymore.
• Choices confuse me. I'd rather have one or no choice than multiple ones.
• I think I am quite selfish. I want to be more selfish.
• Most books I read are after receicing recommendations from people. But the best books I have read are some that have not been recommended by anyone.
• If I analyze my life in 5 phases of 5 years each, I might look like a different person in each phase.
• This shit is difficult to write.
• I have lost touch with music. I have no plans to revive my relationship with music.
• I wish I could do something creative and sustain myself with it.
• I dont like being told what to do. I might even decide not to do it just because someone tells me to do it.
• I dont like telling people what to do either.
• Humor is what I adore most in a person.
• To be Frank, I need to change my name.
• I want to end this list, but don't know how to.
• Something clinching, enlightening, amusing. Something that can end this list.
• Hmm.
• I have to end this with a cliche. Sorry to disappoint you. But I cant think of anything else.
• So...
• I was here.
• So was [put your name here].

Words

bored, football, censored, funny, incredible, hungry, pop-up box, scared, romeo and juliet, dire straits, pink floyd, music, insti, memories, wing, hostel, godav, saras, jam, change, night, movies, dcc++, search, net, chat, epao, closure of net, torrent, nift, party, beach, people, fake, dislike, keep in touch, lose touch, new people, books, schumacher, realize, federer, *****, bengali, punjabi, tam, gult, bihari, sand art, face, crushed, groan, email, dinner, hungry, movie, phone call, weekend, practice, school, marriage, tuitions, classes, books, change, school friends, metro, city, floyd, baby laughing, happy songs, chroma, philosophy, for love of sophia, uncyclopedia, home, lonely, mute, incredulous, incredible, photo, words, crime, famous, ram gopal verma, anurag kashyap, kashyap, london, murder, agatha, dog, curious, kid, flat, swing, swimming pool, swim, learn, beach, gujarat, bishnupur, chicken, cricket, lunch, ethnic clashes, chongnikim, rains, clean, depressing, green, gc tongbra, manipuri, books, none, zuk, zilch, infinity

Echo

A monk asked Hogen, "I, Echo, ask you, Master. What is Buddha?"
Hogen said, "You are Echo."

Link

100 suba post

Does it creep anyone else out a little that 'ten years ago' refers to 1998?

Being honest

How is it important to be honest? How different is it to be honest with one’s self and to be honest with others? How much is others’ perception worth while determining someone’s honesty? Isn’t it possible for someone to be completely honest with himself and yet dishonest in the eyes of others? If someone chooses a place where he can be all alone with himself, a place where no one else can touch, does that make him a hypocrite because to others, he is not what he is? If he chooses to hide a part of himself from others, does that make him a hypocrite? Is it wrong to feel vulnerable when someone lets himself known to another? Is it wrong for someone to try to protect himself from that vulnerability?

If u put in two different individuals together, wouldn’t it be a miracle if they just happen to agree on everything? Is it prudent to imagine a world where everyone just stuck to his honest opinions? Does every compromise make one more hypocritical, as u r accepting something who u r not, something u r not wont to do? Is it possible, then, to live without any compromise and stay completely honest? Can we say, I will stick to my own notions, and the world may go its own way?

But then, how will this work in the grand scheme of things? How will the world work if everyone stuck to his opinion and remained honest, without any compromise? Does agreeing with someone else’s opinion, different from yours, make you dishonest? How different is it from respecting someone else’s opinion?

If someone claims to despise a certain kind of behavior, but tries to justify it when he himself behaves that way, does he become a hypocrite? If he is able to justify it, does it cleanse him of his hypocrisy? Is the act of justification itself an act of hypocrisy?

Which one is more honest - shooting from the mouth, or taking time to think, and then speaking? How important is it to show one’s emotions? If someone tries to curb his anger, is he cheating? Should he just let it go?

If u decide not to do a certain thing which u want to, but ought not to do, does that make u a hypocrite? Isn’t that running away from who u r, what u want? Are we what we r, or what we want to be? If I don’t know who I am, can someone accuse me of being not being the real me?

Ctrl C , Ctrl V

# How do you extract iron from Hema Malini?
Get her drunk. Then she'll get tight. Now u have hema-tite. You can extract iron from that.

# son: mom, what's there to eat?
mom: hum eat ka jawaab pathhar se denge

# Two paint tankers, one carrying red paint, and one carrying purple paint, collide. The sailors were marooned.

# Two atoms are walking along. Suddenly one says "oh no! I've lost an electron!"
"Really? You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm positive!"

# Did you hear about the dyslexic who walks into a bra?

# What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don't know and I don't care.

# What's the difference between regular garlic and roasted garlic?
A gypsy once told me it was the roasting, but you shouldn't trust the gypsies

#
Deep within a forest a little turtle began to climb a tree. After hours of effort he reached the top, leaped into the air waving his front legs, and crashed to the ground. After recovering, he slowly climbed the tree again, jumped, and fell to the ground. The turtle tried again and again while a pair of birds sitting on a branch watched his sad efforts. Finally, the female bird turned to her mate. "Dear," she chirped, "I think it's time to tell him he's adopted."

# A Times Roman walk into a bar
The barman says, "Oi- get out! We don't want your type in here"

# Two muffins were sitting on a counter. One looks to the other and says "How've you been today?" The other screams "AH! A TALKING MUFFIN!"

# How do you tell a boy chromosome from a girl chromosome?
You pull down its genes.

# A man goes to a party and sees a man with a banana in his ear. He goes up to him ad says "Excuse me, did you know you have a banana in your ear?"
"Pardon?"
"I said did you know you have a banana in your ear?"
"Sorry?"
"You have a banana in your ear."
"What?"
"YOU...HAVE...BANANA....IN.....YOUR.....EAR"
The other man replies "I'm sorry, I can't hear you, I've got a banana in my ear!"

# Attorney: Were you present when your picture was taken?
Witness: Would you repeat the question?

# Descartes walks into a bar and orders a tequila sunrise. The bartender looks at him for a moment and says "Wouldn't you like something a bit more manly?" Descartes says "I think not!" and disappears.

# A waiter asks a man, “May I take your order, sir?”
“Yes,” the man replies. “I’m just wondering, exactly how do you prepare your chickens?”
“Nothing special, sir. We just tell them straight out that they’re going to die.”

# Three people of different nationalities walk into the bar. Two of them say something smart, and the third one makes a mockery of his fellow countrymen by acting dumb.

# So a stripper walks into a Pole:
"Sorry ma'am."
"What? A pole can talk?!"

# A very confident James Bond walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman. He gives her a quick glance then casually looks at his watch for a moment. The woman notices this and asks, "Is your date running late?"
"No," he replies, "Q has just given me this state-of-the-art watch. I was just testing it."
The intrigued woman says, "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?"
Bond explains, "It uses Alpha waves to talk to me telepathically."
The lady says, "What's it telling you now?"
"Well, for a start it says you're not wearing any underwear..."
The woman giggles and replies, "Well it must be broken because I am wearing underwear!"
Bond smirks, taps his watch and says, "Bloody thing's an hour fast."

# A Pole walks into a bar

# A constant function and e^x are walking on Broadway. Then suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator approaching and runs away. So e^x follows him and asks why the hurry.
"Well, you see, there's this diff.operator coming this way, and when we meet, he'll differentiate me and nothing will be left of me!"
"Ah," says e^x, "he won't bother ME, I'm e to-the x!" and he walks on. Of course he meets the differential operator after a short distance.
e^x : "Hi, I'm e^x"
diff.op. : "Hi, I'm d/dy"

# Who is sodium?
Shahrukh Khan ("Main Hoon Na" )

on writing

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.” - Terry Pratchett

i'm alone and i have time to kill. i want to write about something, anything. i'm just unable to decide on what. (should it be 'decide on what' or 'decide what on'? i need a wren and martin!) a lot of things have tempted themselves before me, for me to put them in writing. for example, i could write about what i did today, about someone, some movie, sites that i visit, tv shows that i like, my favorite songs, so on and so forth. or i could write some fiction. by the way, there's this story that has been ringing in my head for quite sometime now. i could put it in writing finally! but that would be too taxing and too deep for me to write about now. hmm. or i could keep typing about anything that pops up in my head till i get bored and tired! that should be exciting! but am i not doing that alreaedy? am i excited? i guess u tend to falter when presented with choices. i've always wondered whether having choices is better or worse than having no choice at all. do u realize that having only one choice is the same as having no choice at all? that's when 1 becomes equal to 0! man, i just posed a philosophical question and cracked it myself.

i wish real life would be as easy as typing something. imagine being able to tidy up ur room just like doing Ctrl + A and then Ctrl + J in word. i could write pretty neatly too, justifying the text left and right (it requires a lot of practice, let me tell ya!) it is not so easy when it comes to arranging ur wardrobe, and books and other stuff.

hmmm. so, the story i was thinking about. it is about a guy who, one day, discovers his father's diary. in the diary, his father has written a lot about a certain girl. this was probably before his father met his mom. so, he decides to set out on a journey to go to where the diary was set. the place, as he finds out, is a magical one, unlike any place he has ever been to, and unlike any place he ever thought would exist. as he spends time over there, he starts discovering a lot of things about his father. in the end of his stay, his entire perception of his father changes, and along with it, his person changes completely.

what else, what else? oh, how can i forget to write about the harbhajan-monkey-symonds controversy. now, that is weird. when harbhajan calls u monkey, u don't get offended, u laugh. it IS funny. also, by now, symonds must have used to all the monkey chants. jokes apart, all this hullabaloo coming from the australian cricketers, of all people, smacks of plain hypocrisy. i even had an idea of starting a google bombing meme so that a google search for 'monkey' would point to andrew symonds' wikipedia page! ((speaking of hypocrisy, where did i hear this term 'hypocrisy of democracy'. now where did i hear that. perhaps i'm predicting the title of a future arundhati roy essay, but it sure sounds like a cool phrase. make u sound intelligible and all.))

time to wrap up for now. i have a lot of things in the pipeline (things that i want to do, but just too lazy to) - learn origami, interview some famous person of yore who has now disappeared into oblivion, go on a traveling trip with a bunch of complete strangers, shoot a small movie of my own. if i don't do them, at least i could write about them!

Getting ready

No Smoking

(This post contains spoilers - a lot of them. Not that it should matter when you decide to watch the movie!)

"To be is to do"--Socrates.

"To do is to be"--Plato.

"Do be do be do"--Frank Sinatra

thus the movie began. And it had me enthralled from then and there! Two people had recommended it, which is my usual criterion for watching a movie. I was warned of the movie being a ‘mind-warp’ and was expecting a ‘Lost Highway’-ish style of David Lynch and so it turned out to be. It has every element to transform it into the next cult classic coming from Bollywood. The movie did make me go philosophical with the question – what the fuck?!! And so I did what I usually do after watching such movies – search the web for the answer(s) to my question.

The web, however, proved to be a disappointment. There were lesser posts about the movie per se than the Anurag Kashyap love hate war which included, among others, Anurag himself and some prominent critics in Bollywood. Khalid Mohammed’s review (??), in particular, was pure spite and entirely a tirade against the director, with little being said about the movie itself.

As the director himself admits, the movie is about arrogance. It depicts a clash between the arrogance of a narcissist on one hand and the arrogance of a society on the other. I would take it a step further and say that the movie underlines the arrogance of the director himself. It is by a director who doesn’t want to conform to rules, someone who loves his own work like a child, doesn’t care to churn out a run-of-the-mill masaaledaar Om Shanti Om. If not for anything else, Anurag needs to be applauded for that.

After watching it, the movie does fill you with questions. It seems to be replete with visual metaphors. What does ‘Hitler ki aulaad’ signify? The carpets shop? The eunuch giving him the coins? His two cut fingers? His wife and secretary looking the same? The bath-tub? Siberia?

There will be, as is with such movies, multiple answers and interpretations and not a single unified theory that can explain everything. Trying to understand the movie becomes as interesting as trying to decipher an interesting dream. However, we are not content by just dismissing it as just another dream, but are intent on trying to find a meaning, to fit the missing pieces in the puzzle and to discover the layers of reality underneath.

My interpretation –

K is having nightmares and going through a traumatic experience as he is being forced to quit smoking, something he does passionately. He tries to cope with his freedom being snatched from him and it is all a harrowing experience for him. He has forced himself to imagine extreme consequences to make him quit smoking and they continually haunt him in his nightmares. He tries to escape and goes to his Siberian dreams but is not able to escape entirely as his dreams turn to nightmares. Unable to cope with reality he returns to his nightmares and digs into it in search of an answer.

His wife and his secretary, albeit the same person, (‘I’m your wife. I’m your secretary. Remember, tum nahi chahte the office mein kisi ko pata chale.’) depict different personas – one who is intent on making him stop smoking and thus, curb his freedom and the other who is not bothered by his smoking. But he is bent on seeing them as two different people. He sees it all as a conspiracy – the people who convinced him to quit smoking appear in his nightmares as members of a well-knit conspiracy.

His cut fingers signify his loss of freedom in another level. It shows how he is compelled to quit smoking. I further thought he could have actually lost his fingers and that could be the reason he is not able to smoke. But I’m not sure of this explanation myself.

His friend Abbas (who regained his fingers after referring K to the baba) and his doctor friend represent people who were forced to conform to societal norms, people who were forgiven their sins after ‘helping’ someone else. The movie in the end, shows the complete assimilation of K into the society when he, for want of redemption, tries to bring in another of his friend to follow his suit. At this point, the dividing line between retribution and redemption becomes blurry and curved – beyond recognition.

The baba is an epitome of the society, which in itself is much more arrogant than any arrogant person. The baba wants people to conform to his rules. His mistakes will be forgiven, he can’t be blamed. At the same time, he will be relentless when it comes to mistakes committed by individuals. If a person has committed a crime, a sin, he has to pay for it. The baba is unforgiving.

Hitler is one name for human arrogance and that’s why he repeatedly refers to the baba as Hitler ki aulaad (Baba: “Guru manta hun main usko”)

Siberia epitomizes his loss of freedom – the curfew and his inability to find cigarettes to smoke. It is a fear that he harbors constantly. Further, the bathtub in the snow connects his nightmares to reality. It is the place where he drops into ruminations and where his fears come alive as nightmares, and finally brings him back to reality.

P.S. Get the script of the movie here.

Sunday evening

Before

After