A different ball game!

Well, I do fell that I need to give explanation of my unforeseen and comprehensible disappearance from cyberspace for the past few weeks. I took admission into the College of Engineering Roorkee (COER). Now I am a B.Tech student. Like all others.
I thought that the education pattern in the Engineering colleges wouldn't be much different from the school education, considering that both of these find education to be their ultimate purpose. I thought that the students living in the boarding schools would be much familiar to the lifestyle in the college... living away from home. I had considered that the food would not be comparable to home, but would have the basics similar. I had thought I would have the time of my life.
Firstly, I was WRONG almost everywhere! The food is crap. The teachers talk Greek. The instruments are martian. AND again...THE FOOD IS CRAP!
  Comparison of the food at home to the mess-food is like comparing the Eiffel tower to a freaking brick wall in terms of architecture. It's like comparing Megan Fox to any girl passing by in terms of looks. Its like comparing the milky way to the moon in terms of size!!! You get potatoes in every possible cut, shape, size, appearance, color, design and flavor in the mess dishes. You get tomatoes that have been peeled by a man without fingernails. You get vegetables that you can't recognize without looking at the menu chart. You can get things you didn't know, existed between the sky and the earth! But despite all the hardships, problems, resistance, and upheaval... we still eat the food! There are harder things to engineering that just studies... harder and more horrible! Mortifying!
As of the teachers, they're brilliant. Everybody's is either a graduate or a post graduate or a PhD from an IIT or any other prestigious institution. They all know their subjects like we know the terrain in motocross mania! And they all have a congruent nature... They like to talk in languages that are UN-understandable to students. You don't need Wikipedia or Yahoo Answers to understand what has been taught...You need Google translate!
Now you must say that if everything here is so intolerable...how do I cope with all the collegeophobia! It's the friends people...the friends who make every moment of college life worthwhile...Its them who make you feel like you've come to a place that is solely yours...Where you belong!
You know what I learned after coming to this college friends... I learned that Its not the studies, the technology, or the teachers that make you a real engineer.
Its your friends. Its them who make fun out of thin air. its them who make you cherish every moment in a place where moments are rare to come by. They are the ones who slow down time.Literally (well of course it can actually slow down according to the special theory of relativity!)!


P.S Sorry for the delay in writing . Things will streamline from now onwards!

Of music and more

"The music I listen to is the only sort of good music that you can probably get!", exclaims the metalhead!
"Nigga, You talkin' shit man! Your music is just shouting and screaming... it no music man!", the hip hopper shouts back.
"You are so foolish and ignorant, music is not about fast speech, its about energy, its about passion, not about spitting at people's faces!"
"Stay cool nigga... i ain't shouting crap man... i am talking about your luck.
and your metal is just shit man... and rock also sucks! That is what I've wanted to tell ya from a long long lime!" gimmicked the hipster! 
"Oh really!", and now the metalhead was  really angry!


Stories like these often come up if you are members of various music related groups on Facebook! You hear crap about JB, about RB about TB( oops... that is if you are part of a medical group!), and then somebody adds you to a group, without even reading your profile, to a 'rock hater' group, and then you have to tolerate notifications about how rock is shit and how metal sucks!
I personally don't give a darn about what people write on fb... I know that being guarded by  a screen gives them a sense of security that they will not be punched in the face and so they keep writing stuff!
And again I have to write before updates and comments and posts like these that these all are personal opinions and they don't have anything to do with personal hatred!
Well, actually, I don't care... I don't care about what people say on fb...well, I am not honest when I say this, because the truth is... that I pretend not to care! I pretend that I don't give a freaking darn! I pretend that I don't want to punch the man in the face who updates his status as... " JB is a rock star!"
But the truth is that I want to do all these things, not because everybody does this but because I feel that certain things insult my genre of music just like they insult people like me!
You might feel that this all is very childish... fighting for 'who's music is the best' and 'who is crap and who isn't!' when it all really doesn't matter... but then you are wrong, aren't you? 
That is because it does matter! Let me ask you a simple question...
How do you feel when you punch a person who called you, and for that matter, anything that you like, crap?
You feel good! You feel satisfied! You feel elated!
And that is what we're living for. Aren't we?


P.S. You don't wanna know the end of the above mentioned story!
       (Hint: Keywords: Chainsaw, Shotgun, Head, Brutal, Laugh, Burn)

Things that never change

Before you start reading this, brace yourself! This post is the mirror image of what I feel, a completely unbiased opinion, for that matter, not even a opinion; just an expression of what I feel!
Two days back, as I sat before the television watching the news about the serial blasts in Mumbai, I did not feel sad! I did not feel angry, for that matter! All i felt was a deep and sincere pain and hopelessness! I felt hopeless because i couldn't be console the people who had lost their loved ones, I couldn't tend the people who were badly injured, and i couldn't help the people who had done this to all of them!
To be completely honest i don not feel a trace of harshness for the terrorists who end up destroying hundreds of lives and ruining many others, I only feel a sincere sadness for all of them who fail to realize the virtue of human sentiments and feelings! Humanity doesn't appear in their dictionary and they will die like many others hoping they had not done what they did!
But I did feel anger then. Not when the distorted remains of humans were shown on television, not either when the injured were rushed into ambulances already full!
I felt anger as the home minister in his speech said that Indians show true spirit in what they do after an explosion takes place...when he appreciated the spirit of the Mumbaikars for continuing life as normal after the bombings!
I can not imagine what else he could have said. I am not concerned about what else he could have said but all that I know is that he should have rather done something than to have said something!
Rahul Gandhi said that 1 % of the terrorist elements can escape! But can they escape and infiltrate so far as to target the largest metropolitan! I am astonished by the level of alertness of homeland security and the intelligence database!
We declare alerts after a bombing happens... we call up the police when all that had to happen...happens! This is not an allegation, its just an expression... not because I have to...but because I want to express myself!
I am not targeting the government, who am I to do so? I am just sad that people die when they could have been saved! Maybe they couldn't have been saved...maybe their fate was written when they were born...maybe they were where destiny took them, but we can't just let people die because we think that destiny overpowers everything! We have to be optimistic.. at least till destiny allows us to be!
Please comment...I want to know what you feel! its never one man's job to think for all!

Commercial Insanity!

I got the idea to write this post when I was watching the television this evening! I wasn't watching anything in particular, not because there wasn't anything particular to watch but because you can't watch anything particular now-a-days! It’s the commercials that you are watching most of the time!

So while watching the commercials that presented themselves mercilessly for almost 15 minutes, I decided that either we've gone unanimously and absolutely stupid, or the advertisements exceedingly insane!

But after having watched almost four innings of these adverts, I realized that both of my hypotheses seemed to have solidified into one singular theory!

I mean, come on, the popping up of pretty ladies in shaving cream ads and men’s wear have become a thing of past! In the most recent advert I saw three black clothed and fearsome looking girls jump out of the bathroom glass armed with wolverine like metal claws and pounce like predators on the protagonist just for the freaking sake of telling him that his shaving cream doesn't nourish his bloody skin! I don't mean to be sarcastic but WHY the hell could the ladies have not used the bathroom door and simply remind the man of the minor flaw in his shaving cream?! That is the allegory of the most insane degree!

Similarly, in another advert, this one selling certain soap, a little girl turns up at home covered in stains of mud with a cat following her. And for some strange reason known only to the maker of the advert and the girl, all that she fears about is that her mother would give her a bash because the bloody cat followed her and that for some divine reason her mother( who, we get to know later in the ad, is standing just behind the girl, and does not get noticed due to either the girl being short sighted or the mother wearing some sort of invisibility cloak), would fail to notice that her school-dress is stained as if she had been doing some mud-artwork the whole day! In all this divinity, the mother, popping up like a witch, reminds the girl that the germs had to be killed, when a normal mom would have beaten the shit out of the girl!

I fail to understand the advert despite the fact that I use the same soap and use it for entirely different reasons!

Another advert that I would like to discuss here is the watch advert featuring a dirt bike race and that has the Indian cricket captain in it who is supposed to tell the audience that if you wear the certain brand of watch, you shall win a bike race on a rusty bike that looks like a 1960 vintage and all the other drivers will slow down to traffic speeds and blah blah blah!

Then there is another ad with the hero dancing and jumping like an ape with a bad itch towards the finishing line in a race while all the other racers slow down to 0.25x ! And all this supernatural stuff supposedly happens because of a freaking underwear!

I can’t believe half of the stuff they show and don’t BLOODY want to believe the other half!

Commercials are meant to sell things to the public. They only reason I believe, behind the rise of such adverts is that due to the fact that the actual entertainment now stands at 25% of the T.V. time, the stuff occupying the 3/4^th part has got to be entertaining... hence these ads!

The development of such commercials not only shows that insanity has now become an asset, and thus, the next step for sure shall be the transformation of Asylums into Ad-agencies!

Perhaps, we shall see more of entertainment then...

Wife murders husband brutally and chops his body into minute pieces just because he didn’t use the perfume...

I mean I don’t know, Next is what?

A walk to remember

If feel that the time spent in the wilderness is the best time in one's life! A person might feel more secure and definitely more comfortable sitting beneath a fan in his living room or in an air-conditioned environment in his car, but the true and pure feeling of happiness originates from the scent of the weeds and smell of the dampness in a forest!
Even now when there are too less forests left and too many cities, the tranquility and serenity of the woods attract the wild being that sleeps in us 'like a bear, waiting for the summer to arrive in order to walk again'... yeah...okay...  read this in a poem somewhere!
People now-a-days are too concerned about their health so they refrain from what they call dirt, mud, grass, weed ( the real one! No drug abuse intended) and such things and still they require vitamin pills, calcium tabs, energy caps, and such crap!
I believe that if a person had too be healthy, he would refrain from gelatin pills rather than twigs!
Its in the wild that wee feel free, we feel out-of-the-chains and we feel 'ourselves'!
Now why do I suddenly get writing about forests and trees? That's because I, along with some of my friends went to a temple on the top of a hill close to our town, called 'Syahi-devi'!
Now its a mile and some to climb to reach the top after an hour long car journey and tell you what... Its amazing!
Despite the fact that I was mostly puking on my was to the spot (Due to the hideous, treacherous, 'beep' 'bee' 'censored' 'censored' songs played in the car by the driver!), I clicked a million photographs on my way up, got lost, ran in the fear of being chased by a leopard, shouted a lot, fell tired and ultimately met my friends! All this in a mile long climb! Phew!
It was I, Pankaj, Bharat, Anshul( the holy son of god... if you've been reading my earlier posts!), Gaurav, Cdt. Dishant, and Akash, who ventured to reach the top of the hill. But we did a lot more than simple soporific and tedious climbing... we wreaked havoc in the hills!
To be honest, it indeed was mostly a rough climb to the top with little incidents like Dishant holding a snake in his hand and me almost being lost... well it doesn't really matter now, does it?
Then we tried to eat some noodles cooked like rice with some sauce that smelled like turpentine oil but was probably nothing but stale vinegar! But before all this we prayed in the temple... for general things that everybody else prays about!
But the actual fun of the trip was on the way down. We halted in a clearing and decided to play hide and seek in the forest we knew nothing about, which probably had a few leopards and with no signs of civilization for about half a mile! But that is what life is all about!
We fell
and we rose, we jumped and crashed( really badly!) we brushed our wounds and played again all this we did despite all the calls from our driver who was getting late!
After an hour of playing we got tired and sent Gaurav ( alone!) all the way to the top of the hill to fetch some water!
After all the fun we had in the wild, I was getting late, and frankly we didn't want to be eaten by the surely frustrated leopards of the forest, so we descended from the hill to the spot where the car and the really crabbed driver!
I might not have gone many places but this was surely one 'heaven' of a trip!

The necessary Immobility!

India is a country of diversity in every aspect of life! Be it festivals or attire, our country is a way apart, there are millions of colors, millions of people and yes, millions of mobile devices! Mobile has now become a part of every household. A device that was very exclusive in the last decade has now become the new revolution! 
There are bureaucrats, doctors, engineers, shopkeepers, housewives, small children, punks, drunkards, drivers, policemen and many many more... each with one hand in their pockets and the other stuck to their ear using a mobile. A mobile is, to be precise, a device that makes you immobile! 
Yeah! It is... i'll tell you how!
See, earlier you used to wake up and shut down the alarm clock, now this (you might not have noticed) required great deal of hard-work... now you just touch the screen and the alarm turns off. WHO THE HELL wakes up after that! Not just this, the alarm tune is something like 'While my guitar gently weeps'... That make you even sleepier!
Apart from that, earlier there was computer to check you mail, Walkman to listen to music, A watch to see the time, a calender to look up the date, and something called a dictionary (People haven't started calling it "GOO"ctionary only because it looks rather crude!).
And to get to all these darn things, you had to walk. And then you lost the calories. And then you stayed healthy.
But all that you find written beneath 'Health' in Wikipedia are terms like 'Non-living', 'organisations' and stuff like that when you search it... oops... 'google' it!
Talking of health, I see in newspapers every other day, reports claiming,
Mobiles fuel Heart attacks, brain dysfunction, liver failure, kidney failure and many more things!
But still mobiles are growing and so are diseases!
You know what this means..." MOBILE IS AN EPIDEMIC! "
You can't keep it in your breast pocket... cause your heart will fail and you will die!
You can't keep it in your back pocket... cause your back will be burned will fail and you will die!
You can't keep it in your frond pant pocket pocket... cause your kidneys will fail and you will die (or get impotent... in case of any other scenario)!
So you are necessarily dead and should stop worrying about insurance policies because you'll end up giving all your money to your children who'll probably buy costly mobiles out of what they get!
I wanted to write a little more, but since I've got a call on my cellphone... maybe I'll write later!

Walking along the freeway of life...

I've never been quite interested in the mysteries of life. For me life has mostly been a random set of riddles... sometimes I am able to fathom them and sometimes I am not, but still, I realize something, mostly I am not able to comprehend why, in the name of sonny jesus, am I solving those freaking puzzles in the first place!
I guess this is the story with most of us who think life is almost as simple as a pie, but mostly we don't understand what has got into making the pie so simple!
Now since I don't like to talk of serious matters to the readers, I usually resort to simple means to convey my actual story!
What I need to talk to you about today is actually a question that i've never actually been able to understand all through my life.


What the hell am I doing here!?


Okay guys, its not that simple. I not here to earn a living. To get married. To have children. To have a house. And frankly, to die!
If death had been the motive of our birth, we wouldn't have born in the first place! There would have been no light bulb had Edison thought that the end result would be it fusing up!
There are many reasons behind us humans all being born with a certain purpose. The first, and most evident, reason would be our frustration at doing certain things. Had we all been machines, all built to do the all the same things, we would have done all the things with the same sense of joy! It wouldn't have been like us having a face of a troll while painting the yard, but since it is, we must conclude that we all are different and built for different purposes!
I've come to think of all this crap today out of no particular reason. I just wanted to write something that was indeed of some use! i guess I can't write useful stuff longer than this, because I realize that things run out of their usefulness when they get boring... look at the comedy shows on Indian television!

Tripping down a trip!

I don’t know how else to put it, but me and my three friends had one hell of a trip today! I mean we crossed paths annihilated by large landslides, had to run from a huge herd of cows, nearly went down to three, and oh... how the ‘hell’ could I forget! We were with the son of god!

Okay! Let’s put it like it happened!

We had planned to go to a tourist spot called ‘Kasar-devi’ that’s in walking distance from our town. We set off at seven in the morning. We were four friends, three impure souls and Christ himself. Okay! One of my friends...whom I saw after a year...who has now got a beard, and thus assumed the appearance of the Son of god...and thus his name!

So we set of on the asphalt covered trail towards our destination. The road to the destination had, to a certain extent, nothing special...well, apart from us christening Christ the redeemer, Christ the photographer; and us nearly entering what looked liked a deserted caravan, in hopes of finding a severed head but otherwise... nothing special!

The actual journey began at our destination!

The ‘Kasar-devi’ temple is at quite some height, and has some great rock outcrops, and we are four young boys... so we decided to get our photos snapped as we fought for dear life on the edges of the severed rocks! So three of us did it, the fourth being an acrophobic or rather unwise...seeing that the lord walked with us!

Let me tell you something here. The spirit of adventure is like herpes, once you get it... there is no way back!

So we got infected, and that too real bad!

We decided to walk down the hill to the road by following un-trodden paths, or rather, no paths at all!

The first real adventure came up when one of our friends, an engineering student, decided to run down a hill, and then (perhaps by the divine will of the ‘lord’ himself), stop as the edge of the mountain approached!

And he failed.

Drastically.

He ran down (as he perhaps had planned), gained speed (the inevitable), and failed to stop (despite the son of god).

But as I approached the edge of the hill, expecting to see a thousand foot fall and his spread-eagled body... I was shocked to see him hopping down what seemed like a 7-foot-drop, clutching his ankle! After all our swearing at him...Lord had indeed blessed his child!

After that we decided to ‘forget’ the sprained ankle and move on down the hill, on no path still!

After we had reached another steep fall, we decided to sit down and enjoy the serene beauty of the valley! But then, one of our friends stepped on cow dung, and ‘Yeshua’ was extremely tired, and despite our ‘forgetting’ the ankle...it was still there!

So we decided to get on the path home as soon as possible. Soon we found an ill-trodden (but ‘still’ trodden) path. We started climbing down the hill. Suddenly we realized that a few women (who apparently decided to think that we didn’t exist), started to walk down the same path we were on with there huge heard of cows. The only way the cows could have walked down the path was by either throwing us down the hill, or by thinking that we were invisible, trotting on upon us and beyond.

Seeing either of these options as clearly unacceptable, we ran down the path for dear life!

After running down what seemed like a few hundred yards, we started walking down again.

Yet again... despite being with the son of god, and despite having faced ‘quite some’ difficulties, our path was now blocked by a massive landslide... which Christ, as usual, thought, could be crossed easily...only if we had the ‘faith’!

Sadly, one of my friends agreed with him... so I swore (don’t call it blasphemy) at both of them and we four split up into two teams... one of my friends and I decided to head back and climb up to the ‘asphalt’ road down as soon as we saw a visible road up. Lord, on the other hand decided to go right way ‘UP”!

Finally after much loud swearing, and pretty much hard work... we finally reached the ‘real road’, and headed on our way down... another ‘not-so special’ journey... with another few exceptions like me playing loud metal music and Christ disagreeing( as expected!) and no one listening to him (again expected!); and also us eating a very-very awkward dish...consisting of curry, mashed potatoes and I-don’t-have-a-freaking-idea-what’s.

On the hole, the journey was fun (irritating), adventurous (ridiculous) and worth remembering (at least for a few days)!

Thanks for all the fun...to Pankaj, Akash, and the lord almighty!

Run...Apocalypse coming!!!

The world will end when it will end. There is no point being scared that a mighty meteor, which will presumably, appear out of a gigantic black hole, will strike the earth and kill us all, just because the Mayans did not know how to count after 2012. This is the ultimate extent of stupidity.

Assuming that they did know that the earth will come to an end in 2012, and that a giant rat will come and devour us all, it is still utter foolishness to sell all that you have and go hide in a cave. If there were to be a massive earthquake and the earth were to end, you would die even if you were hiding in a small cave in the mountains of Turkey!

I guarantee, if I had a long beard and a toga, I would have convinced at least a dozen people to sell all their property and dig an underground cave!

Do you know what the reason behind all this is?

I'll tell it to you. In all the years of development that we've seen, in the technological revolution that we've experienced, there is one vital thing that we've forgotten!

Common-sense!

Yes, we've started to believe in much more of this entire non-sense! We try to convince ourselves that all the mistakes that we've committed will all be wiped out in a single stroke and that we'll all be spared! How childish!

I write this because I recently read a report claiming that a dozen or so people sold all they had because they believed in the 20-may-apocalypse!

Guys! Jesus ain't coming back that soon... and even if he is, he'll lead you into light and not take you into darkness!

So believe in what is a fact and don't take in what is fagged!

I keep this post real short because this isn't an actual post! This is just a small notice of caution for all those who believe too soon... and repent soon enough!

So guys... Keep your cool... There ain't no meteor coming towards us that's not been noticed, and there ain't no Godzilla waking up from its two-hundred-thousand year hibernation!

The New Gods of YouTube

This is a very very personal opinion. My sole intention by this post is to express my personal choice, and while a desperate attempt has been made not to be prejudiced and biased, any loose nut may hit the face of people who are too curious to find faults or rather meddle with deliberate ones!

To begin with, I must ask the fans of 'certain' YouTube sensations (I find it extremely hard to say their name in case I spell it wrong and spark a controversy!), to please STOP reading this! Right now!

I don't say because I am afraid of a small girl coming to my place and threatening to throw water on me! I just feel that if you do proceed with the text (though you might not find a 'SINGLE' clue who am I talking about)... you might 'feel' like I don't like him... some might even go to the extents of thinking that I have exaggerated a few facts... others, who like to be straightforward, might say that I have slaughtered him!

But then I continue thinking that this is your personal opinion... and that I respect it!

So lets jump to the actual topic...

A few years back, when I had been a school going child, I had heard the song of a 'certain singer'; which I found extremely entertaining! Not nice, but 'entertaining'!

The specialty of this singer was that you couldn't possibly tell that you were listening to 'him' or to 'her'! You couldn't have even imagined what the age of the singer was... because if it was a girl, she was close to 16 but if (god forbid!), it were to be a boy, he had just been born!

So the first question that came to my mind was:

"What is the software called?"

What? you don't get it! i mean the software that makes a person's voice have absolutely no relation with his age or sex!

But the person who made me hear the song, which was about a synonym of 'child' and which rhymes with 'maybe' , and who was immensely enjoying it, told me that it was a boy and that he was close to fifteen!

You might feel like I am making fun of someone... but the very next thought that came to my mind was of sympathy...Yes, Sympathy of the greatest degree... or all these teenagers who think that their Adam’s apple would grow... but find out that they haven't got one!

In a few months, this little child, quite possibly gifted with a sexless, ageless voice, became a worldwide hit!

Little girls had posters of him! The boy with a neutered voice became the idle of every little girl... a person every girl wanted to become!

Now you might think that I am one of the "person-I'm-talking-about" haters! And that I am jealous of his hair and his 'gifted' voice!

Well, to this, I certainly have no answer... because whatever I say about how 'utterly ridiculous' his hair look and how, well, 'shrill' his voice is; no one is going to believe me... and even if you don't, I don't give a heck about it!

I write this post not to change the opinions of the people who think that this sensation is their god, because they won't! Nor am I writing this for deliberately expressing 'hate' for the person in question... I don't hate him as a person... I dislike (Quite an understatement) his sort of music!

Another thing that this 'sensation' has done is that he has given birth to many more like him. Recently I heard that there was a particular girl, who, singing about a particular day of the week, had earned herself more dislikes than the 'discussed person'!(I added mine soon afterwards).

To be extremely honest, the song was absolutely ridiculous! I mean we all know Tuesday comes after Monday and that Saturday comes after Friday... and also that Sunday is a holiday! We don't need a freaking song to tell us that! Thank you very much!

Thus I must conclude the post. And the conclusion is that I don't have a particular conclusion. This was just an opinion. This wasn't a post to tell people not to listen to 'the person in question'! Nor was this a 'hate-mail'! This was just a shade of my feelings and opinions about all that happens around me. This was indeed, The light breeze of the Storm!

The New Number of the beast... an ode to the Indian government!

This is a remix of the Iron Maiden classic, the Number of the beast... this will convey meaning of greater essence to all those who grew up listening to heavy metal music and to those too... who are familiar with the current political situation of India. Think not that I’ve don’t this for no cause...  the general elections of 2014 convey a new ray of hope for all of us... a hope against corruption all over India! Comment if you like it... and spread it if you care!

Woe to You Oh U.P and Bengal

for the Government sends the beast with wrath
because he knows the time is short (and elections coming);
Let him who have understanding
reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number
its number is two thousand and fourteen!

I lived alone
my mind was blank
I needed time to think to get the memories from my mind

What did I see? 
Could I believe? 
That what I saw that night was real and not just fantasy

Just what I saw 
in my old dreams 
were they
reflections of corruption staring back at me?

'Cause in my dreams
it's always there 
the evil face that twists my mind and brings me to despair 

All the money is black 
was no use holding back
'Cause I just had to see
was someone watching me
In the Swiss bank
huge figures move and twist
was all this for real 
or just some kind of hell
2-0-14 the Number of the Beast
Thieves and dacoits were spawned to be released

Torches blazed and 
sacred chants were phrased
as they start to laugh 
Someone with a quarter and someone with half;
In the night 
the money is shining bright
the ritual has begun 
Government's work is done
2-0-14 the Number of the Beast
Sacrifice is going on tonight

This can't go on 
I must inform the law (oh! Ha ha ha!)
Can this still be real 
or just some crazy dream?
but I feel drawn 
towards the chanting hordes
seem to mesmerize...can't avoid their eyes
2-0-14 the Number of the Beast
2-0-14 the one for you and me

I'm coming back 
I will return
And I'll possess your land
and I'll make you burn
I'll have the fire (money) 
I'll have the force (police)
I'll have the power (literally)
to make my evil take its course!

Thank you!

English, as we know it

The English language is considered much more than a way of communication in my country! It’s a representation of high standard! People here have an odd tendency to believe that they have something more important to say if they can sum it up in English. But the English spoken here is very different from the Queen's English, nor is it related to the English of the Americans, and accent, (if you think it’s the reason) is least of my concerns!

English, as I have already stated, is not just for communication, but is also used for laying emphasis, for quoting (and misquoting), for illustrating, for showing off (mainly) and then, yes, for swearing!

But what troubles me the most is the misuse, and to some extent distortion of English!

As we all know, grammar is the base of English language, of any language, actually. If you get the grammar wrong, you don't get the language at all! But a strange belief exists here! People think that English, however disfigured, grotesque, or disembodied, results in a good impression over the listener, or the reader!

Its just like the belief that piercing makes people look cool... but I believe that only if a cool-looking person gets some piercing done, will he look cooler; all the others look like pin cushions!

Let me give you some examples;

The most common greeting message I get on facebook, Google Talk, Orkut, Nimbuzz or any other Chat is:

"How’s YOU!”

Reading this, I get so irritated that I feel like replying:

"He’s fine; he'll come and talk to you later!”

This isn't a mistake. This is molestation!

Another word that appeared out of nowhere when I was in school was 'takouting'. Now, this is a word that most of you wouldn't have heard. I feel this was very specific, not an epidemic!

As the word itself signifies, it's a cross of Taking and out! So instead of saying, I'm taking my pen out, people preferred to say I'm takouting my pen!

Anyways, Spoken English is not the only thing worth concern. Banners, pamphlets, advertisements etc. also have blunders spread all over them.

I attach a few of the many mistakes I have noticed recently... and I assure you, many more exist!

1. ipots: Of all things I have imagined, this is never come to my mind, because, frankly, it's too unimaginable to imagine!

2. This is a menu card with a few 'funny' points to note!

I would now like to conclude by telling all my fellow Indian friends,

People, you've taken birth in a non-English-speaking nation, its nothing to worry about! Speaking Hindi will usually do, but not always! If you want to be a good speaker of English, please don't use English as a show-off, use it as a language!

Of Education

Just like every other thing in the world, the education system has developed a great deal in the past centuries drastically. The time of 'Gurukuls' in India is long gone. Today is the day of auto-education system and state-of-the-art education technology, of projector and laptop tuitions, of rising power of spectacles and huge landslides of home-work!

But the thing that I am most concerned about is the subjects that are included in the education system today!

To begin with, I have been an ISC (Indian School Certificate) student till intermediate level, so neither am I familiar with other boards of education in India nor am I going to speak about them.

Also to make the situation familiar to my off-shore readers,(Like there are any!!), I would like to briefly illustrate the structure of the pattern of existing study system in India!

We, as science students, have to study a venomous combination of either Physics Chemistry and Mathematics (or Biology), along with Computer science (or physical education, or Hindi) and also (I-don't-know-why-it-exists!) Environmental Education and English!

Since English is and was perhaps the only thing that I have always been up to my expectations in, therefore I would like to (intentionally) 'Forget' talking about it! Hope you don't mind it!

So let's begin with Physics. It is highly and most respectfully incomprehensible to understand in the way it is illustrated in our books! I mean there are articles about how to make nuclear weapons spanning chapters and still they don't want us to join Al-Qaeda! There are questions relating high-speed-chases and heavy gunfire, but they don't want us to be violent and most un-understandably (if its a word!), there are questions relating men hanging upside down on trees, or from buildings, or from all sorts of odd places and still all they want us to do is to calculate the effect of gravitation on his head without thinking about ways of putting him down!

Still they say that physics brings 'Sense' to life! I mean, I don't know!

Chemistry, on the other hand is very lucid and easy to understand, only had any one seen those tiny little specks somebody called atoms, or had even stopped calling glucose, 6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-2,3,4,5-tetrol! Otherwise it's an easy and potentially interesting subject!

Mathematics is another good one! Half of the questions that you do, you do because you are told to do, you don't actually have a freaking idea why on earth are you doing them! Or even if there is some use of something that you do today in any distant corner of the earth, till the time you react the reason, you forget the cause! I also like mathematics because it very straight-forward! Only exception is that you've got to study geometry to get an idea of arithmetic, and that you've got to study arithmetic to understand calculus, and then you'll have to study algebra to understand mathematics itself! Pretty Straight-forward!

Computers are good, but they are only good when somebody gives all the programs prepared to you and all the applications that use those programs and the operating system to run those applications!

Otherwise it's quite an arduous job to make even the simplest of programming codes! But I'll not talk detail here since you won't understand it... which is another way of saying even I don't understand it!

I didn't study physical education as a subject but considering all the ones who have had a go, its got nothing to do with 'physical education'; there are some complex diagrams of football fields, of heart ventricles, of diet charts, and then a few minutes play!

I won' t raise an country-wide-outrage by saying anything about Hindi as a subject, but will only say that it is a 'good' subject and that 'everyone' should study it!

Apart from all these small twinges, faults, mistakes, misinterpretations, disast... oops!, distresses, and defects; the Indian system of education, remains one of the most respected systems in the world!

Simplicity

The use of high end technology has made the life of humans simpler than it was ever before. You can now easily do things that you found impossible to do a decade ago. Technology has not only played a role in easing our lives but has also made it much more fun to live!

All this is a huge pile of crap! I'll tell you what the reality is...

When we were in the initial stages of our homo-sapien life, our life was as simple as anything... "Eat-shit-sleep"!

How much more simpler can you get?!

Now-a-days it's more like... "Eat-brush-read-listen to music-watch TV-Chat on facebook-sleep-wake up-...."!

How the hell can anyone call this lifestyle any simpler than ever before! If this is simple then I'm about to become the next president of the United States and Barcelona will end up in the bottom of the Spanish league next year!

The truth behind our believing that our life has become simpler is that its our natural tendency to believe Newspapers, and that its the tendency of the journalists to believe their 'sources', and that its a natural behavior of the 'sources' to believe what the scientists say, and then we all know that scientists have a religious belief in science!

If science comes out with something completely useless, they believe its something worth researching... and then reach conclusions like green vegetables make you healthy... which we have known since time unknown... but its just scientifically proved... THAT's IT!

Similarly, scientists now can pick a doughnut using a mechanical arm... so they say life is simpler... but picking a doughnut using a 3-foot-long, $ 50 million, titanium arm isn't simplicity... its insanity!

The ultimate truth is that our lives are far more complicated, far more entangled, and far more arduous then they were in the earlier times... The only thing that has changed is the methodology of doing things... Like it was raw deer back than and now its Subway! The only thing that’s simpler perhaps!

The Analogy of Facebook

You 'like' and you 'dislike', you comment and you vote, you update your status and put up pictures... till this point of time and space does facebook looks like an entertaining thing! But then you 'tag' people with photos showing a vase of rotten flowers! You send F***ville requests! You ask stupid questions and answer even stupider ones... at this point of time you realise that the entertainment factor is gone and replaced by a crooked, evil smile on your face! Do heck with what's good and what's not... like it or dislike it... You use it!

I will not be surprised when I grow old and have shining silver hair (and perhaps an oxygen mask), if people elope nad marry on facebook and like when the girl's dad posts swear words in the boy's wall!

I will be even less surprised if people of the generation to come call this present decade as the decade of 'The Facebook'!

People who do not use Facebook (like there are any!) find it difficult to swallow the idea of facebook! They don't understand the reason of its success...they can see the aura around it... they fail to get the X-factor that faceook has!

Let me explain this the reason behind these things to those non-existent people!

First things first... Facebook has become a phenomenon due to a simple, comprehensible fact... It is one damn addiction!

There are things you are allowed to do and there atre things that you are not allowed to do... and facebook lets you do all of these things with complete freedom!

You 'like' what you like and you 'dislike' what you dislike. No formal pretention! No fake 'Oh-its-so-pretty's' !

You creake your own public image... your own virtual avatar! It might represent who you are or might be the complete opposite! But this is the thing I like most about facebook... it lets you create a represent ation that is more like the framework of you mind instead of you physical being! It lets you create the actual 'YOU', without the defects... without misproportions... without faults!

Facebook has got more than 600 million users, not because it is a social-network, frankly, there are many of those! Faceboo is a grand success because it is a virtual world... and place where all dreams come true... a place with no limits and a perfectly precise environment... where all girls are beautiful and all guys are smart... and where everything is possible!

When Mark Zuckerberg was creating Facebook, he must not have an idea that he was creating something that would change the face of the future... he must not have had an idea that this wasn't just 'a' Social network...this was 'THE' Social network!

Roads Of India

Indian roads are a wonderful place to be on. Before you step in those not-too-wide asphalt covered tracks, everything that you've accomplished or not runs through your mind like a slide show. No other nation has roads that give you such a feeling! It is exclusive, worth cherishing! Each day on an Indian road is an adventure... a journey that is short on scale but very big on excitement! Every moment is a delicate mixture of grit, hope, excitement underlined by heavy tones of fear, or rather 'mortifying terror'. Interesting thing about Indian roads is that before you ever put your foot down on them, you don't even know that you could be killed in so many different ways! You could be run over by a speeding car...or fall victim to a daredevil motorcyclist... or even killed by a cow... or bitten by a dog or even murdered by a blind psychopath with an axe... okay that’s a bit of an overstatement, but still opportunities of losing a body part are infinite!

You might think that I am just exaggerating a simple fact. Well I owe you a sincere apology of not making myself more factual. lets see...

India has the highest road accidents rate in the world. Over 130000 people fall helpless victims to road rage. Almost 14 people an hour! Bang and you're dead!

It's an interesting thing too, to travel on these paths that have as much diversity as our nation itself. In some very exclusive places there are wide multi-laned roads in which various types of vehicles run like they do in every other place in the world... but this isn’t the story on the larger part of our big nation. There are two lane roads, one laned roads, even 3/4 laned roads; there are roads that have tarmac and which are smooth and there are road that are not!

But don't let that fool you. You will die when you will die. And that can happen on any of these various type of roads!

In my opinion, the only man who is completely safe on the Indian roads is either the one who is wearing a space suite over a metal armor or the one who is inside an heavily armored vehicle!

The people who drive on these roads are as diverse as these roads. Especially the two-wheeler-riders...

In one of my travels in an auto-rickshaw on of our roads I got an opportunity to witness the diversity in driving styles. Some of the riders are so fast that you can barely discern the number of people sitting on the vehicle. You see the right next to you in one instant and then you either see their tail-light as a small speck far-far away, or in most cases you see them lying next to the road, heavily mangled, with the shatters of their bike, either unconscious or crying for help!

The other kind of riders is the ones who usually have the visage of an old man, usually bald with round spectacles, and mostly on a scooter! These are what I call the Slow Locomotive User Guys or simply SLUGs. You can walk right next to them as the drive, have a conversation, ask them about their life, and tell them about you’re, and can play chess, and... Then you get tired and remember that they are on a vehicle! These people are so exceedingly slow... so sluggish... that they don't get run over by a drunken drivers, but frustrated ones!

Jeremy Clarkson, the host of the TV show Top Gear writes in one of his articles, ‘...In Greece, there are only two ways by which you can be killed, by being run over by a bike, or by being run over by a car...’.

I must say that though killers in our nation are not so specific in our methods; we certainly can claim that ‘mostly’ people get killed by being run over by either bikes or cars!

Our road signs are also an interesting addition to the fun that our roads give us!

On one of my recent exploits, I encountered one such utterly ridiculous signs. It claimed

“Sharp Curve ahead, Drive safely!”

This might not sound ridiculous but when there is NO darn curve for the next kilometer or so... it is pretty stupid!

But even after being broken, distorted, disfigured, in-bad-shape, poorly-looked-after, and too thin, no other road is as much fun to drive on! The utter thrill of driving with death on the passenger seat has its own excitement!

I would like to conclude this short essay by giving you a little safety tip on how to cross the roads:

Look Left, look right; repeat this procedure over five times. Stop. Take a deep breath. Remember one of you deities (Multiple if it’s a freeway)!

Then...

Cross as if it’s your last walk on the road!