Homosexuality

This is an article I was asked to write a couple of months ago, to be included in a magazine - 'The Bridge', published by the Youth Parliament.The event being held was on 'Homosexuality and the Gay Rights Movement', at the India Habitat Centre.

First off, let me apologise in advance to all you people out there who will probably be insulted by my article. I don’t consider this – Homosexuality and the Gay Rights movement – to be much of an issue, since I think that there are much, much more important things that we should be focusing on, and so I tend to treat the topic with less than the respect that some of you chaps out there might. My opinion, if you’re interested, is pretty simple. I really don’t care what (or who) you choose to do in your spare time, as long as you give me the same amount of freedom. Fair enough? Fabulous, darling, simply fabulous.

However, there is one problem that I have with the movement.

There are always majority and minority opinions in any given group of people – it’s inevitable. Therefore, there will always be a group of people whose opinions run contrary to the general perception. Take this issue, for example. Society, as far as I know, is predominantly heterosexual (which is a good thing, otherwise humanity would be dead in a matter of generations). Obviously, therefore, homosexuality is seen as something that goes against the norm – which is true whether you like it or not. The norm is what the majority do, not what you’d like them to do – and yes, I know, it sucks.

Now, I don’t believe that people should be discriminated against for their sexual choices. If your job, for example, has nothing to do with your sexual orientation, then I don’t think there’s any basis for discriminating between homosexuals and heterosexuals when it comes to applying for the job. When it comes to getting the job, there’s a bunch of other criterion that come in. Suppose, for example, the office is staffed by a number of homophobes. Firstly, would you want to work there? The discrimination might just be working in your benefit. Secondly, even if you did work there – what if the other employees couldn’t work to their maximum levels because of your presence? It’s them being intolerant, and their problem, at the end of the day, but I don’t think any manager is going to sack half his staff just to retain one person. Life just doesn’t work that way. It never has, so stop expecting it to.

There’s a number of ways out of this mess, of course – increase awareness levels in the general public, STOP MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL ABOUT IT, perhaps try and fit in a little better, stuff like that. Hell, if none of these options work for you, moving is also an option. Homosexuals – males at least – already have a big advantage in India. Ever noticed how many Indian men hold hands and waists and generally cuddle while walking around in public? Blending in should be easy, man. However, there are some chaps out there who like to wear their ‘status’ on their shirts, and be proud of it – and it’s them you should blame for the mess that homosexuals are currently in.
Look. If the poster boys and girls of homosexuals decided to behave a little more like everyone else - Elton John for example, people might not consider homosexuals so different after all. See, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being attracted to someone of the same sex. However, I do have a SERIOUS problem with someone who chooses to dress and behave like a complete lunatic demanding like I treat him/her like everyone else. If you want to be treated like everyone else, you damn well behave like them.

I guess in the end, it really is all about choices. You have the choice, whatever your orientation, of either fitting in with society, or going against the grain. There is a middle ground, of course; nothing in life is quite as black and white as that. There’s always a price for a choice taken. If you choose to fit in, then yeah, you probably will have to put up a façade for a large part of your day – at least until there are enough homosexuals in society for it to be so normal that no one even thinks about it. If you choose, on the other hand, to dress and behave in a manner that will draw attention to your choices, then be prepared to have people make you the butt of the joke – pun intended.

Stormwinds gathering

George W. Bush will, at the end of his current term, have served eight years as the President of the United States of America - which, considerations aside, is the most powerful country on the face of this planet. Whether he's done a good job or not, he has, for better or worse, ensured himself a place in the history books. What he will be described as is the question (and I'm not talking about how much he looks like a chimpanzee).

I'm not going to get into the usual arguments for and against America - frankly, I'm sick of them. I've talked myself hoarse in endless debates over whether, being the most powerful country, America has the right to impose its own morality upon weaker ones, whether its attack on Iraq was justified or not - that's all in hindsight, and moot, besides.

What IS worrying, though, is America’s obsession with having enemies. It seems that they simply HAVE to have someone to hate, someone to be on the verge of war with. During the Cold War, it was the Soviets. Then, not in any particular order, was the First Gulf War, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan (first the CIA backing the insurgency that Osama B. is a product of), then their own invasion of Afghanistan, now this second Iraq War.

Now, there are two possibilities. Either America's just unlucky. They're top dog, everyone's jealous, so everyone hates them, therefore everyone attacks them. Possible, yes, certainly, but there's one or two holes in that theory. Aside from everything else, they're also the most powerful country in existence, and no matter how much you may hate them, you don’t attack them until you have absolutely nothing left to lose. The other possibility is more of a probability - America, until recently, seemed to be following a rather vigorous foreign policy - both via the diplomatic and clandestine channels. Since they got so damn good at it (a relic of the anti-communism era - they saw spies everywhere, so became damn good at being spies themselves), they found that it was possible to divert other countries into choices that, ultimately or immediately, would benefit America herself.

Now, this is nothing new. It’s been happening forever - the British Raj, for example. Only, they didn’t even bother with the diplomatic or clandestine channels. They just turned up, took a look around, figured they liked the country, and took it home. Much more direct, and a lot less red tape involved. But I digress.

America's problem is something like this.

They've had it great forever. While the rest of the world was just about getting to its feet after World War 2, and some others were just gaining their independence (like us), America had a nice, long head start, more natural resources than anyone else (since North America was a relatively virgin continent), no horror of war, since no enemy ever reached their shores, an industrial sector that was booming, what with all the production of war materials to be sent to the Brits and Russians, so on, and so forth. This consolidated into a solid advantage in almost every sector, as besides this head start, they also had virtually no competition. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, India, Africa, South Africa, Egypt - no matter where you looked, revolution/war had been roaming the countryside. The only competition to the USA was the USSR - which imploded a few years later, giving rise to a bunch of new countries even further behind than USSR was before. Lovely. Not to mention, since all the money, technology and opportunities were in America, the best and brightest from the world went there.

Standards of living reached ridiculous new heights, which we in other countries would regard as almost Olympian in their standards, but to the average American, no more than their birthright. Now, here's the problem. In all natural cycles, the end result is a sort of balancing out of everything. That is, perhaps not an equal, equitable distribution of resources, but across the boards, more or less average conditions prevailing. Human society is no less of a natural phenomenon. If one country has it SO great, there must be a lot of countries that go without - since it takes a lot of free labour/ under priced resources/whatever to make life so good for the one country. And for a time, they were. The made in Korea tag exemplifies what I'm talking about - the price for the American dream was borne by other countries, who got bullied into toeing America's line. Sell us your Oil cheap! Work for 50 cents a day! Buy our mass produced garbage at inflated costs! Send your best and brightest to us!

This wanton self worship has reached its peak in Hollywood. Usher wears two diamonds the size of large grapes in his ears. Some arbit rap artist routinely changes his cars (yes, cars - eight of them) every six months, because he's tired of the colour. Paris Hilton and Nicole Riche have launched a reality show which shows them doing whatever the fuck they want to at jobs that people depend on for their livelihoods - and with the American public considering it good enough entertainment to broadcast abroad, rather than cringing in self disgust. P.Diddy routinely throws parties that cost about $15 million, for one night of wild partying. Forget how much that sort of money could help people in genuine need - where famine, or war, or disease has struck. Forget the debate about whether what he does for a living is actually worth so much money. Forget all of that. Just remember that this is a ROUTINE party. Once every year. Dress code, white. All white. Real angels, the lot of you.

It's disgusting. But it's also inevitable.

This isn't really anyone's fault, since what's happening is usually too ethereal to actually reach out and pinpoint. You could just say it's an effect of Capitalism - the generation of enormous amounts of wealth - gone bad, since it was more like monopolistic capitalism on a planetary scale rather than competition. But here's the deal. The rest of the world has grown up. India and China are blazing along at ridiculous growth levels. Russia is once again starting to flex its economic muscle. Potentials for growth, and therefore, for investment, are much higher in the rest of the world than in America. Therefore, following the simple rules of capitalism, a lot of that enormous wealth that has spurred America along should be reaching our shores anytime soon. With everything that it entails.

I don’t believe that we'll be able to become anything like America anytime soon. For one thing, we will always have our battles to fight, since we're not the only ones heading up this mountain. It's a race, and so growth, and investment, and competition will always be at the forefront of any governmental decision. With any luck, this should keep us stable as a country, and as a people, and help us avoid the price for achieving paradise in this world - that we lose our edge.

Perhaps this happens with every civilization on the path of greatness. There must be some point where the armies are strong, the land is secure, and the wealth is enormous, the time for leisure, and the arts, and the sciences, limitless. It happened in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome...hell, even to us.

It's sad to see a superpower fall. But it's also the American Dream. The Last Stand.

So what?

I just had a thought.

There's no way to blame others for their actions.
One can only despise them.

Late nights, early mornings and no work

The last time I checked, we were human beings.

I had a long argument with a friend a couple of days ago. His point was that there’s no real way to blame countries for their actions, since everything they do is in their self interest, and we would have done the same, given the same situation. Gives the phrase ‘One for all, and all for one’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

I disagree, though. In fact, after having thought about it, that view is absolute bollocks. And I’ll tell you why, too.

Consequences exist. The result of your actions is not a simple mathematical formula. There are glaring results, hidden ones, hell, even intangible ones. Example, you say? All right, take the Holocaust.

Millions of Jews dead, tortured, destroyed, displaced. Result?

1. The creation of Israel, a country that’s been in a corner since it began, that’s been fighting for its existence since it was born. A land that was given to the Jews by those that had no right to do the giving in the first place. (No, no, for the last fucking time, NO, you can’t get away from it by simply saying that’s the way the world works, or that morality is relative. If it wasn’t yours in the first place, or if you’re dispensing it on the simple basis that there’s no one strong enough to challenge your actions, that’s called being the bully. Remember class 5? Those lessons are still applicable. Just because the world is more complex, more subtle than what we did back then doesn’t mean that right and wrong go out the window.)

2. The death of freedom of speech. Don’t believe me? All right, try and come up with a way to tell Jews that they’re in the wrong this time, and prepare to duck beneath the accusations of Anti-Semitism. There’s absolutely no way to disapprove of Jewish actions these days. You’re a bastard, a Jew hater, an anti-Semite, or simply a Nazi if you voice an opinion against Jewish action. Strongly condemn their assault on Lebanon? Bloody hell, there’s ten fucking thousand of them wandering around in there! And for what? Two goddamned soldiers?
So what if Mel Gibson says that the Jews are responsible for all the wars? It’s his opinion, for crying out loud! Bill Clinton can have sex in the Oval Office, and not be impeached for it, but Mel Gibson is strung up for a drunken rant?

I don’t know what I’m so angry about. I should be used to the constant lies, the deceit, the maneuvering behind the scenes without giving a toss about the rest of the world, and trying to make money while you’re at it. I’m Indian, after all.

Morality is relative. Fine, I can live with that. BUT THERE’S GOT TO BE SOME MORALITY BEFORE YOU GET ON YOUR HIGH HORSE AND TELL ME THAT, DOESN’T THERE?

Mr. God, this is Baboon

Mr. God, I have a few questions for you. Not that I’m doubting you or anything – I don’t think I’m properly insulated, let alone earthed, so the thought of a bolt of lightning passing swiftly through the night is not one I’d like to consider. Nonetheless, I think there’s a bunch of stuff that’s going on here that you seem to have missed, and which you play a fairly important role in. In fact, you’re the centerpiece, but you seem to be pulling a no show these days. All right, granted, nailing that son of yours to a cross (which we made him build) doesn’t seem to have been the right thing to do, but it’s been two thousand years. Also, you didn’t give him a very good resume. A virgin birth is spectacular and all, but firstly, I don’t think too many people believed it back then, and secondly, I think Mary (his mum, not Magdalene) got a bit of a raw deal. Magdalene also got a raw deal, come to think of it.

Mr. God, we’re sorry. And we’re quite fucked too, for that matter. Yes, it’s quite typical of us humans to ignore you while the going’s good, and come crying when everything goes wahoonie shaped, but you’re like the universal parent, aren’t you? If you just gave us life, and then kicked us out, that’s quite a shady thing to do. If not, then I really think you owe it to us to give us a hand. Personally, I don’t even quite believe in you, so therefore, I must assume that I’m insane to write a letter to you; but there are a lot of people out there counting on you – who’ve dedicated their lives to doing good things in your name. Please at least think about it?

Coming to the questions though – a lot of them have absolutely no bearing on the way the world is going, more of me trying to understand you. Yes, I’m an arrogant fool to assume that I can comprehend what others die trying to, but you knew that anyway, didn’t you?

Firstly, man, who are you? As in, which one are you? Err. Yes, that was the right question. You have a bunch of names – Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Jehovah, Allah, the Father, so on, and so forth. I think the problem we’re having here is that we’re getting a little confused as to which one you’d actually like to be. You can also have all of them, of course, but it would make life a whole lot easier if you just let us know. People are dying here, man – there’s people out there that believe almost exactly the same thing, but they’re fighting and dying because their interpretation – or because what their particular prophet told them differs in the specifics. This brings me to my second question.

Dude, seriously, what was the point of having so many religions? We love you just the way you are, you don’t have to change. All right, the Christianity and Judaism bits are quite similar, so we can probably put that divide down to human conceit (after all, they share the same book, don’t they?), but what in the name of…err, what in your name was the point of putting a warrior religion, Islam, right there next to them? You’ve also confused the fuck out of a lot of people, you know. You’ve given us two different religions – Christianity and Islam – and you’ve told BOTH of them that their God is the only God. Were you looking for a fight, or what?

Look at what’s going on in the world – hell, what’s gone on in the world for centuries now. How many wars have been fought in your name, how many of your children have been slaughtered, tortured, burned, and destroyed utterly, all in your name? How much blood has blackened the souls of your chosen warriors, who destroyed entire civilisations for your greater glory? The crusades are still being fought, my lord – your children still kill one another because you never taught us to share. It could be a sign that there’s no difference between us, having the same holy land – but then tell us, won’t you? This game of spiritual dumb charades will be the death of us, else.

How can you stand your religions being perverted and raped of all decent meaning, by greedy, selfish men, whose only thirst is power? Muslims are brainwashed into believing that there is no greater purpose in life than to die for a cause – when surely the greatest purpose would be to live for that very same cause? They believe that in sacrificing themselves with your name on their lips, and killing a few thousand souls in the process, in your name, they have assured themselves a place in Jannat. Is this justice? Is this the truth you told us to seek out? Christians are no better, I might add. Their weapons are simply different. They’ve been on top for so long that they’ve come to believe that they have a right to existence beyond all the rest of us. Our deaths are termed as ‘collateral damage’, while if you read their newspapers (these sheets of paper folded together with recent events and opinions and things printed on them), each Christian death (well, I mean American, really, it’s pretty much turning into a zealot country) is a martyr’s death. They’ve usurped the right to set the rules of the world, what with being the most powerful countries, and somehow it seems that no matter what we do, they always take home the money.

God, why is there so much inequality? In Hollywood, people spend thousands and thousands of dollars a day on clothes, and cars, and watches, basically shiny, sparkly stuff that they want to own first. In my country, some people exist on half a dollar a day. Even less, sometimes.

In Africa, AIDS rages unimpeded because your voice on earth, the Pope is against the use of contraceptives. Every day, hundreds of African Christians contract this disease, and begin the slow slide toward a rotting, decaying existence because your flunkies are screwing up. And don’t believe for a second that they’re handling their business either – you told them that Priests weren’t to have sex, but they found a loophole. Sex is only between opposing sexes, isn’t it? Every night, a few hundred pageboys go to bed with aching bottoms because some random priest got frisky. These are your chosen servants? I’m starting to wonder, my lord.

The Jews, the ones who claim to be your chosen ones are also neck deep in it. They’re in a precarious position – their country, your holy land is at war. They’re surrounded by hostile forces; who strangely enough, are also your children. Jewish honour, which has always been a benchmark, is slowly being eroded. In their battle for peace, they commit horrific acts to preserve their existence. Why have you condemned them to this fate? Why must forty odd children – relatively blameless, in the greater scheme – be murdered by an Israeli rocket just so that Israelis can live in security? Is this the fate you have chosen for us – that we must learn the deepest, darkest parts of our natures, that we are ready to murder, and destroy and pillage others just so that we our safe? The Middle East has been at war forever. Make it stop, I beg of you. Every day, hundreds die so thousands may live. Again, where is the justice in this? The cost of one Israeli soldier is a few hundred square kilometers of Lebanese land bombed to rubble. Not that it was much in the first place – but some people called it home. Now they have nowhere to go.

Are you trying to tell us something here, God? Are we so unworthy, have we committed such a heinous crime that we must watch everything we have built up be cast down in fire and blood? Tell us what we did wrong. You owe it to us.

My country, India, is also a mess.

We aren’t religious in the regular sense of the word – we’ve got a number of co-existing religions, and they usually manage to work together. We aren’t torn apart by war, at the very least. Nonetheless, murder, bribery, corruption and sleaze compete for the headlines even here. And we’re supposed to be the peaceful ones. Remember Gujrat. Remember Kashmir.

God, peace doesn’t work. You messed up somewhere, or perhaps we grew in new ways when you abandoned us – for I have truly come to believe that even though you might have existed at one time, you have truly turned your back on us.

India is not an aggressive country. That I can say with certainty. We’ve had recent enough examples of peace (Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa) to show us that a lot can be achieved without war, even though the price in blood must be paid. We’ve been attacked almost constantly since the beginning of our existence, when the British left. We’ve fought to defend ourselves, but we have yet to make war on another country. For this simple reason, we are attacked again, and again. Recently, hundreds were murdered in the city of my birth, Bombay. Bombs – explosive materials packed with shards of glass and metal – were put aboard trains carrying people home to their families. You can imagine the result.

And this is but a miniscule footnote to the madness that rages through our world. There are so many countries I’ve left out of this – Russia and Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, South America…every single existing country has a history soaked in blood. I’m probably being extraordinarily biased in favour of my country, as I’m sure people will tell me soon enough – but then I’m a human, and therefore flawed. You are God.

I’m not a believer in pure egalitarianism – whatever you might have intended, humans are not equal, not in any way except the basic needs of survival. For that matter, you might as well have said that all living creatures on this planet – or all mammals, at any rate, are equal. Perhaps you did, and man in his arrogance changed it. I don’t know, and I don’t think we ever will.

We don’t have much time left, my lord.

We have created weapons that can destroy a country at a blow. Not a hundred, or a thousand, or tens of thousands of deaths. Millions – even the future generations will be affected. We are at the brink.

If you exist, if there is any mercy in you – help us.

Yours,

With the deepest respect.

I.R Baboon.

(Now I know there are some of you buggers out there who just won't be able to resist posting a comment as God. Here's your answer in advance. You're a jackass.)

Through the looking glass

A person feels insecure if he’s in an environment that doesn’t suit him. A person feels insecure if he’s behaving in a way alien to his true nature. Put someone in a hostile environment, then, and force him to put up a façade to get on with his life, and you’ve killed him right there.

I know this guy who’s been through something like that – or at least, that’s what he claims. He says that right from the beginning, he had to pretend to be someone he wasn’t, just so that people would leave him alone long enough for him to maintain some measure of sanity. When I ask him for more details, he gets irritated and starts shouting. Fair enough, there’s something bugging him for sure. However, isn't that something everyone goes through in life? Every single person I know was a kid once, and every kid I know has been through some sort of shit in life – that’s what makes them mature, I feel. You never really grow up until something bad happens in life, since that’s what gets you thinking in the first place. That’s why women mature faster than guys – from what I hear, the beginning of the biological tick is a pretty intense situation. I know it would scare the crap out of me, that’s for sure.

We were talking about the guy, though. He says that he’s looking for closure, some way to get past whatever happened, and finally get on with his life. It must be a real pain, carrying such a weighty history around with you, which sometimes makes me wonder why he does it. Fair enough, something bad happened – perhaps much worse than happens to other people. And he’s a smart guy too, no doubt about it, so it must have made it even worse to know that you’re behaving in a way that isn't you, but having to do it nonetheless, just so that people would stop picking on you.

I’ve got a theory on this – old friend, I hope you don’t mind me laying your life out for others to ponder, but I think it’ll be good for you. Trust me on this one, like you have in the past. It’ll be okay, I promise.

I think, in all honesty, that you don’t really consider yourself worth very much – which is why you have to come up with all these complex excuses to avoid looking the truth in the face. Fair enough, you got messed up in school. It must have sucked, not having friends for years on end, and it must have sucked even more not having someone to pour your heart out to. Everyone needs someone to lean on, and not being able to trust anyone long enough to take a bit of weight off your shoulders for a bit is a bit of a harsh way to grow up. But consider this.

You are who you are for the simple reason that you went through all of that in the past. Yeah, it’s left you with a bunch of scars, and I doubt that you’ll ever be free of all your demons. Look, though, at what this gave you. You know more about yourself right now than most people ever will – and that’s something. You’ve experienced cruelty first hand, so you know not to be cruel yourself – your scars are a product of that, and I doubt you’d want to give this sort of grief to anyone else. Fine, you don’t trust people, which is a big, big disadvantage when it comes to rebuilding your life – but you’ve already basted yourself in the fire of your own personal hell for so long that most of your insecurities are already gone.
You’ve were forced to think about yourself and your life at an age that few people even knew of the concept of who they were – and you’ve been doing that for so long that you’ve even begun to understand deeper meanings of life. No mean feat for someone who claims to be as messed up as you.
I could go on with this forever – and I know that as soon as I say something, you’ll have a comeback, something to bring us back to the starting point. There’s no point in arguing this out – this is about you, only you.
Stop beating yourself up. You’re fine, you really are. You just need to start believing in yourself a little more – and I trust you can see the difference between that and becoming arrogant.

The only way for someone to live in a hostile environment and still be at peace is to realise that you make your own world. There’s no need for facades, no reason to lie to yourself and others. Just be yourself, man – it’s what you were born to do.

I've been working on the railroad...

This is an excerpt from the Darwin Awards (http://www.darwinawards.com)/. Basically, the Darwin is presented to those who have improved our gene pool by removing themselves from it – and as necessity often dictates, this award is often presented posthumously.

Accident Report
This one needs an introduction, so you won't be lost at the beginning. This man was in an accident at work, so he filled out an insurance claim. The insurance company contacted him and asked for more information. This was his response:
"I am writing in response to your request for additional information, for block number 3 of the accident reporting form. I put 'poor planning' as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully and I trust the following detail will be sufficient. I am an amateur radio operator and on the day of the accident, I was working alone on the top section of my new 80-foot tower. When I had completed my work, I discovered that I had, over the course of several trips up the tower, brought up about 300 pounds of tools and spare hardware. Rather than carry the now unneeded tools and material down by hand, I decided to lower the items down in a small barrel by using the pulley attached to the gin pole at the top of the tower. Securing the rope at ground level, I went to the top of the tower and loaded the tools and material into the barrel. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow decent of the 300 pounds of tools."
"You will note in block number 11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh only 155 pounds. Due to my surprise of being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rather rapid rate of speed up the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming down. This explains my fractured skull and broken collarbone. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold onto the rope in spite of my pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of tools hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel."
"Devoid of the weight of the tools, the barrel now weighed approximately 20 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in block number 11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, and the lacerations of my legs and lower body. The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell onto the pile of tools and, fortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the tools, in pain, unable to stand and watching the empty barrel 80 feet above me, I again lost my presence of mind. I let go of the rope..."

Poof

I often find myself writing in two distinct styles – the conscious and the subconscious. Mostly, it’s the scripted, logical sort of writing where I’m spinning the web of my argument intentionally, but in the few cases that I don’t, though, I wind up not reading the article until I’m actually done writing it, since the train of thought is so ethereal that looking up means the end of the flow of words.

Damn.

The Freewheeling Taim

This one is long, LONG overdue.

Basically, here’s the history. There’s this series, right, called the Wheel of Time. It’s by this chap called Robert Jordan – or maybe that’s an assumed name, I don’t know, or care, for that matter. Any amount of caring that I might have had for the chap has long gone, since his series is frustratingly obscure – wringing any amount of information, aside from what the women are wearing, or doing, or what someone’s thinking, is about as easy as nailing a fistful of jelly to a tree.

Okay, I’m being a little hard on the chap. The series is absolutely brilliant – quite possibly the best fantasy series in existence. For all you chaps out there who actually enjoy reading, this one’s a treat, since there’s eleven books so far (in the main series, that is, with a prologue and an overview also published), and the final book due to be released sometime in 2007 or 2008.

The story can’t really be compressed, but I’ll give it a shot anyhow.

Basically, there’s this ages old battle between Good and Evil (btw, doesn’t that seem a little off? One would think that the opposite of Evil would be a little more impressive; not something as mundane as ‘good’). Now, the world is populated (mostly) by humans, with a few twists in the tale.

There are channelers. A channeler is someone who can make use of the One Power, the force that drives the Wheel of Time (yes, a little loopy, but bear with me). There are two halves of the Power, one for males, called Saidin, and one for women, called Saidar. These are made up of five distinct elements, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Spirit. Men, in general, have more proficiency in Fire and Earth, and women in Water and Air. Spirit is thought to be shared equally. Men, in general, are stronger than women – kind of the way it happens in real life – men are generally bigger than women.
There are other species. Ogier, for one, which are basically like huge, furry men who live for hundreds of years, and are like Buddhist monks in their deliberations. Really peaceful, quiet, sober, and above all, ponderous. Trollocs are another bunch – they’re blends of humans and animals, and live to destroy – strictly dark side buggers. Aside from these main two, you get a number of inconsequential type specimens that come into the book for a chapter or so, get thoroughly raped, do some damage in the process, and then move on.

Okay, now sometime in the far past, during the Age of Legends, a time which knew no ill, these scientists (using the One Power) located this new source of energy, one which they thought would revolutionise their world. Unfortunately, they were right, since the source of energy they’d found was the Dark One (Devil, basically), who’d been sealed into a prison at the moment of creation by the Creator. So, happily ignorant, they drilled a hole into his prison (the Bore), and all hell promptly broke loose.

In the battle of Good vs. Evil, thirteen of the most powerful channelers went over to the dark side – Ishamael, Balthamel, Be’lal, Demandred, Rahvin, Aginor, Asmodean, Sammael, Lanfear, Graendal, Mesaana, Moghidien and Semirhage – who were collectively called the Forsaken. Anyway, these thirteen defected, leaving the most powerful channeler on the side of Good, this guy called Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon. Now, as expected, the Good guys are taking quite a beating, and all looks pretty grim, when the Dragon comes up with an idea.

Dragon: ‘Hell, why don’t we just seal the bore?’

There’s one woman who doesn’t like the idea, and she says so. I don’t remember her name (it was something like Leguminous Possum), so let’s call her 'Woman'.

Woman: ‘No, that’s a bad idea. We don’t know what’s involved in that; it might cause something completely unexpected.’
Dragon: ‘We don’t have much of a choice, we’re losing the war.’
Woman: ‘Well, I don’t like the idea, so I’m going to make sure you can’t try it by making all the female channelers of appreciable strength sign this pact saying they won’t help you. Loser.’

Female channelers, by the way, are required to form circles, the only way to add strength to something you’re channelling. Men alone can’t link, and women alone can’t take the circle beyond a certain size, I forget exactly how large – something like six people, I think.

Dragon (aside, to his toadies): ‘Balls to that, I’m going anyhow, who wants to come with me?’
Toadies (softly, so the women won’t hear them): ‘Hurrah and a bag of toffee for you, boss!’

So the Dragon and his Hundred Companions (a hundred and thirteen, actually, and all males, but that title was a bit of a mouthful) launch a surprise attack on Shayol Ghul, the site of the Bore, and manage to seal it, with the added bonus that the Forsaken are inside at the moment of sealing, so they also get trapped. The Dark One, in this moment of apparent victory, gets pissed off. So he lobs a googly at the world – he taints Saidin. Any man, therefore, that wields the One Power gets tainted, and progressively goes mad and rots and dies. Pretty gruesome, but hey, that’s the Dark One for you. The Hundred Companions, caught in this back blast go mad immediately, and proceed to wreck the world entirely – an event known as the Breaking.

At the start of the books, the world has been Broken for a few hundred years, memory has faded to legend, and even legend has been forgotten, and the only channelers around are the women, who call themselves Aes Sedai. All male channelers are promptly hunted down and ‘gentled’ – cut off from the Source (the One Power).

The unique bit about this series is that nothing is ever stated explicitly. Since each piece of the story is always narrated from some characters perspective, you have to factor in that person’s motivations/ perspective to get the true picture of what’s actually going on. In addition to that, there’s a bunch of stuff which is just left unexplained – which means there’s bags of theories out there, each wilder than the next, about what happened. Kind of like that episode of M*A*S*H, where the last page of that mystery novel is missing, except in this case, the missing bits are intentional.

Now.

This is a brief, brief overview of the story, and doesn’t include anything that actually happens in the books – just the groundwork for what’s going on. What’s I’m going to do now, though, is the fun bit – and I invite everyone who’s read the series, or even parts of it to join in.

The next bit is a bunch of ideas I’ve had about the series, from where the last battle is going to happen, to who exactly Mazrim Taim is. If you agree, disagree, or just want to babble for a bit – the lines are open!

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The last battle will happen in Tel'aran'rhiod. I remember this bit of doggerel where someone was talking about keeping the Dark One imprisoned – it went something like

‘Keep him chained in one world, and he’s chained in all, free him in one world, and he’s free in all.’

Doesn’t really make sense to me any other way – Tel’aran’rhiod is the most malleable of most worlds, after all, and you can affect the real world from there – plus, all the main characters are already there, or can get there really fast -

Mat's already heading there - tower of Ghenji – which includes Moraine as well.
Perrin, if course, will fall asleep and be there. Rand will simply step into it. Elayne has that twisted stone ter’angreal, and Egwene is a dream walker. Min, I’m not so sure about, unless she simply steps in with Rand. Aviendha’s also a dream walker, so no problems for her either.

Alivia is supposed to help Rand die. She’s the strongest woman channeler around, unless you count Talaan, and she’s also some five hundred years old – and that’s a five hundred year apprenticeship with the Seanchan learning all the fighting weaves. Intrusting. So, she’s supposed to help Rand die. Rand, in his wander through the Ter’angreal in Tear, asked how he was supposed to win the Last Battle and survive – his answer was ‘To live, you must die.’

Also – ‘His blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul, the price to save mankind’ or something like that. Although, that might not mean Rand’s blood – his blood is Aiel blood, after all, so it might mean a mass assault by all the clans on Shayol Ghul proper, with him fighting in Tel’aran’rhiod.

All right, so dying is definitely on the cards. Why, though?

One possibility is that he might be turned against his will. Thirteen Fades and Channelers can turn another Channeler to the dark side against his will – I’m guessing that’s what is going to happen to Rand/Lews Therin. Say Rand gets captured. Lews Therin is holding on to Saidin when the turning begins. So Rand's still good, but it's Lews Therin controlling the body.

There’s not a chance that Elayne, Aviendha, or Min could kill Rand – so it’ll have to be someone else. Possibly Alivia, by balefiring Rand, so the turning never happened, Lews Therin ceases to exist, and Rand comes back.

More interestingly than all of that, though, has anyone noticed the distribution of forces?

All the Tariens are going to Arad Doman.
All the Aiel are going somewhere near Cairhein.
All the Aes Sedai are wandering around the White Tower.
The Borderlanders, with those huge damned armies, are in Andor.
Basically, everybody who's anybody is surrounding the southern end of Caralain grass.
I think Rand's trying to entice the Trollocs to attack somewhere there, to spare the cities from obliteration. There's no other reason I can think of to even bother moving the armies, 'cause hell, they've got gateways. Why not just sit tight behind some defences, otherwise?
Oh, and not to mention, Lan's doing his Forrest Gump run through the borderlands, picking up whoever's left to attack through Tarwin's Gap.
My guess, though, is that he's going to come south after reaching Shienar, 'cause that closes the encirclement.


I think Masema is either a channeler, or he's got some sort of Ter'angreal that allows him to control people. Maybe even the crystal throne, which might not be all that big.

Think about it.

Wotzisface...the Tinker chappie, Aram, was looking dazed when he attacked Perrin. Mad though he may be, I don’t think that he'd have a quick drink before coming to the battle - so SOMETHING'S up for sure.

As for Masema having the crystal throne - it's a Ter'angreal that has lets you Compel people, right? So if the Seanchan Queen was on it, how did Semirhage manage to kill her and destroy Seanchan?

Masema's had contacts with them. Raken have been landing, so on and so forth. Maybe, just maybe?

Although, now that I think of it, it sounds shady, the crystal throne angle....but something’s up. Either Masema can channel - which would explain his madness - or he's got a channeler working for him, or he's got a Ter'angreal.

Where's Padan Fain? Did he get buggered when Shadar Logoth was destroyed? Or maybe he’s at Toman Head – that’s the prophecy in book 2, isn’t it? It’s never over, ‘al Thor, we’ll meet on Toman Head, etc, etc.

Who is Verin? Rather, what's her angle?

Why are Mazrim Taim's floortiles red and black? There was a specific line in the last chapter/epilogue of book 11 drawing attention to the colour of the floor tiles (‘Someone must really like those colours’ or something like that), which is why I'm interested. Why are Moghedien and Cyndane wearing red and black? Moridin dressed them in that first, so it would make sense that he's controlling Taim, or is Taim. Good place to hide, too, right in the Black Tower. That’s where all the dreadlords are getting their training, and they’re all going to be loyal to just one man – Mr. Taim.

Why did Davram Bashere say "You're Taim?" when he turned up in Caemlyn? Why would he suspect Taim of not being himself?

He’s not Demandred – I remember reading somewhere that Robert Jordan had explicitly said so or that someone had managed to prove conclusively that there was no chance – but then what’s going on?

Again, though, why red and black?
Red Ajah, Black Ajah?
Red Ajah, Black Tower?
Blood and shadow, for god's sake?

Where do we go now?

While I was at Purdue University, for the space of one year, I had an American roommate, this chap called Anthony J Owens. I suppose you could call him a typical American – fiercely patriotic, idealistic, and woefully ignorant about anything beyond North America. We had a number of conversations about the world – not that I’m too knowledgeable myself, but compared to him, I was an encyclopaedia. One question, though, I harassed him with throughout the year – ‘Why do you think foreigners hate America so much?’ (There was a lot of post September 11th hysteria going around for a while – this was an offshoot of that).

He didn’t really know. All he knew about Osama, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest, was that they were the enemy; they were the bastards and murderers who had dared to attack his country, and cause thousands of deaths at one blow, and that they should be hunted down and destroyed wherever they were. Oh, and that Osama and Saddam were chaddhi-buddies, and Iraq was a staging ground for the 9/11 attacks, and that Saddam was sure to have weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs and the like, and that America was therefore under threat.

On a slightly different topic (but I promise that I’ll tie it together), Douglas Adams, in his book ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’, put forward the theory that the best way to learn something is to explain it to a complete idiot – you wind up having to simplify it so much that the basics of the matter get entrenched pretty firmly in your own head.

Tony wasn’t an idiot – not by a long shot – but one thing I’ve noticed about patriotic fervour, or any sort of fervour in general, is that it tends to bypass the brain, hotwiring your emotions directly. I therefore decided to explain the whole thing to him in detail – which meant that I had to do a lot of reading myself, so I could get the facts to somehow spark off some thoughts in his vacationing brain. The upshot of the matter was that I learned quite a bit about the Afghan Conflict myself, and as an added bonus, a lot of other stuff in general about the situation in the Middle East – an essential, if microscopic footnote to the whole Terrorists vs. America battle that we seem to find ourselves in these days.

I’m going to reproduce a large part of it here – it’s going to form the basis of what I unfortunately must warn you will be a very long post. Hey, don’t read it, if it bothers you that much. This is my space, so I can do what I want with it – and ironically (or rather, not, since I’ve engineered this bit of writing) that’s where the whole conflict starts from.

At the end of the Second World War, the two main players left on the world stage were the Soviet Union, and the United States of America. The two superpowers, convinced that they were in a battle for world domination, sought to do everything they could to establish spheres of influence around the other’s territory. America, for example, funneled aid to Pakistan, which led Afghanistan, the near neighbour, to turn to the Soviets for aid. In 1964, the then monarch of Afghanistan, Muhammad Zahir Shah convened a grand council to allow more participation in the decision making process – the beginning of a pseudo-democracy. A number of parties were established, notably among them the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a Marxist-Leninist party that was formed in 1965. In 1967, this same party split into the Parcham, and the Khalq, representing different ethnic classes. In 1973, the Parcham faction along with the Daoud Shah, the cousin of Zahir Shah, engineered a revolt, which led to the overthrow and exile of Zahir. Daoud then tried to marginalize the Parcham faction, and shift himself away from Soviet influence – which led to the reunification of the PDPA and the overthrow of Daoud in turn. The PDPA, with Nur Mohammad Taraki as president, and Hafizullah Amin as the Prime Minister, then began a series of brutal reforms, which led to bloody civil war in Afghanistan. Unknown to the rest of the world, America was already on the scene, aiding the local mujahideen – as former CIA director Robert Gates admitted in his memoirs, CIA intervention had begun as early as June 1979, precisely with the goal of provoking a Soviet response – as a classified State Department report of August 1979 stated,

‘The United States' larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan’

This was the Soviet cue to enter.

Apparently alarmed by the deteriorating situation on their southern border, and in particular the collapse of the Afghan army, the Soviets decided to take action – on the 24th of December, 1979, the Soviets airlifted thousands (the eventual count of Red troops on the ground numbered in excess of 100,000) of troops into Kabul, leading to the assassination of the Khalq president, Hafizullah Amin. The government was replaced by one installed by the Soviets, with a Parcham leader, Barbak Karmal, as president.

The next few years were perhaps the blackest in recent Afghani history. About one million men, women and children died in the government’s attempts to crush the uprisings that the Soviet occupation had caused. Some five million more became refugees, which was about one third of the total population of sixteen million.

The history of our sorry race is written in the blood of the millions of innocents who have been murdered, tortured, and reduced to the level of animals – all to serve the ‘larger interests’ of the strongest faction.

The day after Soviet troops crossed the Afghani border, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor is said to have written, in a note to President Carter, ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’

America, seeing this as an opportunity to stop the Soviet expansion south, immediately began to use Pakistan as a conduit to support the resistance fighters opposing the puppet regime, and along with Saudi Arabia, funneled massive amounts of money and weapons into Afghanistan. This, of course, also brought Pakistan and America to a much closer relationship than before (which might account for why America is so quick to defend Pakistani excesses – blood brothers, and I trust you know what I mean by this, usually do defend one another). Pakistan found itself doubly gifted, for two reasons. One was the money and armaments flowing through it to training camps dotted along its borders. The other was the very presence of Islamic fighters training, recruiting and studying within its territory, or within Afghanistan. It is these same training camps that have spawned organizations such as the LeT, which frequently conduct raids and bombing missions in our own country – perhaps even including the recent attack on Bombay. If you think about it, how CAN America blame Pakistan for having terrorist camps? They were the ones who paid for the damned things in the first place.

These resistance fighters, based in Pakistan and Iran drew recruits from Islamic countries all over the world – notably from the Middle East, and North Africa. Along with these fighters came one who would eventually become the face of fear for western democracies – Osama Bin Laden. He appeared in the early 1980’s, and was responsible for establishing a number of terrorist training camps within Afghanistan.

Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujahideen rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage, and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.

Between 1986 and 1989, the mujahideen were also provided with more than 1,000 state-of-the-art, shoulder-fired Stinger antiaircraft missiles. By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to plan mujahideen operations

In 1988, the Geneva Accords appeared to bring an end to all overt hostility, at least among the major protagonists – America and the Soviet Union. According to the document, the Soviets were to remove all uniformed officers from Afghanistan by February 1989 – and they did, although they managed to keep their puppet regime in place for another three years, till 1992. The United Nations, helpless as ever, was unable to negotiate a peace process that was suitable to all concerned parties, and therefore, chaos and anarchy ruled in Afghanistan. Also, the flow of humanitarian aid slowly withered, as donors became disillusioned at the lack of progress, and newer, more immediate crises arose in other parts of the world.

More importantly, with the Soviets out of Afghanistan – rather, with their uniformed armies out of Afghanistan, there was no real need for America to continue with its ‘clandestine’ support. So they didn’t. And promptly forgot that they ever had, too, if you believe the American media.

At this point, let’s pause for a second.

Since 1979, Afghanistan has been at war with itself. Russian factions, American factions, drug lords, warlords, mujahideen fighters, and Islamic nationalists, whoever – they’ve all been there, done that. Most of the arms, money, bombs, whatever, have been brought in by superpowers seeking to increase their spheres of influence - Afghanistan itself is a country brought about to be a buffer state during the years that Britain was ruling the roost. Imperialism, it seems, is not dead- it’s just had a facelift.

No matter which way you slice it, no matter who you credit first mover advantage to – America has had an extraordinary amount of influence on the way things in this part of the world have turned out. Osama himself claims to have been trained by CIA operatives. There is no escaping it – America is partially, if not heavily responsible for the mess this part of the world is in right now.

After the 11th of September, 2001, the world changed. America finally had an excuse to go adventuring. 3000 of their people were murdered, and a symbol of their national pride was thrown down before them. For a single day, the nation cowered in fear. And then began the darkest time in their history since they nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which, by the way, is quite interesting. The same country that preaches nuclear disarmament, that wants to restrict the use of these weapons, that is pretty much invulnerable even without that option, is the only one to have ever used it on other human beings).

In the past five years, America has proved to be as vicious and brutal as any of its opponents. It always has been – this is just the first time it’s ever come to light. Right after the attack, in their rage to avenge their murdered people, they attacked Afghanistan, and wiped out whatever pitiful civilization that had grown in the last twenty or so years of relative peace there. Afghanistan has no reason to hate Americans? The living hell each Afghani must endure has no other root cause. At least the British didn’t try to disguise their excesses by calling it ‘collateral damage’. That’s another interesting thing, by the way. If one American soldier dies on a foreign battlefield that he was sent to on false pretexts by his own government, it’s the death of a hero. If a family of five dies at their dinner table, because a malfunctioning rocket flew into their home rather than the weapons factory it was aimed at – by the Americans – then its collateral damage.

If that wasn’t enough, America wasn’t finished yet. It attacked Iraq on blatantly false pretexts, with the rest of the world watching, aghast. It showed the rest of the planet just what it was capable of – public opinion and world opinion are just words to the average American. It has pointed up the impotency of the United Nations in a way that could never have been, otherwise. Regardless of being shouted down in the Security Council, regardless of the rest of the world – the entire goddamned planet – telling them not to do it, they waltzed into another country, destroyed the infrastructure, bombed its cities to rubble, annihilated the lives of thousands and thousands of innocents – all to catch ONE man. And they got him, too – as President Bush so proudly announced.

America has suffered, there’s no doubt about it. To play the game of life in God-Mode for better than half a century, to have grown complacent and weak, and then to watch your advantages whittled away one by one – there is not one sphere in which the Americans have not fallen from their heyday. India and China are racing to catch up with their economy. Wealth that till recently was happy in sloshing about their markets is suddenly making a run for the east – so much so that the Fed has had to tighten interest rates repeatedly, just to stem the haemorrhage, leave alone bring it back. Their job market is in a downward spiral – price undercutting by developing economies, and the relative unimportance of location these days has cause most of the bigger companies to outsource their jobs. National pride is at a premium – the fact that America, like the rest of the world, is capable of massive cock-ups – The war on Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Haditha, Enron, and last but not least, George W. Bush…

There is no right and wrong in this matter – things just happen. Every country in the world has had its heyday, and not one of them has a record pristine enough to be displayed – hell, to be acknowledged, even. Rome butchered her way into Europe. Germany destroyed most of Western Europe during World War II. Genghis Khan led the Mongols on a looting and pillaging expedition across Asia. Japan colonized China for a good bit of time. America is a country soaked in blood – the natives, the American Indians don’t even exist as a culture anymore. Spain sailed into South America and promptly annihilated the Aztecs, stealing all their gold in the process. Africa is a country that pretty much every other country has had a go at – from it’s mineral resources, to it’s forests, to the land, to the humans living on it, to the animals that roamed it’s plains – they’ve all, at some point or another, been enslaved, raped, murdered, whatever.

All this is not in the slightest to justify what we’ve done. If the purpose of life is to do all that we can, then I think it’s time to shift our focus to slightly less destructive ones. Fuck living in worldwide harmony with each other, the hell with linking arms and curing the world of its ills. How about just taking a break from the madness?

One thing, above all, is essential. We must realize that we have almost no margin for error left to us. The weapons we use these days are in a different category from before – nuclear winter seems like a bleak certainty if we don’t rein back on our excesses.

I read something a couple of days ago that made me furiously angry – a statement by US functionary Richard Boucher on India’s statement that LeT was involved in the Bombay tragedy, and that Pakistan still hadn’t closed its borders to terrorism.

‘ “I know there's a lot of speculation out there now. That happens in these cases. But I think we need to be led by the evidence before we start trying to draw conclusions and make policy pronouncements on it,” US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told foreign correspondents at a news conference on Monday.’

First of all, people who live in glass countries shouldn’t throw bombs. Remember Iraq? Or is this another instance of the famed American selective memory?

Secondly – much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. We as humans have a lot of growing up to do.

Monday morning madness

This is aggravating. Quite aggravating.

For some reason, I can't access my blog - as in see what I'd see if I wasn't myself. Um. What I'm trying to say is, I can't access the http://reallypants.blogspot.com site - I can sign into the main blogger site though (quite obviously, since this has been posted), which makes me think that there's some sort of foolishness going on.

It can't have been blocked, that's for sure, cause if it was, then Blogger.com would also be out of reach. So there's a problem with the blog itself - but then why can people in other parts of Delhi access it?

Maybe I'm hallucinating that I can't access it. In that case, it's a bloody good hallucination, since it includes other people in the area as well - friends at other banks in the area also can't get to it. Man, I'm Charles Xavier; without the funky wheelchair, of course.

Since this post has begun with nonsense, let's finish it in the same vein.

Which X Man would you want to be?

I'd probably pick wotzername - the chick who can change her shape. Not through any desire to be a woman (I hope you're taking note of this one, Ms. Blonde), but out of a sheer desire to know what it's like to be a potted plant.

Yes, I'm strange.

The bargain

The thing about beauty is that it is ethereal – familiarity with joy soon translates into the placidity of the mundane. For something to be truly beautiful, it must excite, and at the same time, destroy.

A work of art is born in fire. Have you heard that before? I have a dim memory of a poem I read sometime in school – it was something to do with the god Pan making a flute out of a reed; the underlying message, or so I was informed by my teacher, was that for an artist to be born, or for the creative spirit to be unleashed, the channel must first understand the nature of pain.

It’s an odd thing, creativity. Mostly it comes and goes, in flashes and sparks, which hold the promise of incredible beauty, and at the same time, are heavy with the darkness of shared pain. Occasionally, though, there is the brief moment of utter possession, the madness of true creation. That’s the key to it, though, madness.

An artist – and by that I mean one who is possessed by the creative spirit from time to time – understands the basic, most fundamental fact about art, and emotions. Every yin must have its yang, and in the same way, every work of art – that which gives us joy – there must be a corresponding level of sadness. Usually, this comes directly from the artist himself – the torment of his soul is what allows him to see true beauty long enough to capture a faint ghost of it.
To truly appreciate a good meal, you must be hungry first. To develop a passion about something – be it a sport, or a book, or a profession, or a way of life – you must first feel the emptiness of its absence. In the same way, for someone to truly appreciate beauty – for him to be able to call on it at will – he must first go through the agony of not having it.

In the words of George DeChirico – “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits; logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realm of childhood visions and dreams.”

Beautiful. I wonder what price he paid for that understanding.

I have miles to go before I sleep

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Permit me to introduce myself.

My name, as with a number of other details about me, is of no immediate consequence. I am at present 21 years of age, 22 in a matter of days. At present, I have studied three and a half years in undergraduate institutions; nevertheless, I have just completed the second years of my BSc. I have extensive experience when it comes to writing, since at the tender age of eleven I was convinced that I was god’s gift to the literary word, and therefore, spent the subsequent ten years painfully extracting coherent sentences from the depths of my brain. Read the last sentence again, if you don’t believe me – painfully is the word, trust me on this.
I have, so far in my meander through life, worked at two newspapers, a construction company, and a library. I have studied science and biology at the ISC level, a year of engineering and computer science at the undergraduate level, and two years of economics, also at the undergraduate level. In short, I am a well read know nothing. Nevertheless, I persist in my belief that I have something to say about life, and therefore, chose to inflict my particular brand of fluff and feathers on all those unfortunate enough to happen across this page.
Now, my mother, a saint in dragon’s clothing, fed up with trying to cajole me into doing something with my life, recently decided to approach matters from a slightly different perspective. Gone were the day where I could laze in bed as long as I wanted (or, at least, as long as I could ignore her irritable commentary) – waking up one morning with a cup of coffee being forced down your throat is enough to make you wary – leaping out of bed is now standard dogma when one hears the dragon’s approach.
Recently, as you would know if you’re a returning visitor, I started on a two month long internship with a bank. It didn’t sound quite so bad when I head about it the first time – air-conditioned office, comfortable chairs, unlimited Internet access – who would complain? Unfortunately, I didn’t count on the new spirit invigorating my mother in getting to my father as well. The result? I have to make my own way to office everyday. Again, not so bad, you would think. Well, you be the judge. Here’s my average schedule for the day.

7:00 am – Put alarm clock on snooze.
7:05 am – Put alarm clock on snooze
7:10 am – Ears prick up at approaching tread, leap out of bed and dash to bathroom
7:30 am – emerge from bathroom, having bathed, shaved, and put on monkey suit (shirt, pants, tie, belt, socks, and shoes)
8:00 am – Having eaten breakfast, leave home for bank.
8:05 am – Reached main road near house via cycle rickshaw. Have first smoke of the day, have interesting conversation with driver. Begin ten to thirty minute wait for bus heading toward AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), getting progressively more worried as clock approaches 8:35
8:40 am – Traveling in bus/Tata Sumo, heading toward AIIMS. Trying not to get toes crushed by obese, sweaty gentlemen who (inevitably) I am crushed up against because there’s no space. Being 5’6” is not a good thing, as people assume that the seat wasn’t taken, and react with great surprise to hear squeaking noises coming from under them.
9:00 am – With luck, have reached AIIMS. Spend a couple of minutes hoping for another bus to arrive, to take me to Connaught Place, barring which I have to go and get scalped by an auto rickshaw driver, who wants a hundred rupees and my first born child to take me to work.
9:15 am – Arrive at work. Go around the corner to a convenient panwari, to buy my pack of smokes for the day, and my daily half litre of Pepsi. Take first sip, smile happily, square shoulders, and march into office.

Between nine fifteen, and when I leave, there’s no exact set routine for the day. I work primarily with three people – M’rora, Tortoise, and the Wall. They’re all really nice guys – they helped me get settled in really well, always asking me if there’s any help I need, or anything of the sort, really great guys. Unfortunately, they’re under the impression that I actually WANT to work, and therefore take every opportunity to thrust obese and obscene looking files at me, pausing only to rattle off a line of meaningless gibberish before trotting off back to their terminals. “Hey, just run these MFAs past the BRG will you? And while you’re at it, pull a D-SIT off the GBASE, and correlate it with the BCA. Thanks!”

M-effing-A is just about right.

12:15 pm: Leave office, run to McDonalds. This is the only time that one can get a meal and a seat in the same visit. Every other time finds this place filled to the brim with visiting hippies, complete with requisite dreadlocks and tattoos, random smelly men from various offices, and stargazing couples. I swear. There were these two sitting next to me once, doing the whole dove impression, and feeding each other French fries. Very romantic location to choose, I must say.
12:45 pm: Return to office, begin dodging work once more. Rather, since the work that I’m expected to do is mostly formatting, with a little bit of light research on the side, it’s easy to keep two windows open and write while I work.

Somewhere around 6 pm: Leave work, covered in sweat, full to the gills with Pepsi, lungs black from frequent smoke breaks - which are actually taken to return calls - certain pretty women (you know who you are, if you’re reading this) insist on calling or missed calling, or sending me messages that say ‘Call’ in between particularly exciting bits of number shuffling (not that I'm complaining or anything, there's a particular one who's rather interesting, actually. If she'd only return calls once in a while, like she promises to).
6:20 pm: Finally have found a bus, or an auto rickshaw driver who’s prepared to be reasonable about the fare, heading back toward AIIMS. Aroma of sweat now enhanced by a faint miasma of Eau De Petrol Fumes.
7:00 pm: AIIMS once again. Buy bhutta, convince squatting-man-with-less-than-perfectly-opaque-loincloth to put a little more masala on it. Board bus for mehrauli. Make sure not to fall asleep on bus, as the DTC seems to let its drivers choose the route they take. Any turn is potentially on the route, and therefore, an alert mind, quick reflexes, and good stamina are essential. Unfortunately, I have none of those, so I have to compromise by sitting behind the driver and bawling into his ear when his fancy takes him off the route home.
7:20 pm: Mehrauli. Almost there, just one more bus…which is the one that’s never there. Compromise by finding some sort of transport heading to Haryana border, haggle with driver, offer him a smoke as a bribe to be reasonable, finally convince him that I’m not a millionaire in disguise (tearing at hair and pretending to be an out of work student works particularly well, thankfully I have a lot of experience in that particular role).
8:00 pm: Haryana border. Almost home. Frantically call friends, threaten them with severe psychological trauma if they don’t pick me up and drop me home.
8:30 pm: Home. Mauled by over affectionate dog with severe halitosis.
9:30 pm: Eaten dinner, had bath, met family, endured usual inane questions about whether work was fun today. G-BIT! D-BASE! BCA, for god’s sake, BCA, you miserable bats!
10:00 pm: With friends, who insist that I have just one drink, c’mon man, it’s just one, we haven’t seen you all day, you never spend any time with us…
2:00 am: Not sure who I am, or where I am. Quite thoroughly sozzled.
4:00 am: Finally reach room, change, collapse into bed, make attempt at reading a book that I started a week ago, and am still on the first page of.
4:30 am: Asleep. Passed out, more like.

Yes, yes, I know. My life sucks. Two and a half hours of sleep a night, ye gods.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop complaining.

Back to work, I suppose.

The persistence of life

The problem with the gene pool is that people keep on widdling in it.

Darwin’s theory of evolution stated that the species best suited to the environment would be the one that flourished the most in it. Therefore, in wide, open grasslands, crocodiles wouldn’t stand much of a chance. For that matter, gazelles wouldn’t do too well in swampy areas either, but that’s another story.

Humans have gone beyond such trivial nonsense, it seems. With the advent of medicine, hell, with the beginning of science, we’ve consistently been increasing the chances that a weaker species/specimen would survive in a hostile environment. There are thousands upon thousands of cases where a baby that would otherwise have been stillborn was saved by medical technology – c-sections, infant incubators, whatever. And that’s an absolutely fantastic thing for the mother – I can only imagine how much it would torture someone to lose a baby even before it was born.

Medical marvels aren’t just limited to unlucky babies, though. In thousands of cases, people on the brink of death have been brought back from the edge, coaxed back into a semi-life. With enough time, healing, treatment, and so on, pretty much any sort of problem can be solved. My question, though, is this.

Is it right?

It seems to me we’re taking away a very basic right of all creatures – the right to die.

Now before the more excitable of you start leaping about and screaming bloody murder, let me explain myself.

I think it’s fantastic that we can save so many lives these days. The pain that someone goes through when they lose a loved one is simply unbearable – my dog died in my arms, and that was bad enough that I wouldn’t even want to consider the thought of losing someone who I’ve actually talked to. However, do me a favour. Re read the last sentence, and tell me who’s going through the pain. The person (or animal) who’s moving on, or the one that gets left behind?

We’ve come to the point that we simply cannot control our emotions – they become our yardstick rather than intellect, and rational thought. Yes, I know, it’s pretty obvious that I’d change my tune in a second if it was someone I loved on the brink – I’d be hysterical in my efforts to prevent it happening, but nonetheless. It’s an emotional thing.

Let’s take an example.

Suppose there’s a man, who’s been in a terrible accident. One of his legs is mangled beyond repair, and one of his arms as well. His ribs have been broken, internal bleeding, loads of complications. The doctor tells you, his relative, that he can be saved, but he’ll lose an arm and a leg, and will probably not have too many years left to live – and while he does, he’ll have all sort of trouble, chronic pain, breathing difficulty, the whole nine yards. Given that he’s also unconscious, and that a decision has to be taken, and quickly, what would you do?

Say you save him.

He’s alive, but barely so. His leg is gone, and one arm as well, so her has to learn new ways of doing everything – from tying his shoelaces, to driving, to cutting the top off a boiled egg. His active life is gone, and so, for that matter, is his independence – until he’s managed to create a new way of life for himself, he’s utterly dependent on someone else. His life isn’t that long, either – he hasn’t got much time left to do what he had planned. He’s constantly wracked by problems, breathing difficulties, muscle spasms, generalized pain, and so on – his life now revolves around medications to treat his body. Then, there’s the psychological angle. He once was a whole human being, and remembers that time all too well – unless he’s an extremely stable person, personality wise, he’d be completely destroyed – imagine the thought of waking up one day, and only having the use of one arm and leg, and to be in constant pain, for the rest of your (short) life.

And you made this decision for him. Because you would miss him if he were gone. Hell, it’s not your daily battle to fight, is it?

Death isn’t much better, to be sure. Your life ends there and then. The only positive thing you could say about it is that it isn’t a lingering one.

At the end of the day, it should be HIS decision.

It’s a knotty problem, that’s for sure. You can’t ask the person what he wants, since he’s unconscious. You cant say let him go, since what if he wanted to live? You can’t say save him – well, not without some thought – since it’s a pretty sad life you’re consigning him to.

If it were me in that accident – well. Surprising as it may be, bring me the hell back, and find out the number of the truck that hit me.

The perfect storm

The latest in the scientific news, live from New York! A new strain of phobia has appeared! WEATHER PHOBIA!

Err…what?

Yes, you heard right the first time. John Westefeld, at the University of Iowa has recently documented a study in which he claims that perhaps one in five – twenty percent, ladies and gentlemen, one in five people in the USA suffers from ‘weather phobia’. This new disease apparently is characterized by panic at the thought of storms – not the regular, healthy type of worry that makes people stock up on provisions, or board up their windows, or whatever – but actually renders them incapable of helping themselves while under its influence.

Now look.

I’m sympathetic to peoples worries and fears, I really am. I listen to people when they tell me there’s something that’s bothering them, and I usually try to give some sort of positive advice. So here’s my advice to all you Americans afraid of the big, bad, weather.

Wear a nappy. It wouldn’t do to piss your pants every time you hear thunder, now would it?

This one's for you, Bro

I woke up today, and felt like shit, cause I realised that my best friend wasn't there anymore.

I’ve known this chap for two years now – not an indecently long amount of time, not by a long shot, but long enough. In the past two years, we’d met almost every day – and done absolutely nothing. That was the great part of the friendship – the capacity to sit every single day, and constantly bitch about not having anything to do, and still enjoy it enough to do it again the next day. And we had an absolute fucking blast doing it, too.

Looking at the two of us though, you really wouldn’t imagine that we’d be friends, let alone best friends – hell, almost brothers. We’re different from almost every perspective you might choose to look at it from – he’s 6’4”, I’m 5’6” (we made a strange pair walking down the road, I can tell you that, and there’s not one picture of us standing that has the both of us in it – unless it was taken from a good distance away). He’s the quintessential party boy – there’s nothing he enjoys more than a loud, writhing, gyrating scene with bucket loads of booze flowing everywhere – while I’m more of the sedate scene with a bunch of good friends chilling on someone’s terrace. He never bothers to think about what he does (hell, he’s never even heard of foresight, or for that matter, hindsight), while I usually wind up not doing a lot of stuff for the simple reason that I cripple myself thinking about it. He plays almost every sport imaginable, and he’s pretty good at most of them too – I guess having the reach of a mutated gorilla can help you out in these sort of scenarios. I, on the other hand, will pretend aloof disinterest in every sport, usually because I suck at them – or maybe that’s just more of my crippling thoughts. Interesting.

Anyway. We’re unlike as two peas from different pods, is my point. But something clicked.

In the past two years, we’ve drunk ridiculous amounts of alcohol (one of our favourite party games was to try and drink the other under the table, which usually resulted in everyone getting mad cause we’d finished all the booze), talked endless amounts of nonsense (there will never be another to match his brand of bullshit. Honestly. He once convinced a guy that we’d only played one hour of snooker, even though we’d been there for five hours). We’ve utterly destroyed the self-confidence of any number of fools who crossed our path; we’ve established a reputation in college as the root of all evil – anything that went wrong was automatically attributed to us. Even if it happened in the women’s loo, for god’s sake. We were once blamed for the electricity going, by an overexcited teacher.

We’ve been in four accidents, one of which reduced a three year old Ford Ikon to a pile of smoking, twisted metal. I think he still has the picture, too. Fun day, that one.

At college, we followed each other’s footsteps diligently, which usually meant that we wound up going in circles most of the time – and I don’t think there’s another pair of students who’ve been thrown out of class (especially macro) quite as much as we have.

What can I say?

Well, here goes.

(I know you’re not going to read this, you illiterate fuck, so it doesn’t really matter how much I insult you. And I get the feeling that you’d be a little disappointed if I didn’t describe you as a monkey with it’s arse on fire.)

This one’s for you, Bro.

I first met this chap some eight years ago at my cousin’s birthday – and trust me, it was hate at first sight – duly reciprocated, of course. When he was smaller – that is to say, about as tall as I am now, his face hadn’t quite grown a chin yet, so it seemed that his head bore this unfortunate resemblance to a cough lozenge. It used to piss him off quite a bit, having me yell, “Yo, the cough drop is here!” when he walked in. He, of course, with a dint of much thinking (he looks like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone when that happens), soon came up with an acceptable retort. Cough Drop and Shortarse were born that day.

The next time I met him was at college, ITM to be exact. Our reactions were pretty much identical – “What the fuck are YOU doing here?” pretty much summed it up. Unfortunately, since ITM is where you go when you don’t qualify for anywhere else, there were few intelligent people around – people like us, with the brains, but with no drive whatsoever, resulting in a lack of results. I wouldn’t quite say that we were forced to hang out with each other, but for some reason, we decided to – by the second morning, we were cheerfully bunking class, secure in the knowledge that no one would care, and regardless of what we did, it couldn’t be quite as bad as actually attending class.

One week later, the Group was born.

The group – as that is what we were known as – consisted of four people - me, him, and a pair of surds who were known as Paji, S’dar, Surdy Paji, or something equally ridiculous, depending on mood and weather conditions. Thus began two years of absolutely rocking fun – our reign had just begun.

There wasn’t one party, or a drinking session, or a card game, or a snooker game that we didn’t dominate right from the start. For starters, our sense of humor was in perfect tandem – one would set up the poor bastard we’d chosen for the day, and the other would land a blistering comment on him (There are about fifty odd desks in ITM that we decorated with marriage announcements between these two chaps that we particularly enjoyed heckling. ‘GK Weds Prasanna Jain’ is a particularly famous line, at ITM). Secondly, the both of us are extraordinarily cocky buggers – it’s a common sight to see us defending completely indefensible positions, and getting away with it just because we refuse to agree with the other people.

We’ve done so much in the past two years, that it just wouldn’t even do justice to it to try and list what we’ve achieved (or, alternatively, destroyed beyond repair).

I remember once he told me while we were driving around – dude, you suck at driving. Being the arrogant chap that I am, I immediately flared up, and an interesting discussion developed on whether or not his ancestry contained howler baboons from the African jungles, and whether or not I resembled a snapping turtle. At the end of it, though, I realized that compared to him, I DID suck at driving – and so began my education.

Did you know that the best way to take a turn at high speed is to start it tight, and drift into a wide turn? Or, for that matter, if you start a 1.6 litre Opel Astra in first, rev straight up to third, then down to second, then up to third, and stop at fourth, you’ll reach 110 km/h faster than a 2.0 litre Honda Accord? That, and a whole lot of other really, really twisted stuff. He’s an interesting chap when it comes to cars. Just don’t let him drive yours.

Dude, I’m rambling.

And there’s no point to this. I already remember all the good times – which was pretty much all the time.

I’ve never met a chap who’s as blessed as you, boy. I’ve seen it happen; luck rides on your shoulder. Nobody walks into a card game with 50 bucks and leaves with 2500. Consistently. Nobody routinely races a shitty little Santro against a Honda or a Toyota and expects to win. Nobody who looks as fucking uncoordinated as you should be able to play a 100 point break on the snooker table. And nobody should, after eating six McGrills, get up and say, “Dude, I’m hungry.”

Fucking Arsehole. Take care of yourself, fool.

Goodbye

Zinedine Zidane.


FIFA Player of the Year 1998, 2000, 2003
Golden Ball winner in 1998
European Player of the Year 1998.
UEFA Champions League MVP 2001


Rest In Peace.

The Impotent Indian

Today, I saw something that set my blood on fire – and my complete inability to do anything about it makes things even worse.

I live in DLF, which is basically a suburb of New Delhi, the capital of India. My office, though, is in Connaught Place, the centre of Delhi, a good hour and a half away from home. Now, I usually get to work by taking a bus into Delhi, and then another bus to CP.

At 8:45 in the morning, I had just gotten off the first bus, outside AIIMS, the All India Institute for Medical Sciences – affectionately termed ‘Medical’ by bus conductors and rickshaw drivers throughout Delhi. So, I had gotten off the first bus, and was waiting at the bus stop outside AIIMS for the second bus, just watching the traffic flow by. The first thing I noticed was a white ambassador (a model of a car, not a person) weaving through traffic, at something over 60kmph. Now, around 9 in the morning, traffic outside AIIMS is probably the densest in the city, so what this chap was doing was undoubtedly dangerous, and utterly stupid. The inevitable happened – one of his wilder gyrations plowed him straight into the back of a tempo that was stuck in traffic.

Ordinarily, one would expect the driver of the ambassador to acknowledge his mistake, get out, get into a shouting match with the tempo driver, and then make his escape before the cops arrived to make life difficult for anyone in the area. Not this time, though. Four large, bearded chaps got out of the ambassador, marched up to the driver of the tempo, and started beating him to a pulp.

I was about to start forward, with the idea that I could help the driver in some way, before I noticed two things. Firstly, nobody on the street had moved. This is a rare thing to happen in India, where the slightest sign of a fight will have every loafer in the area congregating into a small, tight, smelly circle before the first punch has time to land. Secondly, the ambassador had a small, discreet pennant on its bonnet, and a license plate saying “Government of India”.

Since nobody looked like they were going to back me up, and I’m 5’6”, and weigh about 60 kilos, I decided not to get my face beaten in for interfering.

I am a coward.

The driver, quite obviously, didn’t stand a chance. He looked like the kind of chap who’s been on a starvation diet for the past few months, ribs there to count, sunken face and all. How could he resist four thugs intent on their job? No matter how he protested, or begged for help, or begged them to stop “mujhe mat maaro, maine kuch nahi kiya, mai gareeb aadmi hoon, please, bhaisaheb, mat maaro”, the pulping continued. And I watched, helpless.

I feel sick. This is the first time I’ve ever been ashamed to say that I am an Indian.

What sort of government allows its employees to break its own laws, assault its own citizens when they haven’t even done anything to warrant it, and walk free at the end of it?

The fat babu sitting in the car was probably some middle level government flunky, nothing more than a paper pusher, who probably got his job through some shady connection, in return for a favour. Not to say that the tempo driver was some sort of saint, but what the fuck IS this? Is it right when some bastard abuses his privileges in such an arrogant manner? When the fault is his own, he nonetheless has his bullyboys beat up an innocent man? And there’s NOBODY to stop him?

This incident is already over, for all practical purposes. Even I, feeling so righteously angry at the world and my own impotence in this matter, will probably not do anything about it. It’s just another incident in the big city.

Except, of course, for that tempo driver, who’s lying on the side of the road, broken and bleeding.

To you, the tempo driver, I make one promise. I am neither well connected, nor do I have the kind of time or resources to make sure you get the justice you deserve. What I can do, however, is write. I will write one article a day, in your name, about something that happened in the city. You will be my conscience, and the conscience of whoever takes your story to heart.

This, I promise you.

The equal ape

This particular piece has come out of a particularly controversial thought I had some time ago – are people equal?

People would like to be treated with as much respect as the next guy, usually without doing quite as much as him – whoever the next guy may be. I mean, take me as an example. It’s 12:40 in the afternoon, and I’m supposed to be working – that would be the responsible, correct thing to do. Nonetheless, I’m sitting at my desk, pretending to work, all the time publicizing my opinion on other people, and expecting it to be read and appreciated. Nonetheless, I will still continue with this farce, as emotionally, it satisfies me – hold on to that thought, I’ll come back to it later.

People are infinitely different in their characteristics, and in the combination of those characteristics. And that’s just where it begins – then comes the nurturing effect, which adds another modifier to what is already an incredibly complex piece of bio-machinery. The effect of nurture could turn one of a pair of identical twins into a cultured, thoughtful, respectful, contemplative mass murderer, while leaving the other a boorish, gullible, thoughtless, insensitive, average family guy. Which would you rather be?

We all start off in life at a similar stage – although the innate characteristics you possess are probably unique. I say probably for the simple reason that at present, there are about 4 billion people alive, and have been many billions before us – even with the kind of number of possible characteristic combinations there are, chances are that there will be some repeats.

(The problem with a piece like this is that there’s so many directions you cold possibly take – and only a very few of them will actually reach somewhere in an interesting manner.)

So, where have we reached so far?

There are billions and billions of combinations possible in your genetic makeup – so the chances of finding someone with your exact combination of characteristics are very, very low. Add to that the fact that nurture also has a hand in your final (I mean, at the point that you start to think about them – there is no end in the classical sense) makeup, and you see what I mean.

So why persist in the belief that people are equal?

Perhaps we mean that people should be treated equally – that’s possible, after all. Again, though, should we?

Society tapers as it approaches its peak. There are much fewer openings at the top than there are at the bottom – pretty much because the bottom is where we all start, and the top – say financially, socially, emotionally, spiritually, or any other alley that you choose, is where we’d like to end up. Of course, this is where a philosopher would interject and say that there are no alleys, only the Road, but that’s why they’re usually not invited to debates. Such finality takes all the fun out of a meandering thought process.

People would like to get to the top – in other words, there is competition for the few positions available. This is when the assumption of equality – even the assumption that we should be treated equally – goes out the window. If there is ‘top’, as it were, then how can we treat people equally? There must be some compensation at the top; so obviously, he’s already being treated better than everyone else below him. Secondly, if all people are equal, then where does the element of competition come in? Everybody wins, the ultimate goal of an egalitarian society.

So, obviously, there is a problem. Egalitarianism cannot exist while we are not equal, or rather, when there are fewer rewards than competitors – or when the rewards differ from each other. What to do?

One solution is to first accept that people have different characteristics, and therefore, desires. Not everyone wants money, or power, or a really expensive vacation, or something like that. Me, I’d settle for some peace of mind, and a lifetime career of writing. Once we’ve managed to get people to accept this, then we can proceed with locating the next step.

Perhaps if we structure society in a way that every industry rests on every other industry – mutual dependence to the hilt, as it were. No one at any point can then claim to be the most important – since any one industry collapsing would cause every other one to collapse as well.

Another solution is one I’ve picked out of Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke. Provide everyone with all the basic necessities of life – increase manufacturing of base goods to the extent that their prices plummet – free electricity, water, food, clothing, housing. Luxury goods then become the only marketable products – okay, I haven’t thought this through, and probably wont, since it’s starting to sound an awful lot like Microeconomics – but you see my point, I hope.

I don’t know any solution to this – and maybe a lot of people don’t even see it as a problem. If you do, however, and you have a couple of minutes to spare – any ideas?

Bally Krishnan

10:30 in the morning, and I’ve already been awake for three hours, and working for an hour and a half. I think I’m getting the hang of this working thing. Pretty impressive, considering that on average I used to sleep about ten hours a day, and sunrise was that mystical part of the day either seen as the end to a long night of partying, or not at all.

Umm…yes. I’m sorry; there is no point to this post. Earlier, I used only to post if I actually had something to say, but of late, I seem to be using this as an excuse to goof off at the office. Not that there is much work, anyway, but at least this way if someone surprises me, I’ll actually look like I’m working (large swathes of text occupying your screen always look impressive, it seems. No matter what it’s actually on; there’s this chap sitting a few tables away who religiously spends a couple of hours a day reading up on alligators, and no one seems to have noticed).

Oh yes, funny story.

The bank at which I work (I’m avoiding naming it to minimize the grievous shame they must already be experiencing for having hired me) has this interesting policy. There are no spare computers in the office – there is one terminal per hired worker, and that’s all. No spares, no extras, exactly how many they need. Admirably efficient, but there’s a crack through which I seem to have fallen – since I’m an intern, I technically don’t come under the heading of hired worker, and therefore, don’t qualify for my own terminal. Therefore, each day at the office begins with me lurking around unoccupied chairs, hoping someone calls in sick (otherwise, they make me write everything out. Bastards).

Anyway, a couple of days ago, the VP of the company went on a week long leave. Much to my excitement, they decided to let me use his office – that is to say, I went and badgered my boss until he came to the conclusion that the shame of him having to sit outside my office was nothing compared to the irritation of having me mooching around his desk asking him what I should do.

So, twenty minutes later, comfortably ensconced in my new office, I’m trawling through the BSE website, looking for annual company reports, when this middle aged man knocks on my door and walks in. I promptly got to my feet, since I’d never met this chap before, and a little bit of caution when dealing with strangers in a bank is preferable to having your brain chewed by an irritable VP whose office you’ve just laid claim to. As I say, he walks in - and promptly starts groveling.

Now that’s shocking enough, when you’re an intern, but after he’d finished ritualistically banging his head on the floor, and calling down God’s blessings on me, he gets up, shakes my hand, and stuns me even further.

“Sir,” he says, “It is really kind of you to stand and greet myself – shaming it is that not so many of today’s young executives are as modest as yourself. Please sir, I have been joined the bank today, and I am *blorbleblurbeglup* Balakrishnan. Pleased to be meeting you sir!”

Okay, his English wasn’t quite that bad. And I’m still not sure what exactly his name is, I don’t think I’d survive asking him for it again. At that point, though, it was all I could do to burst out laughing, and keep a straight face. More importantly, I was having a particularly worrying thought at the time -

“What the fuck is he going to do to me when he finds out I’m an intern?”

Anyway, I bit the bullet, steeled myself for a punch in the eye, and informed him about his mistake. I wish I hadn’t told him there was no need to bow, though, that seemed to really get him cheesed.

“Sir, I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. There’s no need to bow, I’m just an intern – I’m just using this office until another terminal becomes free.”

The honeymoon ended quite abruptly after that.

“WHAT HARE HYOU DOING IN THIS HOFFICE? WHO TOLD HYOU HYOU COULD SEET HERE?”

At that point, Mrora (my boss, that’s how he introduced himself to me on my first day here) hurried over and sorted things out; bless the three hairs remaining on his head. May his loins always contain fruit.

Must stop now, Balakrishnan is making dirty faces at me through the glass walls of my private, Vice Presidential Office.