The out-of-teen spirit !

Swamped phone at midnight. Greetings by complete strangers at college. No-lab bliss. Cool breeze. Casa Picola. Vaticana. Pizza Milanese. Orange Soda Pop. Speculating about Matrix-4. Concurrently, about Hera Pheri-2. Laughter. The placement scene. More laughter.
RAIN. Collapsed parking-lot compound. Water in basement shop. Homeward bound. Deforestation, nature's way. Coffee. Brief stint on air (a.k.a IGATE). Blog-meet in prospect.

Yep, neat 20th birthday!

Blessings, curses, invocations....champagne...any of these?

Merci...

Everyone would gather
On the twenty-first of May
Sitting in the sand
To watch the fireworks display

'Fireworks' indeed, especially to all that is left of a disgruntled soul coming home from an exam with mental constructs in loose cognitive binding states!
If my thoughts seem senseless or even desultory, attribute it to this mild state of disappointment-induced rage I'm in.
You'd think its probably because I've gone and screwed my tests up....but no, its not about that.
You know how sport history is strewn with those absolutely block-rockin-beat matches that actually tug at your emotive glands and bring out a tear or two....either out of joy or pain?
The FA Cup final was one such affair.
As if to disprove the cliche of the better team winning, it all came to a bitterly disappointing end with Manchester United losing to Arsenal...a game that they should have, in all fairness won.
Flawless defence, amazing possession-football and rampaging counterattacks all took a collective dive in the drain as Arsenal (a.k.a Jens Lehmann and occassionally, the goal-post) saved their asses by the skin of their teeth.
Cristiano Ronaldo is an out-and-out magician dammit....Andy Gray actually said Lauren looked like a flapping girl trying to defend him...har har!
My heart empathises all the Red fans who are mourning the defeat...yes, we all have reason enough to feel hard done by.
But lets rise and applaud the lads for a fantastic performance...maybe its just not our season. Scholesy's apparently a new friend of the President of the Depressed Soul's Guild(t)....aaw, its alright Paul!

Here's a small list of sporting masterpieces which've got me superfuzzing with emotion:

Aus.Open 95, QF
Sampras vs. Courier 6-7 (4-7) 6-7 (3-7) 6-3 6-4 6-3
Quite simply the greatest match in tennis history.
"Do it for your coach, Pete. We remember him" a fan yelled after the first point of the 5th set and didn't know what the consequence will be. Pete broke into tears, served brilliantly while crying and won eventually the match, which will forever be remembered. It was a magical night.
I actually didn't see it LIVE, but recall being completely amazed at the creature that was Sampras.


Belgian Grand Prix,98
Michael Schumacher in a comfortable lead, after absolute carnage at the start of the race with 11 cars including Hakkinen crashing out. With about 10 laps to go, David Coulthard (a lap behind) suddenly backed off to let Schumacher overtake.
But Coulthard kept his McLaren right in the racing line, and blinded by the spray from Coulthard's tires, Schumacher plowed into the back of the McLaren at full speed, ripping off the front right suspension to transform his Ferrari into a wreck.
I suspect dogs might've been feeding on David's danglers if not for some crew who restrained Schumi from making that happen!
I remember not eating that day....I was and still very much am a blind Schumi fanatic.


December 2001
India V Australia, Eden Gardens
Dravid and Laxman deciding to get together and mystify the planet with the most sensational display of courage, commitment and sense of inexplicable phyllia to destroy. A victory to cricket...easily THE greatest Test match that will EVER be played.
I wept like a girl, by the way.


July 2002
The unforgettably stirring and soul-lifting "race to the tape" with India triumphantly chasing 326 at Lord's against England. Fuck, can cricket get any better!!
Silent note to Hem, Daam, Rag and Gau to buy me that glass vase you guys broke in the maddest celebration ever.


May 2005
The FA Cup final. Arsenal freak show ROBS Man Utd of much-deserved silverware.
I switched off the TV and put my face in the sink, with thunderclaps in the background (yes, very filmy).

Oh and Bangalore's raining fuckin' hailstones!
Yep, our city's not just cool, its rainy.
Unintended pun...rats.


These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion - I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall.

It is painful sometimes how the semi-literate older generation use the word 'foreign'. You can almost invariably tell they mean USA when they say 'foreign'.
Bob and me have resolved to be silently rebellious about this and speak of 'foreign' as Westman Islands from now on. We either have major issues with the US or with just getting old.

Still on the whole 'western' affair, you know you are in fabulous company if you look at the West Indies scorecard and say something to the effect of them being the Kings Of Collapso rather than Kings Of Calypso and have your friends rolling in laughter about it.


Damn, I might just have a drinking problem.

Live 'n' Technofried

There was this article in a newspaper on Technology Day that talked about the level to which machines have enslaved us. There was a whole column anatomizing the various instances where the gizmos proved a bit too smart for the users' comfort, the DPS disaster and the Hilton hedonics being the most vivid.

This friend of mine just bought this ridiculously small cellphone enabled with bluetooth, IR, VGA camera and WMP 10. In the midst of larking about how amazingly zapped our generation is, I didn't notice this bastard mag-taping me eating a mango.
There's something about a ripe, sweet-looking mango.....you are manically fixated about how devouring it messily makes it a hell of a lot tastier!

Anyway, I'm depressed to say that an absurdly clear video of my mad mango feast is circulating in college right now.
Lets just say I'm aware of exactly how scarring such voyeuristic escapades can actually be.
Dammitbitch!

Stolen from someplace...

Howlarious!

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration,
as a chicken which has the daring and courage to
boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom
among them has the strength to contend with such a
paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its
pancreas.

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment
would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road
gazes also across you.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed
the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-
nature.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from
the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken
was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored)
reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the
transportation, so quite understandably the chicken
availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow
out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno Of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade
insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome,
filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume
to question the actions of one in all respects his
superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

One of my closest friends got placed in Mahindra British Telecom today.
As much as that rocks, I sadly noted how only 5 of us turned up for his treat tonight. I don't intend to be narcisstic in the least bit when I say the ones not present were not at all geniunely happy for him.
I know it shouldn't matter a flying fuck to Abhi, but I worry sometimes about being left alone....as a result of people becoming indiscriminately self-inflicted. Is it just me...?

Anyway, social occassions like this are always a great time to think about what you want to tell the next person who asks about how the placement test went.
I'd promptly say I want to pursue higher studies and so didn't take the test seriously enough.
Highly risky...analogous to that small flat part of a roadhump that people drive on despite knowing how dangerously narrow it is.
Uh huh..I had a pal called L.Ganesh (LG) who used the aforementioned 'alibi' and got caught. He's called InLG these days.

But this is so much more pleasant than confessing ineligibility outright!

Here's to Abhi btw...(hic)...