Bhagwan

It said " He reigns " when I got this image from another blog. Couldn't resist though. Any better ideas?
Personally I liked Bhagwan best in the 1950's movie song " Shaam dhale, khidki tale, Tum seeti bajaana, chodd do.. " He was quite awesome back then.. Especially in Albela, along with Gita Bali which had that super number ' Shola jo bhadke, dil mera.. '
In an allegorical masterstroke his parents decried the Wand-happy School-teacher image that God was made out to have , when they named their child Bhagwan Dada .

Mujhe Bhagwan mein bahut vishwaas tha, until his movies began to falter.

Read about the making of Albela, the movie that made Gita Bali a star and a tribute to Bhagwan at http://www.screenindia.com/20020215/ftrib.html

No offence meant to any athiests. Agnostic comments welcome. Unitarians too. And everyone else.

E! news reports:

Mick Jagger is rumoured to have spent all his millions wooing a supermodel with cocaine.

Today Mick, is a half baked Disney name. Wrong sentence.

Today Mick, is as heartbroken as he is bankrupt, for he hasn't been able to convince the object of his affection to reciprocate his love.

Pithily put, A Rolling Stone gathers no Moss.

Kate,meanwhile, in the absence of Jagger's millions, can only get Pepsi.

To be or not to be [pshaw!] Whether -That is the question

'Weather', the word, has some interesting history.

The word for Weather was originally Whether. And for good reason.

Weather was called Whether because of uncertainity.

It was used synonymously with the word 'whether', that we all know, for ages, before somebody decided that there was money in it. These chaps decided that they needed to modify the spelling to gain respectability.

And thus Whether became Weather.

So the chaps on TV or the Radio station are only Whether Forecasters. And as we all know from Heisenberg's uncertainity principle, Uncertainity cannot be accurately forecast.
Heisenberg was himself quite uncertain of the whole thing but he couldn't blame himself for that, as he had already proved that uncertainity was not predictable, unless it was. But one could never tell, for sure.

So don't worry about the Weather/Whether in Pondicherry or wherever else you are going, but do pack an umbrella.

*Dan Brown Inspired Info:*

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. --Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

Or, to put it simply : Ek ka pata toh dooja laapata { to understand the true poignance of this situation please watch Hindi movies where the mother/elder sibling/father/benevolent maid etc etc realize that they have lost one or more little children at the Kumbh Mela(which, incidentally, was invented by Rajshree Productions as a film setting for losing kids/parents/lovers etc. The Kumbh Mela as such has no historical relevance and was initially created as a film set in the 1930's before it grew into popular legend and culture as a place where pious people performed rituals in the water and young voyeurous lechers checked out all the women in their wet clothes. Its a good thing though and everyone goes home satisfied) }

The idea behind Heisenberg's Uncertainity principle, struck Heisenberg as he finished cooking an elegant meal for himself. This thought, though, enabled him to create prize winning science papers, while most of us just add more salt when struck by the very same thought , " Something's missing " .

55 word stories

Everyone is writing a 55 word story. It is good timepass except that I am not very good at counting beyond seventeen.

There are many questions that bother me, though:
Why a 55 word story? Why not a 54 word story? Or a 291 word story?

But I have two such stories, myself.
Three maybe.

___________________________________________________________________


He sat in class gazing out of the window at the playground.

Teacher Mohan caught him and said, 'Say sorry ten times'.
So he stood up and said ' Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry '

Teacher Mohan was part psychotic and hit him over the head harshly, screaming ' Can't you count, you idiot??!!! '


____________________________________________________________________


He walked towards the edge of the cliff, but slipped and fell screaming " help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help ".

It was a long way down.

He sounded like a barking dog in a comic strip, with a typo in the baloon.

Le plus ca change, le plus c’est meme chose

eh?!!

India pledges 5 million dollars for Katrina relief operations @ http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/03katrina.htm

From an year and a half back, on a Saturday afternoon, when I used to work for someone else :

bahwahwah bahawahwahah bahahwahwahahah bahahawahwahahahah...and so on and so forth in a complex arithmetric progression...
but then..hum hum ho hum hum ho hum hum hum ho hum hum ho hum... aapke hain kaun?
and ofcourse..hai hukku hai hukku hai hai..hai hukku hai hukku hai...

All of which is neatly encapsulated in the pithy "Why me?" .
I will now take a bow.[ with severe flourish ]
- Bow -
Now I will take an arrow.
And will shoot it into the throat of the guy who is responsible for my presence in office on a Saturday afternoon. Any afternoon.
But I want neat deaths. I dont want him to spill his larynx and half a litre of blood when i shoot him in the neck. I want a spotlessly clean dead body. So that i can reuse my arrow without having to clean it. Which reminds me of Mahabharatha on Tv. It was really neat that they got back clean arrows.
There is no point to this parley.

Cracking the Code again and again and again ad nauseum

From our news desk :

At the high tech ex-Meguro* facility of Kawasaki motors, performance testing is a very serious deal.
Their benchmarking process is the most well kept secret in the Motorcycle industry.

Author Dan Brown reveals the secrets in his new book ' The Kawasaki Code ' [ sidenote - the hindi version will have a different version as his last book The Da Vinci Code, did not go down well with the leprosy-averse public in the Hindi heartland. (well sorry, couldnt resist) ]
It has come to our notice that the cracking of the code and the performance testing benchmarks at Kawasaki have to do with Cows and a popular japanese alcoholic drink.

The name Kaw-a-saki has its origins in this performance testing benchmark..


* - Meguro is the company which Kawasaki took over to start their motorcycle operations. Helped by the knowledge of the Meguro company which Kawasaki had taken over (Meguro was the oldest motorcycle company in Japan) the company moved into the production of big bikes around 1966. The model was called the W1 (650cc).
This in-depth research was inspired by the highly motivating Mr. Dan Brown

Movie Review - The Rising

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to allother countries because you were born in it. (George Bernard Shaw)

The very fact that I am posting an amusing perspective on patriotism a day after August 15th, would make you think that I am not a very patriotic person.
I will have you know, though, that in some moments of diffusion I do feel patriotic surges ( in the form of goose bumps usually and sometimes even an overwhelming feeling of love for the idea of our nation ) given the right stimuli.

An engaging movie with a patriotic theme is one such small trigger. On Independance day I was hoping to feel some partiotic poison.

As the clock struck 00.00 am on the 15th of August, I watched in horror some insipid and half baked scene in the movie Mangal Pandey : The Rising.

Ketan Mehta should have called this Mangal Pandey : My Failings

Terrible ! Do not watch.

Check this out to be transported back in time :

http://thecomicproject.blogspot.com/

This is a service to society.

Page 273

Event Horizon !

Theta iota sigma iota sigma omega epsilon rho epsilon iota tau beta epsilon gamma iota nu sigma !

The birds flying , the wind swells,
And all that cloudy curd.

The sky is like everything else,
Absolutely absurd.



Apologies.

linus torebaldus

What do lines remind you of?
Geometry in school. Architectural Diagrams. Road maps. Limits. Boundaries. Electricity Bill Payments.
A line is that which has length, but not breadth or thickness.

There are two kinds of lines.
The first is the Straight line. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points in space. There are several unsolved problems relating to Straight lines and their relation with concepts arising from quantum physics. For example; Wormholes, Straight Lines bent in space. A lot of research money goes into Straight Lines now a days.
The other kind of line is completely ignored.

Ofcourse...I mean Gay lines. heh heh

Slowly but surely, because of the growing trend among men folk in the film industry towards obesity and the evolution of a taller, more robust aspiring starlet the Casting Couch has become rather inadequate to afford a comfortable fit.
More and more, it is now being called the Casting Ouch.

How many of you men have been molested by other men who prefer the same sex? [ On a different note, how many of you people are happy with the same sex every night? ] And when you did become an unwilling recepient of these same-sex affections, how did you feel about it?
Once, at a crowded pub, I felt very wet around the ear:)) and after ignoring it for the first few minutes, discovered that it wasn't my inexperience but someone's saliva. A man's at that. I shuddered and dived into a temporary opening in the crowd. I didn't feel too much revulsion, only the whole thing felt very absurd for a while.
Then it started eating me. What if men at the gym were lusting for me too? And what about my boss backslapping me this morning? No more football. No more football.
Because of the whole public stereotype of the pretty gay boy and my active imagination i imagined for a while that i was slowly transforming into a proper birdie. But my ass still felt reasonably firm. So i got out of that hallucination, thankfully.
Then after some contemplation i came to the conclusion that men with homosexual preferences had to take their chances whenever they could. Because there are so few of them out there who are not hidden in little mental closets and shoe cabinets. The gay boys just had to hit on everybody they could, to maximise their chances of finding a mate. At bus stops , in theaters, at the circus, at church, in the temples, at art shows, at photo studios and massage parlours, at schools and in offices, at dance bars and stereo shops...everywhere. Its unfortunate. Circumstance does not afford them too many choices.
After all, buggers cannot be choosers.

Those Marauding Eskimos...
They came, they thawed, they conquered.

Flashback

Written when I was younger, but it still makes a point, unlike what i come up with nowadays. Who'd have believed it ???!! In the Organisation of Life, i must be the Pointy Haired Boss, rising to absolute incompetence with age :)

====

As I read the paper or when i glance at the news-at-eight a strange terror strikes me deep. I wonder what i'd do if I were confronted by a mad mob determined to murder anyone not their own. A mob which fuelled by religious sanctions, rapes and kills. A criminal mob driven by politics and fascism. Maybe I would cower shamefully and submit and beg them forgivance or owe them allegiance.
As an Indian, today I'm entitled to kill in the name of religion. In good style I can also fulfill all my other satanic urges, humiliation, rape and arson. Someday soon our dodo impulse might possibly lead to gender based cleansing. All the men trying to kill all the women and vice versa. That is not a very absurd thought considering that extreme atrocities which affected either, or rather, all sides in Gujarat have been accepted by most of us, without more than a shudder or a public squeak. I have the birth right to be extremely xenophobic. I think i'll first eliminate the muslims, then the christians, then the sikhs, then maybe the subsects within the hindus itself. In fact i'll eliminate snotty nosed children and oily haired bus travellers also to make sure things turn out aesthetically comfortable for me.
It'll be such a long and satisfying scalping...one after the other, forgive me if i've forgotten anyone. In the end I can sit and watch the ruins. I think it'll be a nice and unique picture. Saffron and green can mix into a very exciting blood red.
I want today to leave this country. I want to leave it because I'm scared, scared of what it will do to harm me, scared of what it might make me. Leave it or make it disappear. Make the blinding bright shades of saffron and green disappear. A few years ago, a younger me was very thrilled when i felt patriotic surges as i heard the National Anthem. Today I am drained, without feeling, even ashamed at times when I begin to think that being an Indian is one of the few identities i have left.
Maybe we could drop these calling cards of being hindu, sikh, muslim, brahmin, christian, dalit, adivasi, communist, malayalee, maharashtrian, bihari, pakistani, indian. Maybe we can just be human. But that would be a Utopia and i would have wasted your time. The point is.. today I just want to be left alone. By everyone made dangerous by defined boundaries like belonging to "X class" or "Y caste". All of these killers and hatemongers have 2 legs and 2 hands, the same as me.
I'd much rather fight purple hued aliens or 14 legged killer ants. There would be dignity in that.

This happened a few years back and the other juvenile of the piece is often seen on these pages.
I call this.....

Self-Evict Convicts!

We went to a little pub last night,
With intentions of tanking up allright,
Over philosophical smokes,
Just the couple of us blokes,
Raved and ranted and attempted,
several metaphysical thoughts demented,
We finished our beers, one a mite faster than his peer,
But that is to be expected said the slower one, for all the alcoholic tales you've spun,
We must have a couple more, otherwise it'll be like never before,
But the wallets hang a little light, splurge now and tie our belts tight?

Oh that is for later to think, now let us just concentrate and drink!

So we drank some more, blithe spirits unthinking,
Daily paper crossword solvers, we could have both been,
Living like we were drinking, blithe spirits unthinking.
Order something cheap to eat, this is a rather meagre treat,
But it'll have to do, for it'll feed another round of golden brew.
So a small bowl of green peas, gives our stomachs some small relief.

Topical reruns, old strains but new trials,
Too tired to talk about, talks which we could do without,
Slow conversation, thoughtful parleys with oneself,
Sequential trips to the men's room, results in a new joke in full bloom,[most pubs here dont need a ladies room..the ladies room board gets me going everytime!!]
Squeeze dry the thought, laugh a lot...
Slow conversation once more, knowing we could feel deja vu if we ignored the realization,
Decision made, no more honey marmalade!

We must go for dinner someplace, good food and more taste!
But the money crunch, we wont have enough to buy tomorrow's lunch!!!
Lets ignore it again, and get some coastal andhra cocaine!Yes!
We are in agreement, our thoughts concurrent.
Lets ask for the cheque, (what a pain in the neck!)
I look for the head waiter, and i shine when the thought hits me square,
Listen dear friend of mine, when did we last do something practical and asinine??
You mean, you don't mean, No! Ok, lets see it through!!!
So sequentially again, we were'nt that poor, but we shot right out of the door!!!!

There was once a beautiful amatuer astronomer. All the extra money she made as a model on television was spent to feed her passion for looking into the night sky at the stars. She was fascinated with every twinkle up in the night sky. Every night she would sit with her telescope and squint into her 33 inch telescope.And every night her dependant boyfriend would ask her not to screw her eyelids up like that.Eventually she could no longer model.

Wrinkle Wrinkle, it'll Scar.

I once had a large gay following, but I ducked into a side street and lost him.

[A day in the life of many of us]

I think [blah blah blah blah blah] and I really believe [blah blah blah blah blah]. Your opinion is flawed, can't you see it. Its staring you in the face dammit ! What i think is that [blah blah blah blah blah].
My favorite music [blah blah blah blah blah] is so superior to your fav music. He has no class because he actually wore those horrible [blah blah blah blah blah]...
and so on...
The most I'll give you is that this my opinion/your opinion is more or less shaped by our completely exclusive set of experiences.

But i still think you are absolutely low IQ / irritating / foolish / stupid and so on . And pig headed to boot !

And I think I am somewhat redeemed by blogging this kind of social historian-like observations-piece ! Guess who is pig headed?

When I was young, Doordarshan ran the wonderfully campy series Vikram-Vetaal.

[Background score] Vikram Vikram Vikram Vikram...Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal, Veeekraaam aur Vetaaaaaal...Viiikraaam aur Veeeeytaaaal...

Every episode started with King Vikram [ actually Trivikramasena played by legendary ham Arun Govil ] getting to the simsapa tree in the middle of the cemetry with his sword drawn. First he would jump up and down trying to reach the corpse. He would then, dressed very happily in orange, climb up the tree to get to the corpse. This he did by doing some tacky acrobatics, which esentially involved hooking his ankles together and swinging towards the corpse. He would do this for a while and would finally manage to cut the corpse possessed by the Vetaala [ played by a very good man who agreed to do the role, aptly named Sajjan ] down. On hitting the ground the corpse would invariably, howl in pain and Arun Govil with his Ramayana hangover would at once become immensely concerned about the Vetaalas well being. He would rush to the vetaala and then the vetaala would laugh a hysterical laugh and the corpse would move by its own volition along the ground with Vikram chasing it in vain. Then the vetaala would fly back up the tree laughing all the while. King Vikram would steel his being and set out once again to cut the corpse down. This time he would do it with immaculate timing, outwitting the vetaal, without blinking a single wooden eyelid. He would then swing the corpse over his shoulder and set out. The corpse/vetaal more or less rode piggyback on Arun Govil, like one of those popular and excrutiatingly painful ordeals one has to go through when dealing with 4 yr old kids. The Vetaala itself was very funny to look at with a voice like old timer villian Jeevans'. It had a powder caked face, a flowing white wig and horrendously lip-sticky lips that opened wide in a leering grin, which in turn revealed an absence of teeth. [Background score repeat!] Vikram Vikram Vikram Vikram...Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal, Veeekraaam aur Vetaaaaaal...V aur V... The deal was that Arun Govil/Vikram was not supposed to say a word till he got the Vetaal outside the Smashan ghat. Now Vetaal would say, "Raasta kathin hai, Chalo rajan, main tumhein ek kahaani sunaata hoon".He would then weave a tale about some Jataka-tales-era characters which would finally end in a moral dilemma. The best part about these tales was that, they were always populated by the same set of junior artistes in different outrageous hair do's. Then Vetaal would say," Batao Rajan, ab is samasyaa ka kya hal hua? Agar aap jaante hue bhi, nahi bataayenge, toh main aapke sar ka hazaaaaron tukde kar doonga " Wonderful! And Vikram, he would be forced to solve the problem like a moral, god fearing Deep Blue computer. In a jiffy. And in a jiffy, again, Vetaal would rise up and away back to his Tree Joint saying in sepulchral tones, " Ha Ha Ha...ab tu bolaa, toh main chala...ha ha ha" And he would fly using the same technology they used to make Hanuman in Ramayan fly. And Vikram would run chasing him again...ad infinitum it would seem. Luckily the series ended:) But, Subconciously, our feeble minds were irrevocably altered by the travails of King Vikram and slimy old Vetaal. My attitude to philosophy has been shaped by Vikram-Vetaal almost completely. Including and especially InDUHvidualism.

Lend me your ears for a minute?

How do you think Cannibals manage to live as a society? You think they have rules or have stigma's about eating their own families ( as we do with marriages within families ) ??? And if so, how distant is distant enough?? Can you sneak up to your third cousin and take a bite off his shoulder??
You think they have uneatables?? you think they ever had a cannibal version of Gandhi who fought for the rights of uneatables?? What do you think the uneatables were demanding ?? You think they had boards in Cannibal club kitchens which said 'dogs and uneatables not allowed' ?? You think this inspired uneatable revolutionaries to force feed themselves to some upper-class Cannibals who found them unsavory??

And what about their problems in modern society??
How do these Cannibals manage? You think they fund all the human cloning research?? Do you think one of them might be thinking at this very moment " Hey these other humans.. they don't seem to be agreeable to being eaten. Maybe if we could perfect human cloning we could persuade them to part with an ounce of DNA, everytime we mug them. Crime rates would be down because after the Mugging we wont need to eat them...only take some DNA. The police and the vegetarians would get off our case. We can have large farms where we grow this DNA to healthy FDA approved eatables. We'll finally gain respectability with the humans. And maybe I can finally open that restaurant on Times Square."

More importantly, you think 'give head' has a whole different meaning with 'em cannibals?? You think they are thinking of things other than VDs when they promote 'Safe' sex ??
You think they'll ever like chicken??

You think Hannibal the Cannibal is based on the lecters of a famous cannibal historian?? You think we can dig up some statistics on why infant mortality is high among cannibal tribes??
You think Heinz and Hersheys' have products targetting Cannibals? If they do, how do they recruit the sales force?
Do cannibals wear Hand me Downs?? If they do, when and why do they wear them??

Is obesity, which is caused by all the junk food around us, controlled by cannibals? Do they have moles in every food and beverage company planting fatty food additives into all the junk food manufactured, just because Fat People help their cause??
Are fat people sold on the black market to cannibals in the shady markets of Istanbul or Djakarta??

You think the cannibals themselves have problems with obesity? You think they have an Atkin's diet which says ..'stay off middle aged men for a while and Eat a healthy mix of geriatrics and 22 yr old men.'

You think they end every meal with an A-Men ??

Etc. ...

Young children don't see the world the same way as adults. Not only do they see everything from a lower angle, but they have difficulty seeing things as a whole, and concentrate only on parts of things - usually the part they're looking at the moment. The fact that most kids have the attention span of a gnat doesn't help matters.
I have implied here, that the attention span of gnats is very small, but it is a rather safe contention to make because gnat's can't go to court and i am showing this piece only to children, which means, since they have the attention span of gnats, they won't notice.

Whatever the reason for it, children's fragmented understanding of the world around them can lead to hilarious misconceptions.

Thats a poser. Though technically it isn't.

To make up for all this though:
Presenting for your special relish, plump english words stewed and stuffed in the right quantities to add that garnish of silly stupidity to your life:

Well, I was born Anita Desai, but then I married and naturally took my husband's name, so now I'm Rajeev Desai......

None of those are any of my names though. Which reminds me of this [ its not mine, but i can't be sure ] :

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I'm a schizophrenic
And so am I

Amen.

Shrink to see..

..that...

Virii have MultipLY Personality Disorder

Yes, i am an idiot.

i wish i would crumble to dust, physically and mentally... ie. that the idea of me crumbled to dust along with my arms and legs.
i want deliverance. i want out, like Agent Smith.
My operational life is definitely not the problem. Operationally my life must be better than the lives of 98% of humanity. I crave not for any other kind of life. It is 'living' by itself that irritates me in these moods.

No i am not merely asking for death. Behind any such suicide wish, looms large the terrifying possibility of some continuing consciousness.
I want deliverance. Not escape to nothingness, because nothingness is another blindingly un-understandable thing.

I want deliverance.. Like "POOF" !

Henceforth, I shall be called POOF. Its a silly name and will take my mind off existential angst..

love,
POOF