Beedi: An inquiry into life

I used to ride to school on my elephant

2006-08-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished playing a marathon session of Civilization 4. I first started playing civ about nine years back. Civ 2 was what i stared with. Then went back to civ 1, and then moved to 3 and now 4. Now coming to what this is really about: In civs 1,2 and 3 the special unit for India was the elephant. The only thing those game designers knew about India was that we have elephants here. Also the Americans were what you called Industrious - enabling them to build roads etc much fastr.
Come civ 4, all that has changed. In civ 4 the American advantage is gone.
And surprise surprise - The Indian special unit is something called the Fast Worker. A worker who can mover faster and work faster than all the other normal worker units in the game. Now thats how far the BPO revolution has reached into the western psyche. I am sure all future science fiction movies will feature not only the customary hispanic, black, woman etc but also a back office operator who will book the tickets etc, process credit card transactions, maybe even a new super hero - BPO girl or Call centre Man..

Of course on a personal front the reason I have started posting again is kind of sad, but just for now its time for an Ode to Joy.

And Shine

2006-05-14T06:34:00.001-07:00

I just wrote this long post and was almost done when this stupid machine in the Internet Cafe decided to restart it self.
Have 20 porn channels to choose from
I have a microsoft keyboard to prop up my mortal reamins
I have a strong urge to blog, but i have nothing to blog about

Well to explain things i just came to Sharjah. Landed in Duabi airport day before yesterday. Mainly came to meet up with one of my old friends, have some fun and maybe improve my personal/professional life.
So far have done 2 out of 4.
Gottto go now. Internect centre is charging in dirhams

And Shine

2006-05-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

Starting New Blog

2006-04-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

Chuchee and me are starting a new blog
This blog will of course continue to be updated by Phaedrus and me.
Am busy nowadays, so Phaedrus will blogging over the next few days.

Laughter the best medicine

2006-04-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy the past few days, but can really blog what i've been upto. Instead just putting a link to some absolutely hilarious stuff i just came across. Its pretty old. So if you havent seen it before here you go
Hobbit Fancier's Diaries

Enjoii maadi.

Dreams, DDT and desperation

2006-04-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

I wake up after a troubled nights sleep. Lots of things on my mind. Diversions to take my mid of Her. No chance. I dreamt of Her. This is the first time that I've actually dreamed about Her. It was'nt a Lucid dream. Or atleast this time I did'nt dresperately try to control the dream like i usually do. There was no pondy stuff. Just a group of us talking and she was there. I could'nt see her face, but i felt her presence. Then she was gone and the rest is hazy.
I walk up to the broken wash basin and try to wash away my drowsiness. The water smells of DDT. Everything stinks, everything is dead, and i can feel the posion getting inside me and destroying what's left of my innards. I wonder,.. if its just me or if the water is really got mixed in something.
My life seems to be like it's been sprayed with DDT.
But then again it could really be that evil dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane. Maybe some crazy guy thought he was doing everyone a favour by mixing DDT in the water supply so that people who did'nt buy odomos just have to sprinkle some water on them to stop the mosquitoes.
A song plays in the background
Nadiye Nadiye Kaadal Nadiye,....
Nadandaal AAru,..
Neerin Arumaiye Arivay...
Wonder how the poet would like it if i told him all his stupid water bodies were polluted with DDT, or maybe thats what he's trying to tell me.

"In animals, short-term exposure to large amounts of DDT in food affected the nervous system, while long-term exposure to smaller amounts affected the liver."
So its all the DDT you see. Not the booze!!!

But lost love to me is like DDT to a mosquito. What doesnt kill you only makes you stronger. I am still alive ergo I must be stronger. My biceps dont agree though.

The only thing more pathetic than a hopeless romantic chemical engineer is a hopeless romantic mba.
Me: Here's a SWOT analysis of you kid.
She: We'll always have Porter's framework, beedi.
No wonder she ended up with Victor.

And btw
Wiki Says : "DDT is a colourless crystalline substance which is practically insoluble in water but highly soluble in fats and most organic solvents."
So i guess its just me!!!

Karnataka Round Trip- Dhamasthala, Surathkal

2006-03-31T22:59:00.000-08:00

Since I said goodbye to her I've been feeling a little lost. I switch on the tv, there's a song from Chandramuki running. Its about a tam guy falling for a beutiful gult girl. Bad Idea. Switch Channels. Animax. Nothing in Animax can remind me of her. Wrong again. Whats running looks just like the stuff she would have watched and liked. Not good. I switch off the tv and try to go to sleep. It's impossible. Finally I try a book. Vikram Seth's An Equal Music. Its nice, a love story but somehow gets my mind off her. Maybe because it reminds of other parts of my life. I decide to write about my Karnataka trip hoping that it will help. So here goes

After sunset at Agumbe we headed back to Sringeri using what is know asa cut service. Now in Chennai a cut service usually means it doesnt go the full distance. Example 1-Cut would end up at Adyar, instead of all the way to Thiruvanmayur. Thats a bad example but i havent been to chennai in a long time and have forgotten all the numbers. Anyway in South Canara and neighbouring places, a cut serivce would mean breaking up the journey into multiple legs. First leg was srigeri to some weird place where a brawl was about to happen. Unfortunately the local decent guys came and managed to stop the fight with one side agreeing to take up their issues with the police. From there a bus back to Sringeri. Uncle and I wanted to head back to the temple/mutt for the evening service, while the rest wanted dinner. So we split up. The temple was even better in the evening. Much quiter and fewer people. I sat down and just enjoyed the peace of the place. Uncle also did the same. After a while doing this, Uncle's stomach began to growl, so we had to leave. The mutt canteen(I am sure there's a better name for it) was closed so we had to hunt aroundd the town for a place to eat. Uncle found a slisha shady place, so i decided to pack the meal, and had the usual Marie biscuit, frooti dinner. Then the nightly UNO game, follwed by sleep.

Some things that people will never accept
1. That they are drunk
2. That they are nasty and aggressive and the most irritating
3. THAT THEY SNORE
Out of 6 guys in that room that night 3 were snoring. I found it a little difficult to sleep amidst all that racket, but after about half an hour the days activities caught up with me and i think i joined the other 3 in "sound" sleep.

Woke up the next morning feeling great. Had a quick bath and was ready for another day of fun. There's nothing more invigorating that a bath in cold water early in the morning. A quick breakfast and we were on the road. Cut service again, after a serious of Manjunatha, Hanuman, and such buses we ended up at Netravati, a place just outside Dharmasthala. This was supposed to be a good bathing spot, with an opportunity to bathe in the flowing river, Only there seem to be more used underwer floating in the water than anything else. Was this some new custom? Come to this place and donate your old underwear to recieve spiritual salvation. The river was supposed to be holy. Then i found the cause. The water was so dirty that the underwear covered the sruface and prevented you from realsing how diry the water was till you actually jumped in. No way I am bathing in that. Thank you.

The others have no such qualms. Theyo go on to bathe in the "river", and I am knighted Sir Beedi Gaurdian of Clothes and Hajmola. I take out a book about the Vijaynagar Empire and being reading it. It holds my attention till the guys come back all "bathed".
Time to go to Dharmasthala the temple of Manjunatheshwara. Its actually maintained by a Jain family. Talk about religious tolerance!!! By the time we got there, the sun was right above our heads and it was getting hot. After a long discussion, only uncle and I seemed to have the enthu to stand in the queue and get into the temple. The rest of the guys were more interested in peth pooja( I will be in gurgaon soon, so i am depserately trying to get my hindi upto speed). After a 2 hour long ordeal, involving a sries of queues and shoves we finall entered the inner reaches of the temple. It was well worth it. A must visit for the faithful. There are only three things that i look for in any temple. The architecture/sculpture and such stuuf, whether the temple gives me a feeling of peace, and the devotion that other people have. What truly amazed me at Dharmashtala was the innumberable number of people standing barefoot in the hot sun waiting to get in. They mallu style temple also looks awesome.
Once I came out of the temple, my feet began to hurt. I had been out in the sun barefoot and not felt much till i got in, but now that i was out i was begining to felt it bad. I looked down at the soles of my feet and they looked angrily back at me. I would'nt mind having pink feet but not like this. As i was carrying on a conversationg with my feet, Uncle had found out where the free food was and we hit it. Food was good( I was ravenous), served quick and efficiently and very much like one would expect at a free food place. Seemed a lot like some Langars I've been to except on a much bigger scale.
Then it was time to try and get to mangalore. We got one of those BMTC level buses, and had to travel in it for quite some time. As usual Bond was pissed of that i slept during the journey.
We arrived in Mangalore. On the way uncle told us that it had been about five years since he had been to mangalore. And for no reason he became a little nerovus evertime he saw a single mom with a young kid.
Uncle was desperate to leave the city and we boarded a reasonably comfortable bus to Surathkal.
Everyone had told me that Mangalore is the place for the best women/ice cream in India. In 30 minutes there I didnt have any ice cream, but based on my "dip stick" survey I am unable to reject the hypothesis that Mangalore women are more good looking than anywhere in India.
There are three hotels in Surathkal. So we took the third. Seemed decent. Changed to shorts and hit the beach. Surathkal has an awesome beach. We hit the water, had great fun dunking each other in the salty water. Uncle behaved his age and preferred to watch us kids playing. Then as the sun set the effect of the lighthouse kicked in. No light but from the lighthouse. No sound but the sound of waves. Good Stuff!! Good Stuff!!
Went back to hotel, bathed, cleaned sand out of every concievable place/ aticle of clothing, and headed to have dinner. As we ordered food we started talking.
Bond Said, "Beedi, you put max enthu at the temples, and max enthu at the beach as well, what's with you."
I replied, "I like temples, i enjoy them, i like beaches, i enjoy them too. I dont see any conflict, religion is also a nice way to have fun."
"You're wierd da beedi.". So what. I had my fun. Dinner was awesome and me and baada went for an after dinner walk. No one else seemed interested.

Good Bye

2006-03-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

This is the customary psenti-i-am-leaving post.
I wonder why you even bother to read it. Surely you have graduated before. Surely you know what it is to move on in life, to leave behind old friends and strike out in the world hoping those you meet will be as good as those you have met.
Surely you have fallen in love knowing that it is hopeless. But even if it is hopeless you know how bad it feels to say good bye to the one you love, knowing that you may never see her again.

So i will have to say good bye to her today. I May never see her again. Maybe that's good in someways. It gives me a chance to move on. I dont really want that chance. I like it this way.

You're a big liar

2006-03-29T00:58:00.000-08:00

I was just reading Wimpy's blog. Seems he crashed and burned last night. Well... since last night seems to have been a night for such things, I might as well take a break from the Karnataka Round trip to tell you about last night.

Sometime in the afternoon , Jakes came to my room to pick up his Asterix. We were generally talking and in the conversation I said, "No one takes me seriously on bracket". In his typical dry sarcastic style, Jakes retorted with, " You can leave out the On Bracket part of it". I suppose that was a portent of things to follow, but who is bothered with such things these days.

Then convo happened. Only good part was that i got my transcripts and my degree certificate. Got my diploma shook the guy's hand and slowly walked off stage.
And of course she was also there, dressed in a sari, looking like a statue from the Belur temple come to life. I don’t know why but i kind of ignored her.

I was somehow trying to get into that feeling of nostalgia etc etc which i should have, since i had just graduated and was going to leave the place in a couple of days. So after convo, dinner, and pretending to pack for a little while, i went over to chuchee's room to have one last(?) game of diablo.
That did'nt work either, so i decided to take a nap, only to be woken up by one of those classic L^2 numbers, and Sahu's voice.
"So its a free L^2?".
"Yeah!"
"Is the bar open?"
"Yeah i think so"
Talk about raising the bar, i have always been content with just hanging out near it.
I suppose you get the picture, I went down to the bar picked up some beers, went through a complicated procedure to cool them, and started what will almost surely be my final L^2.

She was there. She always is. Beautiful as ever.
Took a sad song of one sweet evening
I smiled and quickly turned away.
It’s not easy singing sad songs
But still the easiest way I have to say.

I am not as lucky as Ian Anderson so I'll just have to stick to broken English. Things were fine till about 4.00 AM. I suppose she was drunk by this time. I know I wasnt. I had had a couple of beers, but somehow just couldn’t get in with it. Was kind of feeling nothing at all. Then she came and sat next to me. We made small talk.

And the memory stays clear with the song that you hear.
If I can but make
the words awake the feeling.

Then she said it
"Beedi I've been reading your blog". Ok now I do want people to read my blog and .., but not anyone I'm close (want to get close) to.
"Which Post?", I asked, hoping she had just skimmed some of the titles.
"A couple", she continued, "The one about your trip and another one".
I figure, if this woman has read my blog and still sits next to me and talks to me, then....
"I am crazy about you”, I blurted out.
DJ to the rescue, suddenly music volume increases and drowns my pathetic line.
"What?", she screams, "What did you say?"
"I said, I AM CRAZY ABOUT YOU!!". No DJ can save me now.
"Beedi, you're a big liar. I know there's a woman. You said so yourself in your blog. 'There's a woman, there's always a woman'".
"Yes there's a woman", I replied , "it's you, and its always going to be you". Ok I didn’t say the last part about Always maybe I should have. But Always is a long time even for an old man like me.

I now expected some reaction. Anything. I mean I just virtually told her that i was in love with her. Then it came, my past caught up with me. All my humour. That not so witty repartee, the jokes, the posts on arbit.
She started laughing. Oh! That intoxicating laughter of hers. It used to be enough to get me high. But not this time. I just felt like i had been kicked in the balls.
"You can’t be serious" she said in between her giggles.

Jakes must be smiling down on me from wherever he is. I mean just occasionally, (at times like this), I would like people to take me seriously. But seems that’s not happening. I try again.
"I think you're awesome, and really care about you.", Much better. She's stopped laughing. At least now I know she takes me seriously.
"Beedi, I have a boyfriend".
"Yeah I know, he’s a nice guy. I am glad you two got together".
Ok now you're thinking is this guy just plain dumb. I mean on the one hand you tell her you're crazy about her, on the other you are telling her that she should stick with her current boyfriend. (Wow I just read the previous line, I should have become and economist, even though my grade card "begs" to differ).

Anyway back to the point, I am sitting here the next morning trying to rationalize what I did. I suppose its something to do with Oscar Wilde complex. It goes something like: I would never want to join any club that would accept me as a member. I suppose i could adapt it to: I would never want any girl i cared about to go out with a guy like me.So there you have it a logical explanation for my schizoid behaviour. Its a mental paradox. Nothing to do with MPD.

So here's hoping you've faith in impossible schemes,
that are born in the sigh of the wind blowing by
while the dimming light brings the end to a night of loving.

Karnataka Round Trip- Sringeri, Agumbe

2006-03-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting for baada to write his blog about our trip, but he hasnt yet. In all fairness to him it was a tiring trip and we're still recovering from the after effects.
I kind of decided to to write my own version of the trip, so here goes the first part.

The trip started at Bannergatta road on the 17th of March, 2006 AD. After agreeing to a chennai style blackmail from the auto driver we managed to break the sound barrier and arrived at majestic (kempe gowda bus stand) about 5 mins before our bus was to depart. We then had to convice the conductor that we were three of the six guys who had reserved tickets and that the other 3 were coming with the tickets. He seemed pretty cool about it.
So it began.
I was sitting in the second last row of a rajahamsa bus on my way to sringeri, next to Uncle-our tour guide for the trip. I was quite excited. After a long time i was travelling again.
My dad happened to call and was kind of elated that i was going to Sringeri. After all, which tam brahm dad would not be happy that his son was going to holiday at one of the spiritual centres of Advaitha. He immediately gave me a list of things that i should do there. I had to make it clear to him that i was with friends, among whom were vamshi the agnostic and battad the hedonist, hence such drawn out rituals would not be possible. Luckily when we arrived we found that the pontiff wasnt in town. Was kind of relieved. Gave me a good enough excuse with my folks. The place was simply beautiful and the temples were really amazing, extremely peaceful.
The kind of set me off thinking about my family's attitude to my religion.. I came up with a kind of allegory. If you bake a tasty cake and leave it on the table, then tell the kid that its really tasty, he might sometime try it out and enjoy it and really end up liking cake. On the other hand if you catch hold of the kid and stuff it down his throat not only will he choke and spit it out, he might never go near cake ever again.
The math (read mutt) at Sringeri offers free food to any devotee who comes there. Of course in the truest hindu tradition this is also casteist. The twice born were lucky enough to get special treatment and eat in a better cleaner place. I am sorry for being so against it but i think that unless my religion gets over this casteist mindset its going to be in trouble sooner rather than later. Well me being the hyppocrite decided(didnt oppose Uncle) to eat in the better cleaner place while still cribbing.
btw baada has just put up the first part of his post on the trip so i guess he's still as efficient as ever, but i might as well finish mine
Lunch was pretty awesome. Typical 3 courses + desert. Then it was time for us to take an afternoon nap. Sadly my plans were thwarted by the evil UNO . After a smashing game in which i made sure the guys next to me didnt win (though i finished second last) we decided to move our rear ends and head to Agumbe. Agumbe is supposed to be a traditional Kannada honeymoon spot and has such references in Kannada literature, so says Uncle.
After saying this Uncle became very quite, and began staring at the setting sun. He then whispered that he was feeling nostalgic. I never thought a guy like Uncle could be nostalgic about anything. But then i was to discover a lot of things on this trip.

Looks like its all over

2006-03-14T04:47:00.000-08:00

I am writing this post using opera, and its showing me ads of the Didgeridoo Gallery. Seems kind of wierd that my blog brings up ads of didgeridoos.

I just got one of the most awaited mails if my life

"Your Product Management grade is 2.70
Please contact PGP office for any further clarifications. All the Best, HB RAMACHANDRA PGP Office
"
That means that I WILL be graduating on March 28th.
Having just recieved and accepted a job offer yesterday this became all the more important. And as i promised one of my friends its time to break open the bubbly.
But before i do i just have a few thoughts about the placement process, in particular the media hype about it.
Theres just been a post on our local messagins system calling everyone to a particular place to celbrate the expected completion of final placements 2006.
I've had reservations about actually posting this. I actually wrote this a few days back as soon as the effect of the media hype had sunk in. In fact thats probably why its so vitriolic.

For those of you who dont know, the IIMs(and most Mgmt Institutes in India) have a segmented placement process. The companies are segmented into
1. Slot/Day Zero: I-banks/Consults/amd anything similar offering lots of money or foreing posting
2. Slot/Day 1: Anything which has bank after its name, couple of big soap companies,a few slot zero type companies which dont have the brand image good enuff to be at slot zero and some it companies added for good measure.
3. Slot/Day 2: The rest
4. Slot/Day 3: The rest
... and so on ad he whole batch is placed.
Of course there are laddering and other solutions where some companies are Slot 0.4 or Slot 1.6 or even 1.4. Its all really wierd.
Bascially what this means is if you are marketing/it guy you have limited chances till Slot 2 actually starts. Which is fine, except this time the Great Indian Media Industry had other ideas
They along with the PR guys of the various IIMS came up with creative masterpieces both in print and in tv to hype up the entire placement process.
Since i am in an IIM all i can say for certain is that the aim of any press release is to out do the other IIMS and to make sure that nothing in it can be disproved. Dont get me wrong i am all for competition and competing for media share is also important. And there's no point in being holier than thou and spreaking of theoritical constructs like the "truth".
Dont get me wrong Day Zero offers are awesome and the careers of these people is really stellar to say the least and they hype behind them is worth it.
However there are other consequences of such hype.
On the morning of slot 1 here, when the larger part of the batch was yet to be placed, the whole world began to assume that everyone here already had a Day Zero kind of offer in hand. By that i mean parents/friends of students yet to be placed. Everyone started recieveing phone calls, emails and orkut scraps congratulating them and asking them about their offers. It was kind of ok for me because i had already one offer(not day zero but still...) and most people i knew, knew about that and hence there wasnt much ado.
It can be really nasty when you are tense about getting any job and someone asks you if you are going to New York or London. In fact one of my friends who is kind of popular actually had to change his orkut profile to indicate that he was still looking for a job and that he would inform one and all once he made it.
Just imagine you've attended a million interviews for a zillion jobs, with no positive response. You come back to your room to tired to stay awake, too worried to sleep and someone calls you up and asks you how many millions you will be making.

I dont know what can be done about this, but there was a lot of unnecessary pressure on guys who are already really stressed out and i think this can be avoided. My only suggestion is to kind of start playing the media game only once the entire batch is placed.

Nostalgia

2006-03-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

It’s almost certain. It looks like I am actually going to graduate. It’s been a nice two years here. I've come a long way it seems. From only reading about Black Feminist Literature in RC passages to actually reading Black Feminist Literature.

Actually I was reading this book by Toni Morrison. Kind of feels like the Blues equivalent in literature. Well here's a quote by her " Jazz Music was not originally for anyone but its players. It was always clear what its painful sources were. And yet it does what art is supposed to do-it makes another thing possible. This is how I want my work to be- a private thing for public consumption." That last part kind of sums up my blog. A private thing for public consumption.

On to the topic of this post!!
Kind of sad, Kind of glad that its all over(I hope). I’ve felt this way twice before. First when I was graduating from High School. I never thought about it as Graduation from High School till many of my friends went to the US of A and began to call it that. There was no real ceremony. In fact this is the first time I might actually be involved in a ceremony. But anyway there were a lot of opportunities then too. People going to different places, lots of new things to do and try. Everyone was busy hunting future opportunities, while I seem to have locked in something reasonably comfortable, and was (am) chilling out. No great or stellar opportunities for me, but mediocrity handed on a platter. Well I confess it was easy then and it is easy this time as well. I lapped it up.
Just get into some engineering college and relax. Just get a coding job and play games. Just get an IT job and chill out.
Well I did it. Each time I wanted something I’ve always got it, and pretty easily too. Maybe I don’t want enough.
It’s easy to stop comparing yourself to other people, but it’s really tough to stop comparing yourself to what you might have been.
Forget it Beedi. There is no what might have been. There is only here and now.

Of course this time around as well there is also a woman. There always has to be a woman. This time around as well it’s kind of doomed. Too little too late. But then haven’t all great love stories been tragedies.

Well here’s a quote from Giorgias’ Encomium of Helen which I just fell like quoting for no particular reason
“She had godlike beauty, which taking and not mistaking, she kept. In many did she work much desire for her love, and her one body was the cause of bringing together many bodies of men thinking great thoughts for great goals, of whom some had greatness of wealth, some the glory of ancient nobility, some the vigor of personal agility, some command of acquired knowledge. And all came because of a passion which loved to conquer and a love of honor which was unconquered. Who it was and why and how he sailed away, taking her as his love, I shall not say. To tell the knowing what they know shows it is right but brings no delight.”
Beedi you’ve lost it. Go Mug for placements

Yeah I will let me just finish this part

So why is this time different?
This is the first time that I’ve realised that its happened before and its happening again. Well let’s see. This time around I’ve decided that I am going try out something new every now and then. Lets start with music, since it involves the least effort. I’ve started listening to trance. I never thought I would say this but some of that stuff is good. It’s a nice contrast to depressing blues and psychedelic rock(floyd). Maybe I should try remixing some songs from Obscured by Clouds. I am sure Waters and Gilmour would commit suicide if they hear about it, but what the hell.

Short Story Part 2

2006-02-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

I suppose piggy notices the story. It’s not a very well concealed allegory. Since I am not very creative the story is obviously based on a true incident. But somehow I’ve wanted to write this story for a long time and now that I finally have got down to it, the sentences and words seem to be too difficult. Since Piggy is in on this we might as well put him in as well.

K:”Hi Piggy”
Piggy: “Hi K. What’s up? Are you going to be here for Moat?”
K:”Yeah I am in the organizing committee. I am working for some of the events. What about you. Most people seem to wandering of to the hills during Moat. I wonder. What’s the point of Moat, if most of us beggars aren’t here for it? I mean why we should pay for a bunch of MBA’s to come and party for five days.”
Piggy:” I don’t care. Its five days off and I am going to Madikeri to cool off.”
K: “Wow. That’s a great place. I wish I could join you there. Okay anyway I've got to leave now I’ve got work to do. Moat is only a week away.”
Piggy: “I suppose the King will be opening the festival as usual.”
K:” Yeah and he will give his usual speech”. K draws himself up to his full height and begins to imitate the king, in a particularly high pitched voice.
“Freeends, Welcome to Moat. It’s always amazing. I look out of my tower and notice the poor beggars in the moat preparing for the oncoming festival. How the turn the flat land into this wonderful carnival. I must congratulate the Grounds men committee of Moat for their splendid job. “
Piggy:” That’s an awful imitation. And you could get jailed for that. He is the King you know.”
K: “Okay I really must be going. Bye .Have fun in Madikeri”

K then turned around and began walking quickly towards the largest structure in the moat. This was the central tent of the Moat festival. It was from here that the entire preparation for Moat would be coordinated. And during the festival it housed the main stage where some of the more popular shows and events of the festival were held. As he walked he began thinking of excuses for why he was late. As he walked towards the tent, he noticed that there seemed to be a lot of noise coming from it. He then remembered that it was a Tuesday and the weekly movie was being screened in the tent. The beggars knew how to take care of themselves. Though they could go into city theatres and watch movies, none of them could afford it, and even the few successful ones who could, would never be allowed into the city. Hence they had their own screening methods and they usually screened movies in the main tent on Tuesdays. K decided to walk in and watch whatever was left of the movie. K had always liked movie endings.

This story is going nowehere. I'd better stop for now, and come up with some clear ideas on where its going next and how I'm going to finish it. I think i should be done in a few more parts

Short Story Part 1

2006-02-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

I am too lazy to finish my story here’s what I've written so far. I have a general idea as to how it will go on and how it will end, but no enthu to write it now. Just hope that putting it up here will force me to complete it.

There once lived a beggar called K in City of M. He used to beg, eat, sleep, drink, shit and piss just outside the palace walls. It might seem like his life was miserable but he was satisfied with it. He was reasonably good at what he did. He wasn’t a great beggar. His wretched face and mangled hair and beard gave him a pretty sorry appearance. With this he managed to convince some of the rich officials who visited the king to spare him a little change. The new king was also quite religious and so the there was a lot of free food available at the temple. This meant that K could manage a “comfortable” life by just begging.
The beggars were a very organized lot. They had a committee which regulated all the begging around the palace. They collected daily taxes from all the beggars used this to hold their annual beggar festival. Their festival was well known throughout the kingdom as one of the most fabulous beggar festivals. For five days in the area allotted for the festivals there were no rules.

Frostmourne Hungers

2006-02-14T20:57:00.001-08:00

Its been a long time since I blogged. There are two main reasons for this. Warcraft III and Rome: Total War. Now I am pretty much done with these games though I am still too scared to get into multiplayer warcraft, as I am sure it would end up like aoe and ruin the rest of my time here. Not that I know of anyone here, who wants to play multiplayer warcraft.

This is the customary globe para so you can skip if you want to head straight to the better stuff. Its placement time here and soon a million companies will descend on this place to recruit the hell out of everyone. I have the usual doubts. Did it really matter, did MBA really matter. I definitely have a huge set of options now, much more that I imagined possible, but have I really learnt anything in these two years. Of course I have no regrets, the first paragraph will probably tell you why, but still this is just like undergrad. You had fun for 4 years and the end you weren't too badly off. Not that you learnt anything.

Anyways moving on to the topic of this blog. Dhaaji left his comp here sometime back, and i started using it. I made the mistake of downloading warcraft III. As i started playing it i got sucked in more and more. For those days/hours all I was doing was warcraft. I only took breaks for meals. I was playing so much warcraft that I started having warcraft nightmares. And these were lucid dreams. Curse the day I ever discovered the art of lucid dreaming. Well as a result I resolved to quit warcraft and move on to Rome. Rome is a much slower and lower involvement game. Its turn based so that helps. All this gaming has given some new ideas of how to handle life.

Why not think of life as just one of the best RPG's I ever played. I mean what RPG could be more realistic. And its so fascinating, the same thing never happens. Graphics and sound are simply out of this world. The game continuously creates the new characters and old characters always seem to react differently. I already have the basic hardware requirements. Recommended requirements are hard to come by, but I am happy with basic, and hardware upgrades are part of the game. A good diet and exercise and in six months you have upgraded hardware. Network play is also simply awesome. In fact its almost impossible to play single player. This attitude to Life that I am trying to consciously adopt has paid rich dividends. I have been much happier. Must remember ask the developers to include a happiness bonus in the expansion pack. However there are two problems with Life the RPG.
1. No savepoints: This means that if you get shot by baddies it really is game over. Or if you accumulate too much damage you actually have to limp around for three weeks with a torn ligament. This can be quite tough for a new player to handle. However this is kind of fun in its own way. Its like a hardware downgrade. Now you have continue the game with lower quality hardware.
2. There's no objective: No princess to save. No empire to destroy. No villain to kill. This can be looked upon in a different way. There is almost infinite choice in the victory condition. Not only that you can even change the victory conditions as the game evolves. This may or may not be intentional by the developers, but even if it is unintentional its pretty cool. In fact finding the victory condition could be a recursive victory condition.

That said Life the RPG and the gaming experience is dependent entirely how one wishes to play it. I think(hope) ill be playing Life for some time to come.

that's my game review done. Happy gaming.
Game Rating: Life The RPG 10.0/10.0

But the angel forgets to pray for me

2005-11-07T11:12:00.000-08:00

I had all but given up blogging. But a lot of things in the past couple of weeks have encouraged me not to.
The first is this course i am doing out here. Its a different sort of course. One which doesnt claim to teach you anything but one which garuntees that you will learn a lot. I found that i thought i enjoyed writing. So well here i am writing.
Second-A guy i used to know a long time back suddenly posted on my blog and told met that he was bloggin too. Seemed a nice way to keep in touch with th world. I checked out his blog and its got a
nice short story.
So i decided to write a short story, but found it too tough so decided to blog instead, and put the short story on my blog once i am done with it.
Thirdly recently i wrote some really sad piece of rhyme and it was well appreciated by the audience, so i have this glorious notion that i can actually create something that will elicit a reaction in people. Well before i come down to earth i hope i finish my short story.
Then there's this guy who found my blog after a search. I think thats really wild. I mean my blog really come up in a search. Its besides the point that he was searching for a book called the dream dictionary, but still he had the courtsey to drop me a line.
Slightly morbit thoughts follow. For those who know me, I would advise avoiding the rest of the blog.
Well i have had some really morbid thoughts over the years. What amazed was that theres this guy here who works really hard and is a topper(hes a real person not an alter ego), seemed to have similar thoughts. He was talking about how Budha was unfair to leave his wife and his child and just walk off. He said that he should have killed them off before going on his quest. I found this pretty interesting. He also went on to how he would also kill of his wife if he wanted to do something like that. Sometime I must confess i have thought about it too. Maybe if i kill of all the people i care about then i can kill myself without any feeling of guilt. Really wierd and eerie thought. I'll stop here before i scare everyone who reads this.

In your head

2005-09-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

The last week and the week before that seem hazy in memory. I remember it started with a slew of submissions. That ensured a couple of sleepless nights to start with. Towards the end of this I found a new game to get high on. I got addicted almost instantly. This meant more sleepless nights. Towards the end of the week I was a zombie. I couldn’t go to sleep, couldn’t stay awake. I just had to play the game. Nothing else mattered. Not the exams I had coming up. Not the fact that my right hand/wrist felt like it was going to fall off. This had never happened to me before. Sleep had always been sacred to me. It was above worldly pleasure like games, but here I was, losing my religion.
Ok that’s enough song names for one post so get on with it
Why did I no longer care about sleep and food? Why was my game more important that my health? Is this the sign of an addiction?
Luckily I am out of it. I got a break and went home for a couple of days. I intentionally didn’t take the game home and this helped me detox to some extent.
After getting back on campus I realized that though I was still addicted and had to play, I was winning. Either the game was getting boring or my conscience was fighting its way back. In fact having taken time out to write this blog is a small battle I have won. I should have this licked soon.

Dream On

2005-08-11T00:40:00.000-07:00

It all started, or should I say restarted last weekend. I had very erratic sleep patterns that time. No sleep for 36 hrs followed by 12 hours of sleep, followed by another 48 hour stretch and so on. After a couple of days it got to me. I became a kind of zombie. The upshot of the whole thing was that I had a couple of Lucid Dreams. For those who are unaware Lucid Dreams are dreams in which you are actually aware that you are dreaming. If you have been following my blog, you probably know that Phaedrus had a couple of Lucid Dreams as well. Between the two of us we now have four Lucid Dreams.
I then tried to see if there was some sort of similarity or pattern in the dreams.

Dream 1: Phaedrus is in a room. Everything is in shades of blue. Somehow (this was before Phaedrus ever became aware of Lucid Dream Induction techniques) Phaedrus suddenly realises that he is in his own dream. The next thing he thinks of is that if it is his dream, he can do anything he likes. So he walks out of the room and finds himself on a street, where he finds two beautiful women. He walks up to them and begins kissing one of them. Just as he begins to kiss her reality strikes and he is unable to hold on to his dream. It is all over.

Dream 2: Phaedrus is falling off a cliff when he suddenly realises that it’s only a dream and nothing can happen to him. He begins to enjoy the fall. Then a thought occurs what if it is not a dream. This grows into fear. The fear grows bigger and bigger blocking all other thoughts. The fear is too great and as he screams out in fright he wakes up.

It was after this that I started doing some research (googling) about Lucid Dreams. I didn’t even know till then that the dreams I had had were called Lucid Dreams. I started reading about induction techniques and reality checks.

I shall explain these things in the next two paragraphs. If you know what they mean/are not interested you can skip them.

Induction techniques are methods/ways to actually cause you to have a lucid dream. Most of them involve meditation and reinforcement techniques. More stuff about this can be found on the net/ in some Tibetan Dream Yoga texts. The orkut lucid dreaming community has some personal induction experiences. These are somewhat more practical if you want to try them out. But most of them are based on sleep denial and hence somewhat unhealthy and dangerous.

Reality Checks are “checks” that you keep performing to know whether you are really awake or just in a dream. For example touch your nose with your finger. Or ask yourself a series increasingly complicated of logical questions. My personal experience is that if you make it a habit, you will automatically do a check in your dream, and might find that your check fails and lo and behold you have your lucid dream.

Dream 3:I was on a surgeons table. He’s examining my left shoulder for some sort of tumour. I realise that it’s me and not him that is examining my shoulder. I get a very lonely feeling as I begin to realise that I am all alone. I get scared of being alone. The fear grows. I do a reality check. Thankfully Lucidity Strikes! It’s only my dream. I then decide that I might as well have fun and start flying. No wing flapping etc., just like a rocket. It felt great. As I begin to enjoy myself more and more, I loose control and the dream dissipates.

Dream 4: Pretty similar to dream 3. Except that I started of being chased by some sort of demon, and realise that I am chasing the demon and not the other way around. Then of course flying! I am actually beginning to acquire a liking for it.

So is there a pattern in all this?
If I can do a reality check for a dream, is there a reality check for reality?
Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Or am I just justifying an escape from reality?
I have resolved to try actively to solve my confusion. I need to do more “research”. I plan to read some Freud/other psychology to get a better perspective of myself. To paraphrase one of my professors “I am my own patient”.

Whoami

2005-07-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have this feeling of deja-vu. Yes, glitch in the matrix to be precise. Its submission time again. I try desperately to create a mid-term report out of thin air, google, and library resources in the wee-hours of the morning. I am desperately trying to create diversions for my self to avoid getting down to this work. This blog is one of them. The other is this book that I am reading. It’s pretty interesting. It’s called the brief history of everything. Its one of those over-arching books which tries to explain life the universe and everything. Personally I think 42 is just as good but not as much fun. He seemed to say the development of the self proceeds in stages. There’s nothing new in that people have been saying such things since they learned how to say things.
What he however seemed to say is that there is a definite progression and regression!
Things are not all relative. There is some forward development and there is some sort of regression. Generally things move towards “higher development” and there is a way to prove what is higher. The thing that impacted me the most was how this development could get into regression. What happens if the self is unable to break free of the current structure and go to the next level? What happens is a part of the self moves on and a part of the self stays behind. Seems too similar to Multiple Personality Disorder. Maybe that’s why Phaedrus and I liked it so much. The nice thing he says that what is true for the self is also true for societies. I found that very interesting and a possible application to myself and to my country India. Some of us here feel we are liberated and living in a liberal democratic advanced society. There’s a huge bunch that are unable to break out of their current situation and rise to this level. They live at the mercy of natural forces (Yes I am disgraced that my country’s richest city can’t handle some extra water!!) and have very little scope to develop their individual selves.
Closer to home I have finally realised that I have to reconcile my various alter ego’s or there’s going to be no more “self-development”. But which one is the developed one. Who is ahead? Neo? Morpheus? Phaedrus? Aetius? Beedi? Krishna?
Who is the real and who is the fake who has to be cured.

Forever young

2005-07-21T01:44:00.000-07:00

Ok the one real person who actually reads this shit I generate actually told me that the last blog was the pits, and that it was so bad that he had decided not to read my blog anymore.
Well… “Screw you guys”, Cartman, Eric, Southpark, 2000.

Now that we’ve done away with our only fan lets get on with our blog.
I haven’t been attending classes for the last week and a half. Why? Basically I really don’t know why the hell I am in this school doing this degree. Hence I don’t know why I need to bother with trivialities like classes. Maybe my opinions will change once I run out of attendance, but I really don’t think so. This usually happens to me at the beginning of each term. I start off in right earnest, with an attitude to crack the term out of shape, get in shape and generally be a nice guy. The first victim is usually the getting in shape bit. A couple of night outs with good “Old” friends like the monk are enough to put paid to my aims of getting into the pink of health in the prime of my life. The next to fall is the cracking the term out of shape. This usually happens around the mid-terms. Just before the mid-terms I get all philosophical, give up fighting and end up screwing up the mid-term exams, like now for example. “Being a nice guy” usually manages to last the longest but its tough to keep up the façade if you’re not genuinely nice. Well that’s the story of my terms/semesters my life in general. Life till now has kept giving me more and more chances but I have become an expert at blowing them. The only positive this term is that I have decided to rekindle one of my former hobbies. I used to quiz. Never well and hardly used to win, but decided that since I don’t do anything in life I might as well quiz. It’s a nice hobby. You get to meet a lot of other losers. It makes you good to feel that you’re not the only one to have blown you’re chances. Of course quizzing requires that I actually be aware of what’s going on around me. Read the newspaper, literature, harry potter etc. but I think I’ll get by without most.

So what did I do this past week?

1. Played Rise of Nations
2. Watched weird movies
3. Hogged at the Ice Cream Shop
4. Listened to sad music and watched videos
5. Group Assignments, (out of fear of being branded a free rider)

The last point gives me hope. I still want to conform. That will keep me safe. In spite of everything they say, the herd is a safe place.
If you’ve been watching your Nat Geo right it’s only the stragglers in the herd that get hunted. The rest of the herd is pretty safe. That leads me to another conclusion; the so called “RG” spirit is older than most of us think. The slowest runners ended up as lunch. Maybe that’s where our competitive spirit comes from. On that interesting thought I shall close today’s blog.

I'ma rainbow too

2005-07-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

Before we start lets explain the title of the blog. It’s just a nice song by Marley and so that’s how our blog will start today.
Phaedrus: Hey what's this about our blog?
Beedi: Well it’s our blog, yours and mine.
Phaedrus: You're the loser who blogs, not me.
Beedi: That's crap but anyway let’s get on with it. Your blog/my blog/ our blog

I hadn’t been attending classes the past week. I was taking the week of from classes and life in general. I hadn’t caught up with Phaedrus that often. But of late Phaderus seemed to be toned down on his philosophical crap. I finally saw him at the mess having breakfast.

“Hey Phaedrus what’s with you going easy on the life-gyaan nowadays”
“I have been spending most of my time playing Rise of Nations/ watching movies in Chuchee’s room.” (Chuchee was one of our batch mates at the institute)
“Oh Rise of Nations, that strategy game? You’ve been playing that for a week?”
“No just a few days really, rest of the time was getting drunk and watching weird movies”
“Oh I heard even your wingies don’t see much of you. You’ve buried yourself under that game”
“My wingies, they’re an interesting lot”
This was surprising. Phaedrus usually never talked about anyone but himself.
“You know, they have no right to complain. I never get to see much of them anyway. There’s one guy who is probably single-handedly responsible for the ‘All lines in this route are busy’ messages, then there’s this drunkard who I only meet in spread sheet class. And of course there’s the singing footage hyena. The only guy I used to meet was the Darling. But anyway I should be normal now, Ive passed the test.”
“What test?”
“Whenever you encounter a new potential source of addiction, you are tested. I have passed the test. I will not be addicted to Rise of Nations”
These were brave words coming from Phaedrus. I knew Phaedrus had been addicted to games before. In fact some one who knew him Hyderabad actually told me he used to spend entire nights at his office playing some stupid game and go home the next morning.
“So what then Phaedrus? How are you going to spend your time?”
“I have decided that since I am a student I shall spend my time like a student. I will attend classes, eat and sleep. I also have a lot of reading to do. I haven’t read anything in a long time”
So that was why his philosophical gyan had stopped. He hadn’t got any new ideas from the books he hadn’t read. Just as I was hanging on the thought he started.
“I saw this really lousy movie called Anniyan”
I could just feel the gyaan in him waiting to burst out. So he was now getting his gyann from movies rather books. This was dangerous. He could really go crazy if he started believing in the movies he saw. He was a little childish in this. He would believe anything, if it sounded crazy enough.
“It was a really badly made movie, but the funda about multiple personality disorder was interesting. The guys seemed to say that the protagonist created himself multiple personalities to handle his frustration and failures. Somehow I couldn’t really think that could be a disorder. I mean we all do that. You don’t behave the same way with your mother as you do with your girlfriend”
I winced at the comparison. It had some sort of eerie Freudian undertone to it. But I agreed with his point in general. He then went on and since I agreed with him he was really thrilled and went of with Chuchee. He told me he was going to the city to get drunk.

Hello World

2005-07-01T02:29:00.000-07:00

Have you ever woken up in the morning and not wanted to get up? Have you ever felt like telling the world that if it can’t wait for you then it can screw itself?
That’s how my day started today. I woke up at 7.55 AM, with Phaedrus banging on my door.
"Hey Beedi wake up!! We have SCM at 8"
I slowly got out of bed and opened the door.
"Dei Beedi, aren’t u coming for SCM class"
"No dude I want to sleep."
"Okay then maybe I’ll also ditch. His classes suck anyway"
"Yeah, Good Night. Enjoy maadi."
I went back to bed and decided to go back to sleep. How come Phaedrus had woken up and decided to attend class. He definitely had changed. But I did have the smug satisfaction of having deterred him from attending class.
I then slowly floated away into my dream world having decided to log back into reality during the post lunch session.

Let me try some poetry
There are two birds on the tree outside the room
I woke up late and they weren’t there anymore.
So I went back to sleep
I dream of the two birds on the tree outside my room.

Beedi that’s awful. It’s some prose written with a new line for every sentence. As prose it sucks.

So I can’t write poetry. We learn new things about ourselves all the time.

Anyway I woke up in the afternoon around twelve-thirty. Read the headlines on one of those stupid pink newspapers. Then suddenly remembered that I had some work to do. I had lately been pretty sick of my alter ego's, so i had decided to see if I could pick up some new ones from the market. I had put an ad in the papers and received a whole bunch of one-page resumes. I started sifting through them and finally short listed three of them and called them over for interviews. The three were really different and I was certain that I was going to pick up only one of them. The final three were Tyler Durden, Stupendous man, and Norman Bates. They all had impressive bullet points and seemed to have achieved a lot in their current positions.

The first interview was with Bates
"Hi Norman. I am Beedi"
"Hi Beedi."
He seemed very distant and cold. That was interesting. That would match me personality very well.
"So Norman, why do you want this job"
"I feel that my background as a schizophrenic psycho killer, qualifies me to play the role of an alter ego in any industry. I know that with my background in cross-dressing and murder you would like to type cast me as a psycho killer, but I want to assure you that I can play any alter ego extremely well. Also the opportunities for killer alter ego's nowadays is limited. So I want to expand my horizons by working with you as your alter ego."
"So Norman, you are basically going to join me, get some good work ex and a couple of bullet points in your resume and then scoot?"
"No. I definitely want to grow and learn from you, but I also feel that as I grow it is your duty to provide me with opportunities to fit my capabilities. If you fail to do so that would force me to look for greener pastures"
“Thank you Norman. That will be all. Send the next guy in”
I decided that I certainly did not want this crazy guy on my team. He was excellent at what he did no doubt. But with these kinds there was not telling how he would perform in a different environment. I decided I would keep tabs on him, but that this was not the time to pick him up. A guy like that could really rock the boat. We don’t want those kinds on our team.

“Hi Sir, I am Stupendous man”
“Oh! Hi. I am Beedi”
“So Stupendous, tell me about your current position”
“I work as an alter ego for Calvin.”
“Of the Calvin and Hobbes fame?”
“Yes Sir”
“So how is it working for a famous personality?”
“Well, its kind of tough sir. You are always under the spotlight. Also being the alter ego of a cartoon character I felt that there was no room for me to grow. It was always what Bill (the cartoonist) thought and no scope for creativity.”
“Why do you want to leave such an excellent position to join us? An unknown entitiy?”
“Sir, I feel that though I have an impressive resume having worked with Calvin, I would like to explore my potential more and that the opportunities I would get with you are much better.”

I interviewed Tyler as well, but that is I in the next blog.

The Ultimate Addiction: An interview with Phaedrus

2005-06-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

I met Phaedrus. He was back on campus after his summer internship, just like me. So we played the usual how was summers game for a few minutes. Somehow Phaedrus seemed to have changed. I had met him during his summer internship and he seemed a lot different. He had seemed to have lost a lot of his cynicism and generally was more enthusiastic about life. Now however it was like to talking to the good old Phaedrus once again. So i asked him if it was the city or campus life. Neither he said. What folowed was somewhat like an interview with me asking the questions and Phaedrus giving anwers.

Q:You seemed a little changed - improved if i daresay during your internship. Now however you seem to be back to your lazy self once again.
Phaedrus: Laziness. She is so seductive, so intoxicating. It feels so good to loose yourself in her. But she destroys your health and your social life.

Q:So basically you're lazy. Why do you refer to your own fault like it is some woman?
Phaedrus: Must be some complementarian thingy. I don't want to accept to myself that i am lazy. So i create an external personna, who represents my fault and shift the blame.

Q:But why a woman?
Phaedrus: Some Fruedian fundae i presume. But does it really matter. The fact is i am lazy and i am too lazy to do anything about it. I think i am addicted.

Q: So cant you kick the habit. You told me you used to smoke and you kicked that
Phaedurs: I could. But to kick the habit you first need to sober up, and then take a concious decision. Here there are just too many fixes. And i am high most of the time.

Q: Fixes? High?
Phaedrus: Movies, Games, Books etc. All are the psychotropes of a laziness addict. Just try it out. Do nothing tommorow except play a game or watch movies. By lunch you will feel like the king of the world.

Q:Wow!!
Phaedrus: Theres a downside to it also. When you come down it really hits you hard. That'll be somewhat late at night, when your eyes hurt so much that you cant keep them open anymore. Then as you lie down and close your eyes a sinking feeling will creep over you. You will suddenly feel like the lowest of the low. You will fell almost suicidal. Watch it. Thats a dangerous moment. Its useful to read some philosophy before attempting to get high on laziness. You wont get hit that bad when you come down.

Q: You make such a big thing out of being a lazy ass
Phaedrus: So? What do all those stupid great philosophers do. Make some circular definitions, ungrammatical statements, confusing wordplay. At least i tell you life as i experience it without trying to make you think that i am a realised soul. Basically philosphers are liars. I wish i remeber the Marx quote. It goes something like "The philosopher excludes himself from the real world and then attempts to describe it"

Q: But why are you pointing fingers at others. Dont you realise the problem is with you?
Phaedrus: Now dont treat me like one of those Alchoholics Anonymous guys. I am different. I am lazy. I AM LAZY. Happy? And ok i am going for another fix. Going to play AOE. All the best with your essay.

Q: What essay?
Phaedrus: The one your company asked you to write.

Q: How the hell do you know?
Phaedrus: I am your alter ego. So lets ditch all this and go play AOE.

You're going to be the one that saves me

2005-06-13T02:15:00.000-07:00

“Are you really such a sad and frustu guy?” She asked.
“Yes. In fact it’s actually because I vent all of it on my blog that I’m such a cheerful chill guy.”
“Saad”
“Yeah, but what to do”
...
“It’s you” She said quietly.
My heart was racing. My whole life flashed before me. Was I in the Matrix or was this the real world. Everything was going faster and faster. An instant later it all came crashing down.
“I was just joking” She said and laughed, and then went on “But it would be cool na. You would go all crazy and follow and keep calling me from Bangalore”
“Yes I might”. It was only a matter of time now. The chain reaction had started
...
“You’ll miss me na, after tomorrow.”
“Yes, I can’t imagine how I am going to go on without you”
“Proper geela guy you are”
“Yeah I suppose I am”
...
Behavioral theory states that a man finds a woman more attractive if it is later in the night or if he is drunk. It was midnight and I was a bit tipsy. But she looked like the most beautiful girl in the world and it wasn’t my watch(actually I don’t own a watch and my cell phone doubles up as my time-piece but why bother with the details and spoil the moment) or the booze. It was her. It was just her.
I leaned over and so did she. I then Shout-Whispered ( the kind of thing you do in a crowded disco/pub to make sure the other person has a 50-50 chance of hearing approximately what you said) into her ear
“What if I sent you a mail saying I was crazy about you?”

Neo: Oye beedi what sort of a line is that?
Beedi: Don’t know one of those defensive feints I suppose.
Neo: If I had tried that on Trinity, I would ended up like the trainman. You stupid fool. It’s like you are trying to play some trick on her. Like you are showing her some stimulus and trying to analyze her reaction. She probably felt like the victim of some behavioral science experiment. If she had anything for you can be sure it’s over. I am sure Pavlov’s dog never had feelings for him.
Beedi: So what do if do now?
Neo: I don’t know, get her a biscuit... And ring the bell. She might understand what you feel for her.
Beedi: Oye quit the humor and give me a way out.
Neo: Forget it. You’re too much of a bungling idiot.

She mover back immediately. I couldn’t find from her reaction what she was thinking. I never got a chance to speak to her after that. Never saw her again after that night. Never sent that email
....

Cause after all you’re my wonderwall

The Return of the Beedi

2005-06-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Story So far: Krishna, Ruchika and Parate are waiting for Vidhu (not Godot, So Vidhu will actually turn up) at Rythym House.

We were standing like idiots exchanging banter when at last the black and yellow taxi (permitted only for managers of Work Level II and above) turned up.
Ruchika was the first to greet him obviously as we really didnt know him
"Hi Vidhu, this is krishna and this is Parate"
"Hi dude"
"So Vidhu, what are you and Ruchi (can i call you that atleast in my blog) planning to do"
"Well we are going to this really awesome pub called toto's garage.... And by the way its half-way across this bloody city"
"Great" says Parate , "Thats really close to where i live, lets go there Krishna"
"Ok whatever you guys say. I just want to go somewhere and grab a beer"
So we all got into a taxi and headed to Toto's Garage. The taxi also seemed to want to go there. At least judging by the noises it made it needed some garage or the
other and Toto's was on the way to Toto's. (It was a closed interval you see)
After a 45 minute journey enriched with stupid jokes, and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, we finally made it to this so called cool place called Toto's. Only problem was the garage was full and no place to park our asses and get refuelled. So we opted for the wine shop variant and decided to drink standing up. Ruchika cited health reasons and went for a mocktail while the rest of us stuck to unleaded beer. There were a few trendy sports models there to check out but most of them didnt have PUC and were spewing out far too much nicotine for my catlytic converter to handle.

Hey Beedi, i laughed the first time at your garage puns, but that was only to be polite. Please go easy on these attempts at humor and just tell us what happened

So we continued sipping our beer ( I have only had a sip of beer ever. Ask the dumb pterodactyl. he'll vouch for me) , and talked about the usual stuff that boring frustrated MBA students talk about. The Alphabet War as I call it A vs B vs C vs the other 23.

I wonder what it would have been in Hellenic times.
"Are you going to the Grecian Academy for Really High Paying Jobs at Alpha , or are you going to Beta. "
"No spartacus, Alpha is too Academic."
"Of course Phaedrus, its an Academy"
"But surely final placements are the onyl thing that matters. It seems last year 50 guys from Alpha were asassinated on the first day of the senate"
...
I suppose you get the idea, if you dont why not move over to the dark ages

"Sir Gallahad, art thou going to The Knight School at Arlington, Birminham or Camelot"
"Sir Lancelot, i think i shall not be going to Camelot after all it is the oldest night school in the whole of Bloody England."
"True Galley but i heard last year at Arlington half the passing out batch last year got to join foreign armies, and in fact at the crusades Arlington people are the most sought after"

....
Yeah you get the picture dont you. If you dont, its the stupid Ahmedabad Vs Bangalore Vs Calcutta iim fight. But lets be politically savvy and say that everyone's a winner. The Alphabets are dead. Long live the Alphabet war.

After a while things got really boring so Ruchi and Vidhu decided to leave. Parate an I went to this really psued restraunt and had dineer. After which parate left. And i was once again alone with Krishna.
"So krishna hows the project"
"Man marketing sux. I dont ever want to have anything to do with it"
"So whats it going to be fin?"
"I dont know. I just want to make a lot of money quicky and then retire and enjoy it"
"Then you should go for an I-banking job."
"Ok.Waiter!!! WAITER"
"Yes Sir"
"One I-banking job please, with extra chocloate sauce"
"Sir we dont serve I-banking jobs here"
"Oh fuck beedi they dont serve i banking jobs here."
"Never mind ask him if he has any other fin or consult jobs. They're not as cool as i-banking but serve the purpose just the same"
"Ok waiter, get me a consult job please, without tomatoes if thats possible"
"Sir, we dont serve consult jobs here"
"Ok. Do you have any fin jobs atleast?"
"No Sir, wea are a low-cg, no extra currics, looser restraunt. We specialize in sad marketing and it jobs. Would you like one? Our chef's speciality is a really cool position 'Selling cleaning fluid in Chattisgarh'"

Oh my god beedi. You have gone over to the dark side.

The Blog Strikes Back (The pubbing we did yesterday part 2)

2005-05-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Act 1 Scene 1

The Scene is a busy Junction in Mumbai. In the background is the Rythym House one of Mumbai's well known landmarks. Two men are standing on the pavement talking to a girl. All three of them are reasonably well dressed. They look like they are waiting for someone. Its late in the evening about an hour after sunset. Most of the light is from street signs and lamposts.

Ruchika (the lady) : So krishna what are your plans.
Krishna (the fat guy): Parate and me are going pubbing. What about you.
Ruchika : Oh I am waiting for Vidhu a friend of mine
Krishna : Ok. Do you know of any good pubs/bars around here.
Ruchika : Yeah sports bar is here.
Krishna : Oye parate what shall we do.
Parate (the fatter guy): Lets just go to a pub and grab a couple of drinks and then some food.
Krishna: Lets wait till Vidhu gets here and then we can go to sports bar and Ruchika can chill out with that dude.
Parate: Okay, so hows the project going
Krishna: This blog is getting really boring.
Parate: Oye we are not in a blog. This is last thursday and its about how we go to a pub in bandra.
Krishna: But that wasnt all that much fun, right? so lets just keep it for the next episode of the blog.

Some dreamy music is played and the scene slowly changes. The background and set is still the same but now krishna is the only person on stage. The lighting is in such a way that Krishna's two shadows are clearly seen in the background. Krishna turns his back to the audience and begins his monlogue facing his shadows.

Krishna : So who are you guys. I havent meet you before.
Deep Voices : We are your alter egos.
Krishna : But isnt this the realy world?
Deep Voices : No its a blog. And in a blog there are always alter egos.
Krishna : There is no spoon. Thats why you cant bend it.
Deep Voices : (Hahaha, laughter) Dont try that logic on us. We invented it.
Krishna : But if you are my alter ego's then i must have me you before.
Deep Voice 1 : I am arthur miller. One of your alter egos. And it is actually me that is writing this blog in drama format.
Krishna : And what about the rest
Deep Voice 2 : I am Joe DeMaggio. (chuckles)
Krishna : What kind of stupid joke is that. OK so where's marilyn.
Deep Voice 2 : hehe , I am not really Joe , just pulling your leg. I am actually Grihastha, the householder stereotype. It is because of me that you are so happy spending money and want to earn more so that you have more to spend.
Krishna : I think thats enough for one blog dont you think? Since it should have been about parate we should ask him first.

Blog on the pubbing we did yesterday Part 1

2005-05-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

Real World, Thursday 19 Th May 2005
Statutory Warning
Since we have come to the real world most people here are real people instead of being alter egos. But then again what we perceive in others is merely a reflection of ourselves.
"Hey Neo, is that statement grammatically correct?"
"No, I don’t think so, it’s philosophical. The aim of all philosophy is to make ungrammatical statements, and another thing this is the real world so you are on your own. No more Neo, Morpheus, Phaedrus bull shit. AND NO MORE GYAN"
"But I dole out gyan in the real world too Neo. Ask Allen, or any of the B Block chaps."
"I don’t know Allen, he's a real guy. I am just your alter ego."
"How come if I know Allen then you do too."
"No, I am Neo, I only know your trinity."
"You do? Tell me about her then"
"You can’t see beyond the choices you don’t understand. And bye. You've got to write about the pubbing or parate's going to get pissed"
Ok here goes.
I was about to leave office last Thursday when Parate happened to give me a call. Parate BBA calling.
"Hi Dude."
"Hi Krishna" (Krishna is another alter ego and parate's a real person)
"How’s life"
"Life is cool man. Where's your office."
... It turned out that parate was this side of town. So he came over to my office. I met him outside at the ground floor of the building.
"HI Parate. This is Ruchika my cointern"
"HI Ruchika" Ruchika is my cointern. She’s also an engineer and also from a B school. She's in the same lousy project of the same cheap marketing company as me. Now you are immediately thinking that’s the usual clue for an alter ego, but sorry Ruchika is a real life flesh and blood girl from the northern plains.
"So Krishna you want to go pubbing"
"Yeah I’d love to. What about you Ruchika"

This blog is getting scary. Too many real people and real events and emotions. I'll make it a part 1 and write the rest after regaining my mental stability. Like all sequels it sure will suck. But then I could do the George Lucas this and make it part 2 and call the sequel part 1. George Lucas is also a REAL PERSON...

Welcome to the real world Neo.

2005-05-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

I was six weeks into my summer project and things were not looking good. I had not done any awesome work, nor had i had a good time or enjoyed myself. I had basically managed to work really hard at nothing. I was feeling pretty frustrated and i don't know what got into me but i decided to give some friends a call.
"The orange number you have tried is currently unavailable. Please try later" After hearing that from most of my good friends i was beginning to get desperate. So i started alphabetically in the phone book. Before i knew it i was down to M.
Morpheus 9819871673.
Call. Trrrrt trrrrrrt. Trrrrrrt trrrrrrt.
"Hello. Morpheus here"
"Hi, this is beedi. We met the other day at the beach"
"Yes Neo, tell me."
"This is beedi, not Neo."
"I know who you are. The fact that you have called me is because you realize Neo, that your entire life has been a dream. A sad one but still a dream. You spend most of your life imagining yourself to be a stronger, faster, richer more powerful than you actually are. In essence you think that you are Neo and that this is the Matrix and you can change the rules.
Till now you have been able to avoid reality by creating alter egos. The sum total of your alter egos has now come full circle. Your own alter egos now realize that they were just sad creations of a pathetic imagination and refuse to bend the rules of the Matrix. In essence all your alter egos seem to be converging again in you. You have desperately been trying to create more a more images but each successive one deteriorates faster that the previous. The time has come for you to wake up.

You are a 24 year old obese, reasonably intelligent, boring, ugly , self-conscious loser. The year is 2005. The earth is still as it is. Capitalism and materialism are still the prime principles of the current world order. The reason you don't have a girlfriend is because you have nothing any sane girl would ever want....Wake up. Wake up to reality."

"But Morpheus what about all my great dreams of changing the world and ..."

"Most people give up that dream as a part of 'growing up' few ever live with that dream. And few among them get to see it fulfilled. Welcome to the real world Neo. Its not great but atleast its REAL"

Another sea, Another breeze

2005-05-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

"So Phaedrus how do you like the Arabian Sea?"
"Its a nice place. Though not as good as the beach near which I grew up"
It was the middle of my summer project and I was standing with Phaedrus on one of the many sea shores at Mumbai.
"Where are you doing your summers?"
"Ask me where i am doing life!". There u had it the same philosophical defense to avoid mundane realities. I knew he had made it to some cheap marketing company. I was surprised that he wasn't getting sent around rural India. I hadn't met Phaedrus for quite some time now. Maybe it was just that i was busy with summers and hence didn't make an effort. In a way i was glad that i was able to carry on without having gripe to phaedrus about life. Just as we were gazing into the Arabian Sea this big guy walks up to Phaedrus, gave him a big hug and then started talking really fast. Phaedrus introduced him to me as Morpheus, also and MBA types. He was working in some financial services firm in Mumbai. He and Phaedrus were really good friends it seemed. Morpheus was just like Phaedrus only more melodramatic. It was time for me to leave, so i made the polite gesture of asking Morpheus for his cell phone number. Little did i know what i was getting myself into.

Sea Breeze

2005-04-01T11:46:00.001-08:00

I was reading a few blogs today. Mostly links from the section A website. Most of them who had lived on the coast seemed to have very fond memories of the beach. I too have fond memories. I remember when I was a kid I used to get up early in the morning and go for a walk with my dad and brother to the campus of the Theosophical Society. It was a really beautiful quiet place and in those days, before they fenced it off, you could still walk through the campus to the beach. The beauty of the beach was that it was a little distance away was an estuary where a now almost extinct river flowed into the sea. There was actually a broken bridge across the river at this place. I once walked up this bridge with my brother. Then later in life I used to play cricket and Frisbee there. Just as I was savouring the nostalgia, Phaedrus walked in, with his usual "give it a damn" attitude.

"Hey Phaedrus aren’t u mugging, for your business law exam tomorrow"
"Well I was awake for most of the classes so I think ill pass"
That was Phaedrus for you. Always the cowboy shooting from the hip. I wondered if he had ever heard about words like 'preparation' or 'studying'. I confess I am not systematic or very academically oriented but at least I studied for exams.
So I asked him: "Why is it that you never study?"
"I do, it’s just that I don’t desperately cram like you do. In fact I do that too when the exam is important enough."
This was the end term exam with 50% weightage. I wondered how important the exam would have to be to make Phaedrus 'desperately cram' for it.
"Well, I studied for my board exams", he said thoughtfully.
"That was 6 years ago"
"I studied for Engineering entrance, GRE, CAT...”
"Ok ok I get the picture."
Then conversation then wandered on to CAT and whether it was really a good way to choose people for a management program. We then had one of those usual pretentious psuedo-intellectual discussion about the "state of the world"- India's education system, reservation, b-schools, Iraq, world peace etc. Once we had had our fill of this Phaedrus decided to leave. As an after thought I just asked him
"Have u ever been to a beach."
"Of Course I have. In fact I grew up pretty close to one"
This was news to me. I didn’t know Phaedrus grew up close to a beach. In fact I didn’t know much about his past.
"I used to spend a lot of my time there. It was a big commercial kind of beach with a lot of people around, though not in a crowded kind of way. I used to walk there from home, it was a longish sort of a walk but I enjoyed it. Maybe I enjoyed the walk more than the beach itself. But anyway I just used to go there and sit and walk up and down. Sometimes grab a smoke or two."
"You used to smoke?"
"Yeah but I quit...but what I really enjoyed about the beach was sitting on the shore and staring into the wide open ocean, sometimes watching the waves, sometimes the sunset. It was nice to contrast the beach with the ocean. The beach dirty with a lot of people. The ocean blue and open. A vast expanse. And there was the sound of waves. Extolled by poets since the beginning of poetry. Never ending, with some unfathomable kind of rhythm. The sea is so representative. So metaphorical... You know some theories suggest that man's first migration out of Africa was along the coast. It seems beach combing provided early man with enough to subsist on."
"So it’s not surprising that we like the beach so much", I interrupted trying to stop his from launching into one of his techno-philosophical lectures.
"No, but that might not be the reason. You see the sea somehow brings hope. It’s like life. There’s a vast blue expanse and you can’t see beyond a point. You can go anywhere you want. There are no roads on the sea. No traffic signals. No buildings. It’s also dangerous and powerful..."
Powerful statements. We both stopped talking and though about this for some time. I had heard this metaphor before. Not from Phaedrus though. It was a well know pop-psychology connection. Life and the open ocean. The silence continued for some time and then Phaedrus got up to leave.
"Chalo yaar I need to sleep I have an exam tomorrow"
"Ok see you around."

Tell me your dreams

2005-03-27T07:49:00.001-08:00

Phaedrus and I were on one of our usual nightly walks around the campus when i mentioned to him that one of my friends had actually asked after him. He immediately asked me if I talked about him in my social circles.
I said "No, but I do mention u in my blog."
"Oh! Interesting, and what did this person say about me?"
"Nothing just wanted to know what happened to Phaedrus, as I haven’t been very regular on my blog."
"I suppose its okay if you write about me in your blog, but most of what I say is from stuff that I have read, so if you try to pass it off as yours you might get laughed at."
"I'll keep that in mind next time I blog." I said trying to end the conversation. It was always difficult to end a conversation with Phaedrus especially when the topic was he.
Phaedrus took the hint and we walked on for sometime without speaking- just listening to the sounds of the night and the clump of our feet as we stepped on the gravel.
At last Phaedrus decided to tell me what he really wanted to talk to me about.
"Have you heard of Dream Yoga?"
"What’s that?"
"It’s some sort of Tibetan Buddhist technique where you try and take and active part in your dreams. As you become better at controlling and acting in your dreams, u finally realise that dreams and waking life are the same, and at last awake from life into the ultimate."
I knew Phaedrus had been spending a lot of time on the internet at the cost of his academics. I thought he was just looking for porn and games, but it seemed that he had been reading up really weird stuff.
"I know you think I just read this on the net and am trying to con u into this, but it really works. I once had a dream where I knew it was a dream but was able to continue and enjoy it. There was this cliff that I was falling off. The falling was actually felt great but as i fell faster and faster the fear inside me also grew. I was falling to certain death. Then the realisation hit me. This was just a dream. I could enjoy the falling sensation as long as i wanted but the since it was a dream I wouldn’t get hurt when I hit the ground. Then it happened. I hit the ground and seemed to be in immense pain. Was I not in a dream? Was i really dying? I was scared once more. As I struggled to get up I awoke and found myself in my bed. I was really glad to be alive."
He was beginning to scare me with all this dreaming and death stuff. Especially walking alone in the wee hours of the morning just before the birds awoke. I told him that this stuff was enough for a night and that we should talk of more fun things like movies, rock or women for example. He agreed to let it go on the condition that I try it too. He asked me to do a simple exercise.
"Before you go to sleep just tell yourself that you will remember your dreams and will take an active part in them like you do in life."
With that he let it go and we continued our walk discussing some new fusion music group that I had just started listening to.

Its been a long time

2005-03-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

I just finished my Competition and Strategy presentation. Not that I had much o do with but just giving you a background. Just came back to me room in the evening at around five. Saw Phaedrus in my room reading some book about Buddhist philosophy. What seemed to really amaze him was the so called "Middle Path". Don’t pursue happiness, don’t pursue pain. Just stay in the middle. In essence do nothing. It seemed that at last he had found something in the Ancients to defend his laziness. I told him to get up and get working for his project submissions that week, however now that he found some stupid misinterpreted philosophical crap in his defence there was no stopping him. In fact after reading that paragraph he didn’t even want to read the rest of the book. He just dropped of and surrendered to sleep. Why did he find it so easy to surrender to sleep but so difficult to surrender to sleep's sister- death.

Dont Throw Your Hand

2005-03-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

Phaedrus woke up in the middle of the night. He had just had a dream, a vision. He dreamt that he was god. Transcending duality was what it was all about. He had the answer. So now how was he going to do it. But before he found out how to do it...
Did he really want to reach out and become infinite. Did he want to give up the comfor of his mortal life.

If awareness of self is conciousness, and the ultimate aim is to transcend that, then how can act of one's volition-a concious effort, ever lead to the ultimate.

Whats wrong with me. This isnt the first time im asking myself this question. I have all the answers too. But why dont i try to change myself. Why do i lack the will to bite the bullet. Maybe the answer to everything lies in the deeper questions of life.

Say hi to Phaedrus

2005-02-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

Well I have now resolved to write something in blog every now and then I've reduced the time I spend playing games, I need something else to get addicted to and im not very good with substances, so lets hope I'll get addicted to this blog.

If you are reading this then let me take the opportunity to introduce you to Phaedrus. Phaedrus as you can obviously guess is my alter ego. But lets pretend we dont know that so that I can try to confuse you by projecting my thoughts on Phaedrus. You can then proceed to act confused and people will proclaim me a great writer.

Phedrus is now at that stage of his life where he has realized that the time has come for him to have to take a serious decision as to whether he wants to continue the usual mediocrity called life or whether he wants to try something different.
In phaedrus's mind mediocrity is easy, its well known, well established and he's been doing it so far and got away with it. But to continue with it would mean that he would have to accept to himself that he has well and truly given up his dreams. That the time he spends in various rooms staring blankly into the ceiling imagining a different life is time wasted. That his ideas to change his life forever are not worth the time spent thinking about them. That he was too scared and lazy to try and live his dream. The dreams on the other hand are larger than life are beatiful. They are not all rosy pictures. No phaedrus's dreams are strongly anchored in reality. When he was in school he dreamt of being the athletic kid winning medals in acads and sports. When he was in college he dreamt of becoming a noble prize winner. When he a software engineer he dreamt of becoming a dot-com millionaire. When he was doing social work he dreamt of becoming the Che Guevara of his generation. When he was in business school his dreams we about becoming a an entrepreneur. When he went to the Gym which was rare he imagined his pathetic attempts to one day make him look like Arnie.

Phaedrus's dreams were essentially extensions of his everyday life.

He thinks back. "Was I always mediocre. Is there ever a time I was unhappy about being just average. When did I feel frustrated". Phaedrus has got so used to his mundane life that he has grown used to it. He takes comfort from it. The social support system. His family and friends. He is scared to piss them all off and go where his heart tells him to. But he is also scared that his heart is lying to him. Maybe when the going gets tough phaedus wants to claim this defense and leave. Maybe he is an escapist wanting to ignore everyday realities.

Still Alive and contributing to GDP

2005-02-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

So i remember my blog a day before my macroeconomics mid term. 8 hours actually. Just borrowed the text book from chuchee. Got to give it back to him at 5. That gives me 3.5 hrs to mug 7.5 chapters. Ive come a long way since my last post. About 500 kms. Hyderabad to Bangalore. Office to Insti. Dreams to reality.

Chuchee is one of those interesting specimens on campus.

Yes this is my blog but i am not too comfortable with analyzing myself just as yet. I dont want to realize that the truth about me is that i am just lazy. Maybe something someday will motivate me. Well i guess i shall take a moral stand and not talk about other people in my blog. So once again laziness masks itself as wisdom and morals. So i shall not write about chuchee.

Thats all folks.

Hi Blog

2004-05-12T02:17:00.000-07:00

So i just got an email asking me for my blog. Well what the fuck is a blog. Just found out. Looks like a nice idea. Maybe i will start posting more often.

In office right now trying to make it look like im working.

Ver 2 corrected some typos.