Wednesday 15 December 2010

What men want...

Or...why Mel Gibson got it horribly wrong..(cringe)

While it is a surprisingly well known fact that men want power(and sex) and women want money(and sex), it really has failed to render all sorts of books, TV shows, DVDs, and movies on the subject obsolete.

And this is simply because we don't really want to know the answer to the question. We are just fascinated by the question itself. Oh yes, we love it when this sort of carnality titillates our lurid desires. We love some sort of distraction, albeit prurient, from the tiresome banality of our drudgery. In short, we like to leave some things to the imagination. That's why we don't enjoy watching porn, as much as we enjoy watching Bigg Boss 4. On some bucolic level, it satisifies our voyeuristic desires, the way most roleplay(yes, hot nurses included) can't.

No seriously...I was watching Truth Love Cash 2(or TLC 2 for the hip crowd), and it is a total ripoff of Splitsvilla. The stupid entertainment channels have gone from ripping off foreign shows, to launching variants of the same show, adjusted to air at different timezones. This is ludicrous, and intellectually vituperative.

Which is exactly what we love about it!! Come on, if we'd have wanted to watch an informative, intelligent, and slightly educational program, we would have watched TMZ...

No, but the point is...market capitalisation. It is now the single greatest force known to man. Women, on the other hand, have that single greatest force known as the credit card.

On the eve of Wen Jiabao's visit to India, we come across, rather ingenuously, as a bored nation of young people who think MTV is fab, and Chinkys are cute. Which the Chinkies, who are really quite evil, are going to use to screw us out of Arunachal Pradesh, Kashmir and (hopefully)Varanasi. But China has done well for itself. To compare a nation with 10 times the auto production, 6 times the steel production, and 5 times our GDP(yes, PPP is just a lame excuse) is utter foolhardiness.

They just embody what power means, to the Socialist. It means a better life, for all of the country, err..except for Liu Xiaobao, and Google employees, but who cares about them anyway? And maybe that's what the Chinese have done right, that we haven't..

They forgot about market capitalisation..

Oh yeah, and they kill corrupt politicians, and mint their own Nobel Peace prize too.. that can't hurt..

Sunday 12 December 2010

Addicted to Social Network

OR...why the world will implode if you don't change your status every 20 minutes...

Well, this could have been about the movie, which, was pretty amazing. Kudos David Fincher, for bringing to life one of the biggest revolutions of our time. However, it is testimony to the growing banality of our generation, that the smartest thing to take hold of public imagination, the apotheosis of modern intellect and creative chutzpah, has only had the effect of never having to go outside to meet your friends again. Also, you need never to open your window again, to check what the weather is like, or have to worry about the nation's agricultural status..FarmVille, anyone?

Just to clarify things, here is a timeline, of a decade by decade blow by blow account of inventions that have moulded the destiny of our civilization:

lets start at say,
1930- the TV
1940- the atom bomb
1950- the microwave oven
1960- integrated circuits
1970- the microprocessor
1980- the personal computer
1990- SETI
2000- the iPod
2010- Facebook

Is it just me? or did we reach the peak at 1970...and has it all been downhill since then?

So, now that we have entered the era of the social network, and the era of never having to leave your home..again, ever.. isn't it time we stop..and ponder for a bit?

Now, its time to go update your page on Facebook again...You're the only one keeping this world together..

The Somebody Else's Problem (SEP)

Now Douglas Adams might have known nothing about improbability, or about astrophysics, or even about tea, or he might have known a lot. That, really isn't the point.. The point is, he did latch on to one thing, the SEP.

No, I'm not talking about SEO, thats search engine optimization...or SAP, thats some German company I know nothing about. And the only reason you haven't heard anything about the SEP, is because its somebody else's problem...

Now, let me explain, and no, it's not going to involve lists with 5 items in them.. Imagine you are crossing the road. At the very end of the road, you observe a giant truck, carrying a giant payload of packages, that you presume to be deliverable parcels, to someplace, crashes into a lamppost with about the same force as that slap you got when you tried to chat up that girl yesterday.

Would you stop to help the poor driver pick up the packages, and re-sort them in alphabetical order? NO.

Of course not. In fact, chances are, that if you are the normal sort of human being(and most people really aren't, these days), you wouldn't even have seen the truck, its poor driver, or its contents spilled out on the road. And we owe it all..to the miracle of modern day existence, that is...the Somebody Else's Problem.

We can blind ourselves to the most obvious things..poverty in Andhra Pradesh, right wing extremism, National Games, telecom scams,the river Brahmaputra, pretty much anything...

All we have to do, is pretend its someone else's problem

Friday 5 November 2010

Experience is the best teacher

Benjamin Franklin once said, a really long time ago, that Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other. This, presumably, after he was struck by lightning, while trying to invent a lightning conductor. That didn’t turn out very well for him, but at least we now have lightning conductors. Which, does prove, if nothing else, that learning from the experience of others is no foolish deed. It is something, that some of the most intelligent people on the planet, have leveraged to their advantage. And what is important to note here, is that experience is the best teacher, only if it doesn’t manage to teach you directly.

Which, as most students would agree is not a problem.

So, what about those who have learnt from the experiences of others. Well, an example would be Bill Gates. Yes, the richest man in the world, was once just another college dropout. And then he discovered why it would be so profitable to write software for machines that were manufactured by IBM.

How does experience come into this, you ask. Well, that has something to do with another man, by the name of Steve Jobs. A glorified salesman, really, he never had much idea of the sort of machines that his buddy Steve Wozniak was capable of producing. Howver, one thing that their company had experienced, was a new user interface. It had a really new system of arranging data in to little spaces on the screen, that Steve Jobs, liked to call.. “windows”.

And well, when you look at all of Microsoft’s products...the Rune MP3 player, the IE9 browser,the Windows 7 interface, chances are you’ve seen it somewhere before too. Maybe an Ipod, or a Chrome window. But thats where the eXPerience comes in.
And when you watch a movie, say, a real quality movie, acclaimed by critics, like Black, chances are, you would be looking at the experience of one Sanjay Leela Bhansali. A rather small, rather unnoticed movie, called the Miracle Worker, was a critical success, but lukewarm commercially.

Add a few songs, and what came out of the other end, was the eponymous Black. However, clouded the vision might have been, the execution was spot on.
And Bollywood should not be targeted here. So what if we have a Pritam and an Anu Malik here. Any industry that makes over 800 films a year should not be thought of as anything even close to original. And, well experience doesn’t really have a big part to play in most of the movies that we see, if they did, Ram Gopal Verma wouldn’t really make movies anymore.

Anyway, in conclusion, experience, and I haven’t really had much in that regard, is not just the best teacher, but also the easiest to pay attention to. After all, you don’t really want to be the one answering this question, “So, how was the experience of getting that sex change done?”
Experience is the best teacher, but only if it teaches someone else...

Monday 25 October 2010

AUTOmatic….for the people

Now it takes all sorts of auto wallahs to make a world. From the James bond ishtiyle auto driver, to the venerably mustachioed auto uncle, who dropped you home from school in the evenings, and secretly smuggled weed to the senior students. However, the auto drivers in this city, are, to put it mildly, a class apart. No, maybe that was too mild. The auto drivers in this city are freaking weird. Well, what else would you be if you chew through twenty packets of gutkha a day?

But the auto drivers here, at least they’re smart(er). I have been a victim to their smartness. And while I have publicized the rather salacious tale of the one auto driver who was so pleased at giving a pretty girl a ride, he couldn’t stop talking about it…this tale is slightly different. And it does not feature a girl. I know, I know…but it is interesting.

So, it all happened the day before yesterday when I got off at the unholiest of stations in the country, Varanasi Cantt. Me, and three of my friends got off the train, and did what you would instinctively do after getting off the train. We shriveled our noses in disgust. And, following that, we looked for an auto driver. Strangely though, the plethora of options that are normally available were, in this case, reduce to absolutely none. And as a matter of fact, this, rather coincidentally, was equivalent to the amount of luck that we were having…absolutely none.

So, after a night of facing an irritated Bihari uncle, defending a young girl and her mother, and watching a fat guy almost get punched in the face(yes, my train journeys are ALWAYS eventful) I had to contend with some fruitless hunting for an auto.

And just like in National Geographic, I hadn’t gone far when the solution confronted me. Now, the solution was in the form of a scrubby, rather bedraggled looking fellow. What in Charles Dickens novels would be called a ragamuffin, and in Arundhati Roy novels a tatterdemalion. Thankfully, as I am not a big fan of either, and find both somewhat pretentious and overbearing, I will directly get to the point. The point being this idiot had the audacity to demand 120 rupees for the ride from the station to our respective hostels.
When we asked him if we had stupid written all over our faces, he just gave an indifferent shrug, and spat into a corner. And bargaining was to no avail either. The guy said the rates were decided and more importantly “sarkari”. After the CWG disaster of 2010, this term has come to signify activities that are disdainful and pathetic, and I asked him angrily if that meant that Mayavati herself decided the rates.
So, we decided to find another, and while his price of Rs 100 was not exorbitant, it wasn’t exactly bargain basement either. But the auto ride was smooth and uneventful. And so secure were we in our little cocoons of self absorbance, we failed to realize just when the driver stopped, and rather rudely, asked us to get out. At the gate. At LANKA.
After it had sunk in(took around 15 seconds for me), we were flabbergasted. And words could not explain our dumbfoundedness. We aksed him what the hell this was? What sort of game did he think he was playing? Above all, if this was BHU, wtf was Lanka? And, hypothetically, if anyone says BHU, I mean anyone…does he wish to be dropped off at Lanka? Wouldn’t he have said Lanka then?

But our driver was cool as the proverbial cucumber, and told us, in a tone that implied f off, more than anything, that BHU means the BHU gate, and if we wanted to go inside, we should have specified INSIDE BHU, nothing more nothing less.

And as we gritted our teeth, and paid him his 100 bucks, I realized we had learned an important life lesson today. BE SPECIFIC. Or carry a gun. Whichever suits you best.

Ubiquitous Couples, and Ludicrous Aphorisms that you couldn’t do without

They’re EVERYWHERE!! You really can’t set foot outside your hostel without running into one of these. And, very soon, they’re going to take over the world. Yes…I’m talking about stray dogs. The scary ones, with big teeth , no Little Red Riding Hood reference here, that would rather rip into your throat than wag their tails at you. Also, the stupid ones that find it really convenient to leave their mark uncomfortably close to your room. And their mark inevitably consists of a giant, smelly piece of…you get the picture.

But, another species, in our college at least, is fast approaching the terrifying numbers of the strays. That would be what the title is all about. And, yes, if your tubelight needs a new capacitor(engineering jokes are soo lame), I am, in fact talking about couples.
See, a couple, in our college at least, has an intelligence quotient where the whole, is much less than the sum of its parts. What happens is that you take a really smart guy(NOT the smarty waala smart, no, I mean intelligent),and a really smart girl, and voila, you have a really dumb couple.

The bounds of their stupidity would really astound you, if you were at all interested in it. And most of the time, you are. Its human nature. Girls love it, because it gives them new fodder for gossip, and a generally warm feeling about their own intelligence vis a vis the poor girl half of the couple. They think..Ha Ha..there’s no way I could be thaaat stupid… And that’s right before..they’re all over youtube belly dancing to some awful song called didi..

And, just yesterday, I found this really nice couple, whispering sweet nothings to each other, and generally indulging in what the MNS/RSS would call bloody indecent behaviour, under a tree, by the side of a busy road, in front of a professor’s house. Presumably they wanted privacy. So they stayed that way for a half hour, before zipping off. Presumably, to find another busy road or professor’s house, or something.

But really, most couples are ostentatiously garrulous, and rather obscene, and this, in a not so subtle way, is just to make you feel bad about yourself. And, well, why not. They are, so obviously, better than you. And have every right to enjoy it, while it lasts.
And well, just like the guy who married a Chinese girl, and when she died within a year, shrugged his shoulders and said…well, she was Chinese…how long did you expect her to last? Couples, in our college at least, have an alarming tendency to be rather.. ephemeral. They would be like the faint jet engine white trail that we used to stare at when we were kids (admit it..you still do..). They’re pretty while they last, and then just fade out. And , of course, in the Great Indian tradition, don’t ever speak to each other, ever again.

No, but really, what would the world be like without couples? We wouldn’t have the highly armed and extremely volatile, and very effective division of the police..called the moral police. We wouldn’t have any torque. And we wouldn’t have anything to make us hang our heads in shame and wonder, What in hell is wrong with me…oh, yeah,err.. right. But, above all, we wouldn’t have any juicy gossip and rather apocryphal news. Not to mention verbose articles extolling their virtues.

Monday 18 October 2010

CATegorised in InIMitabIlITy

"The problem with this world is that the stupid are cocksure...and the intelligent full of doubt"

--Bertrand Russell

You know when a post starts off with a two line quote, it sure as hell won't be about the weather, or a five item list in futility. And while these chunky keys on the keyboard of my home desktop(god, its like a derogatory term these days)aren't really suited to typing, this post isn't about that shit either. So, patient reader, you might be tempted to ask, what shit is it about then? And for the smartasses among you who can actually read capitals, you might be wondering, is this another stupid IIT post again?

You would most certainly not be wrong.

Why do people spend most of the formative years pf their lives studying for the JEE and the CAT? Is it because of the bragging rights, the fame, the glory, the cahnce to quantitatively measure the heights of their own intelligence(and ego). I don't know for sure. However, if I may be so insouciant, I DO know one thing for sure... its because of the money. Almost all human actions, save for a few basic ones, are a direct outcome of money.

Hell, if people were paid 10 lacs p.a. to sweep streets they'd have a fucking JEE for that too. Now we all know the education system in our country is vapid waste. What we also know, (in no small part due to my earlier posts) is that it WORKS. Like hell. Its the only thing Indians are world class at. Mindless imitation. And while there is a reverse stigma associated with being an IIT or IIM graduate, it is most definitely, because of the money, and not in spite of it.

We are the people who INVENTED class divisions. We still have slave labour. We are still the only country with a GDP of more than a trillion US dollars...and a per capita income of less than a 1000 USD. or if you fancy the rather meaningless rupee sign(its just an R in Devnagiri..not like the dollar..which is a whole different concept), it means that most people in India suvive below Rs. 20 a day. Which, by the time most people reach the IIT/M that they've been daydreaming about, wouldn't even offend their sensibilities.

However, what they should be doing, is running the country. Education gives you power. And, it should give you courage, and conviction. That's what education used to be, before it was mindlessly perverted by the policy making bureaucrats who run it. Now, its just about pay packages, and cost to company, and enterpreneurship. So, you see, empathy is not rewarded, neither is innovation,neither is conscience. What is advisable, is to make money, save money, and get out..while you have your health intact.

The world rewards selfishness, not to mention corruption, the Commonwealth games are a sad reminder. And you would be moronic to think that there would be any change to that, anytime soon. But, what's really respectable, is someone, who, would be able to look beyond an IIT/M education. And focus on the real issues, and try and create that change. And to remember, the epitome of change is conscience, not a CAT score.

True leadership is not an euphimism for an IIM alumni. Its the ability to create change. No one should be defined by the numbers they generate. Only by the people they influence.

Friday 15 October 2010

Herd Mentality...and raucous tatterdemalions


Okay...so I'm really sorry to be away for so long. I mean really. But writing a blog is like giving birth to a baby...videotaping it, and putting it on youtube. What happens is, when you get a good idea, there are all sorts of problems that come up. Like, an anvil drops on your head.. Or Bugs Bunny decides to take that left turn at Alberquerque, thus disrupting the space time continuum.. or you have a proxy server capable of tunneling HTTP and not HTTPS, in order to prevent you from using any site that needs secure login verification, like blogger, for example, but we wont go into specifics.

But none of that matters right now. I'm back. And what triggered this, rather delayed call to action, was the behaviour, in loco, of a rather obfuscate, en masse. Which kindof means I saw loads of people get up to some really stupid shit. And, yes, I will elaborate, and yes it will be a list of 5 things that you may or may not be interested in. Why am i soo predictable? You try writing a 100 blogs...in the same tedious style, and you would be too.. :P (Shouts out to Devil...and thanks for giving me a really entertaining..and very clueless night). But the reason, why human beings, in general, have surpassed every other living species, despite being considerably stupider than at least 3 of them, is the same reason why you stand in line at the ATM, or watch the India-Australia cricket match...yes, its simply because everyone else is doing it.

Here are some examples of crowd behaviour gone horribly wrong:

1.People panicking because there's waay too many people getting off the train(Indian Railways mahaan) for people to get in...and willing to jump on top of people's heads just to get in. Getting to Danapur is appropriate justification to risk your life, for some people

2.The Kumbh Mela. That's it. Enough Said.

3.Pandal hoppers caught in a fire in the middle of Ashtami. They're so thankful for the distraction, they wouldn't mind the searing flames.

4.Going to class on a holiday. It only happens because you see other people going. And yet others would only go, if they see you going...and the chain goes on. Doesn't matter if its a national holiday..or even below freezing point, or an earthquake in progress.

5.Watching Cricket. You only do it so that others don't think you're a complete dweeb at the water cooler the next day.

No, but really, its difficult to come up with a rational excuse for doing the things that we do, because of the herd mentality. And while there are many names for it..peer pressure, imitation, queen bee, OCD, Tourette's Syndrome...what remains fact is what we do. Is just to make sure we're like everyone else..

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Things that you know..that just ain't so..

"It's not the things you know for sure...its just the tings that you DO know, that jst aint so.." -Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

So, its largely surprisng to not that the most highly apocryphal nonsense,is something that most professors, and most students hold very dear to their heart. It makes me almost certain that almost everyone I know is living in complete denial. What's doubly difficult to acknowledge is the fact that there is scarcely enough brains in anyone, to presume that denial isn't the clock that makes them tick everyday. For example..Maglev trains aren't science fiction anymore..a Japanse company(I forget which) has built, tested and is producing them on a large enough scale now..

However, it's fundamental training that all profs and some sudents receive before they enter college. To deny that you are ever in the wrong.. and to ridicule anyone who might dare to presume that you are. For example, if you think that this blog is an utter load of steaming shit that any self respecting cow would be proud of...I would just proceed to cal you a sardonic loser..and really just sad. That's just it, in't it. When you know shit that you ABSOLUTELY KNOW..like for sure, and someone just bursts that little bubble that was there in your head...you suffer the worst sort of culture shock there is. You go into withdrawal. And all because someone told you that Coca Cola doesn't really cost 10 bucks to make...

BUt anyway..long story short, there are some rather obvious facts that you mightave never really known..
1)Formula 1 cars DON'T change their tyres after every 5-10 km. Do the math. THe average speed of an F1 car is 150 kmph. If it changed tyres every 5-10 km, it would have to do it EVERY 2 minutes...

2)Not convinced? Most tracks are 5 km long, and most races run for 50 laps. thats 250 km. WHich means you would need at least 1000 tyres per car per race!!!

3)THe fastest train now runs in China, and no, its not the TGV.WE don't live in the 80s anymore, my friend..

If you're reading this blog, wondering why the hell I should be stupid enough to list these facts for you, it's just to convince those people who know things for SURE(pakka pakka)..that just fuckin aint so...

Thursday 26 August 2010

Deranged Dogma...and NO its not rabies that you have...

Well the great thing about living in a college in Varanasi for the greater part fo the year is that you find absolutely no shortage of nihilists only too willing to tell you what exactly yo ushould do in your rather unfulfilling life. Yes...we have all sorts in our college..and plenty of really irritating redheads with 32 yellow teeth flashing after every comma or fullstop in their version of a funny sentence. And by plenty I mean ONE. YOU know who you are...carrot top...

So..what do you do when your views/intellect/intelligence(yes they are not the same)...are narrower than the gullys of this godforsaken city? You do what any normal person would do...Pretend that you are the only one with an opinion worth listening to, and well pretend your cochlea is shot whenever anyone dares to oppose you. WHich no one would...of course..because they fear your wrath..and..you know the rest.

In truth..to be anyone with an opinion, you should have the one quality that most idiots, and most successful people have in common...resilience. Now unlike most stupid Materials Science professors would have you believe, resilience is not a product of stress and strain halved...no its something much bigger than that. Resilience is the sort of thing that allows you to say Fuck You Asshole...to anyone who might raise their little finger in opposition to you...and do something a bit more hideous to anyone raising any other fingers...

Anyway..its the place in the post that you skip to anyway...(sigh)..well here it is..the list...again
what you could do if you are pigheaded...stupid...retarded..or various percentages of the above..

1.Kill dissenters. Yeah..it works. You could adopt a ball instead. Its much more amiable, and wont ever talk back to you. And also pretend those songs in your head are from your imaginary iPod...

2.Run for election from ANY constituency in Jharkhand...it should do wonders for your self confidence..and be sure to complete step 1 first.

3.Join my department. We ave plenty of pigheads here..one more would be welcome.

4.Laugh at everything...yes...everything..Say something incomprehensible first...for added effect..

5.Just refuse to listen to reason...Sing Lady GAGA songs at anyone who might stop by to offer you some..

Yeah...I would have written a Pighead Egoist Manual for Dummies...but then again...that would just defeat the purpose...

Wednesday 11 August 2010

The Economics of Skullduggery

One of my favourite topics of all time has been money, and its chief function..to differentiate the rich from the poor. Now, and this might sound simplistic, my all important question is Why are some people rich…and others poor? The answer..is again simple enough, because the rich have more money. Now, don’t tell me to fuck off…because I’m going somewhere interesting with this. See, what made the rich rich and the poor poor was where they started out, and what they started out as. See, in India, after 1947, we started out as a rather poor socialist economy. Implies that, everyone poor. The US, started out as in 1776 a rather rich socialist economy, being the beneficiary of a solicitous treaty signed by the British, and having won, rather indefatigably, a really pointless war . Implies that, everyone rich. What happened after that was anyone’s guess, but mine is that the US adopted a capitalist economy in order to make everyone rich. Whereas in India, there were completely different reasons.

See, people who make the policies in India, were sick and tired of the general poverty in this country. They disliked the Hindu rate of growth, and the fact that the rich people were old money…the landlords, anglo-indians, merchants, British-ass kissers. They decided to remove all of that…and create a new rich, coupled with the new poor. The only reason why the rich are rich…is because the poor are poor. Now, India cannot be a rich country. Simply because the resources are limited, and the weather is shit(ergo, shit agriculture). So, the idea was…Lets make the rich richer…and the poor fucking people wont know the difference. Whereas, the idea in the US was, let’s make the rich richer, and the poor would cheer for us…because it would be their dream someday…to be just as rich. See, it worked in India, a lot better than it has worked in the US, because stupidity is much easier to manipulate than idealism.

And why the rich are…well..rich, is because they have money…but not the sort of money that you would expect. The rich now, are not about who has the most gold coins, or the most silverware, or the biggest diamond chandelier. It could have been the case, but it is just not so. The rich, have money…and what is money? Its just worthless paper, with a really shiny strip and some fancy lettering. What gives your money any value, is the number of notes in circulation. A 500 rupee note is 50 times more valuable than a 10 rupee note, because you would need to print 50 ten rupee notes just to get there. And notes are not like coins. It would be great if they were, because coins are valuable. A ten rupee coin..yes, the new one…is made of metal worth ten rupees, and since metal has some intrinsic value, judged by how much of it is found on the planet..you can say that the government may as well turn out gold, silver and platinum coins. Why doesn’t it? It sure as hell ain’t because the government is parsimonious. Nope, the government just doesn’t want the gold and silver miners of the world to become millionaires overnight. You see, what it wants, is plain and simple control…over the money supply, which gives them control over your soul, and you family’s collective souls. Yes…there is just one God. And its called money.

The rich, can therefore, only be rich, if someone else has less money than them viz. if someone else is poor. Because, the number of notes printed and in circulation is constant. Equal to the amount of wealth generated by the country as a whole. The per capita wealth can only be skewed in anyone’s favour, if it leaves someone else in short shrift. Take Anil Ambani, or Sunil Mittal, for instance…they are really rich, only because there are a billion poor people willing to recharge their phones and pay an exorbitant 14% as service charge for that privilege. Inflation, only happens because there’s way too much money in circulation, which is great news for anyone who has lots of money…but really bad for someone who needs to sell his goods for the same price every single day. So, he would raise his prices, as is only logical, as there’s so much more money to be had. But, then, everyone does the same. The wholesaler, supplier, importer. And very soon…we have a prices surge. Now I will write about that in my next blog…but here’s the thing. If someone on the street were to ask a really, mind numbingly candid rupee billionaire, “Sire, why on earth are you so stupidly rich you don’t know what to do with all your money?” And if he were honest…he would say:
“It’s because you’re so fucking poor.”

Monday 9 August 2010

The Truth about Life

"Life is a bitch...and then you die" -Unknown Chinese Proverb

So, what do we do with our lives? We eat, sleep, shit, bathe, have fun...and utilise a few more verb words ub the English language. And thats it. A few make a difference, others just screw up...and wait for the end to come. What's the point? What's the meaning of this? Is life just about reading Word Power Made Easy...to learn how different a past participle is from a gerund...aand because of the misshapen notion that knowledge of the above fact could be vital to your clearing the CAT exam. And how the fuck do you test aptitude anyway?! Is it like...okay..this guy knows how to solve a quadratic equation...he must be SMART...

The whole of humankind, and mousekind, came up with the answer to that...in fiction at least...and it was...42. Yes, thats it. Not a fucking irrational number, like PI, now that would be a fucking good answer. Imagine it...Whats the answer to life?... PI...But it isn't, of course, and we aren't retarded...so lets get the show on the road..

I'm not presumptuous enough, to tell you the truth about life, or to even begin, I'm sure you must have guessed as much already. Whats important is that I really DONT need to. Because you probably have it all figured out for yourself. And why this is a success, despite its inevitable speciousness, is because no matter what, nobody would be able to convince you that what you know, indeed AINT SO...and you're a fucking moron. But then, everybody's in denial.

So where do we go with life? To the 421 million poor people in INdia? To say...let's do something for you...OR to the 20 million migrant labourers, with barely a roof over their heads?TO say...lets do something for you. No one does. And that, is the beauty of life. Abstraction. The Somebody Else's Problem. The ability to ignore whatever doesnt directly concern you. That's the new human nature. And hell, they should put it up on the walls...this is your life...blatantly disregard anyone else.

But, and this is important. You shouldn't care. Because non conformism isn't taught in schools. And, well if you do begin to care about the beggars on the street, what the hell would it do for you? Would you get a job? Clear the CAT? Have a holiday in Mauritius?

Nope. And neither would 421 million other people...

Saturday 24 July 2010

Superciliously Proselytized...and 10 things you might (not) do in college

There are differences between the average college goer and the IT college goer. For one thing, the lack of an extra I in the college name seems to have left many without the feeble strand of sanity that may be found elsewhere... Also,zany as they might be, the average (other) college goer is nowhere as compared to the average IT college goer. WHich, literally, and rather unequivocally may seem to suggest that the IT college goer is superior. However, this is soo not the case, and just to rub it in your face... IT college goer(yes..it sounds sooo much better than student)..you are not superior. So, your supercilious alter ego can take a break now!! Yeah, thats right...go tuck it up, and when you are done, come again to partake of some more of this tortuous dribble.

SO, we as a general population(and I mean general, not you dear reader) tend to think we are, in most ways, better than the other guy. Even when we aren't, we have the most convenient explanation, it's called luck...And that's just one of the few things you can do in your college...bitch about how lucky the other guy is.

But for nine of the other things(yes, don't you think I am going to renege on my promises now), here goes: (on cue...trumpet...wait for it...trumpet again..)

For Boys:-
1.Buy a beer...drink it in really small gulps...and pretend to be drunk...Ahh.. bliss

2.Download and watch porn, its easy, its cheap, and you know you've got to anyway..being in Kota for 2 years really screws you up that way.

3.Listen to some interesting new music...like Linkin Park..or Green Day...wow...it's so cool..you might as well listen to it over and over again...all..day..long..

4.Complain about how few girls there are in the college..then brag about how you were the STUD in your school days...then complain about how no girl will talk to you now...yeah it's their attitude...NOT your face..

5.Laugh really loudly..or sing..even better...because of course...people love to hear you sing and laugh...and don't think you're obnoxious...not at all...

For Girls:-
1.PRetend that you're really good looking...because everyone in your class thinks sooo...and of course..the lack of comparisons/options it even more convincing

2.Let everything go to your head..

3.Get REALLY into rock music!! Yes...listen to Led Zepellin's(sic) Kashmir..and maybe 2 more songs...most importantly..make lots of \m/ \m/ in your stat messages

4.Get a boyfriend..preferably someone who is passing out in a year...or has already

5.Get another boyfriend...repeat steps 4 and 5 until passing out/boyfriend bankruptcy

And if you already do at least 3/5 things regularly...as well as network on social sites like facebook...you are uber-cool. I cant even begin to tell you how super awesome you are, but I'm sure you know already...So i won't bother..

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Vociferously Quixotic...and why too much alchemy may be bad for you

This post arose out of the blue, when, out of a really hazy puff of smoke someone pulled the word inception out from under the table. Yes...it really is an enigmatic word of some proportion...whose cause was not really helped by a rather laconic(and completely pointless) movie *ing Leonardo Di Caprio. Now, the literal translation of inception, in Hindi, as advertised by the various multiplex owners in my city was, "Sapno ka Maayajaal". Which would, once again, literally translated to English, mean, "Illusions of Dreams". Why this does not follow a linear relationship is not immediately obvious...and many people have gone on to misinterpret the word inception as Illusion, Confusion, or Induction. This is weirdly similar to the concept of the Matrix, which when watched in Hindi, would seem a juxtaposition of Makdee and DDLJ.


So, thats all there is to say about that...and btw, and fyi, not to forget fu...inception does not mean confusion...no, seriously, it doesn't. What it means is establishment. And yes..Hindi film dubbers are a bunch of assholes.

But what's really annoying is the stuff I learnt in my Instrumental Chemistry class the other day. No, I'm not drunk, and no, the prof isn't crazy...but read on, it makes for some really interesting stuff. Briefly summarised, and hopefully not completely lost in translation, thse would be as follows:

1. Sleep for 3 hours a day. Eat for 3 minutes a day. This maintians optimal health, and balance in the body.

2. Snakes live for a thousand years. And can change shape if and when they desire. This was of course, preceded by the usual disclaimer, "I am a man of science...but you have GOT to know this fact.." Yeah right.

3. There are certain cells in the human palm which, after about 100 years, become photosensitive. The end result is not clear...and hasn't been researched, according to the prof...but it appears that light may emanate from such palms.

ANd this prof isn't really quixotic in the sort of sense that people with lazy eye are. Nope. His philandering is more to do with the sort fo facts you might have learnt in grade school...and until now have taken for, just facts. Or the sort fo myth, you might have learnt to laugh at in the same grade school, and didn't give a hoot about, until, and rather ominously,now.

Because it isn't about what you believe to be nonsense that matters. YEs, what matters is that you don't piss of that snake...

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Service and Gratitude

There is a difference between politicians in India, and politicians in the United Kingdom. Just like there is a difference between an orangutan, and a bowl of peas. To say that the people of India worship their politicians would be an understatement, an oxymoron, and rather pointless. The people of India worship anything and everything anyone with halfa mind tells them to. And why hsouldn't they..after all...we are a country with more temples than homeless shelters, more gods than the people of Luxembourg. But, where it has all ogne wrong, and this is no side effect, but the main deal...is that it has gone to the head of those in power. Because, in our country, being a politician is not just another job...it is a throne.

You needn't have read Acton to know that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But you would need a course in Advanced political studies to know that the power given to a politician isn't really power at all, it's a responsibility. And that's where the difference originates. Because no one really knows the difference, and very few people care. Let me elucidate.

A politician's job is just that, a job. They come in at 9, leave at 5. Sit at their desks all day. Have breaks to use facebook,the restroom or the lounge. Except that it isn't.

And why not? Because we have become way too used to being ruled....instead of being served. We think of our MP or our MLA as our ruler. Where in truth, he is our server. This is where comparisons with the UK are patent.See, those idiots have never really been ruled over...by anyone. THe Romans, Germans, Russians...and more recently the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, have tried, and failed. As a result...the MPs there, aren't really rich, or obscenely powerful.

And as far as misappropriation of funds, and graft goes, its startling to note, that a country with 10 times the GDP per capita of our country, takes tougher action, on cases of graft that are a 100 times less than that of ours. Derek Conway...of the Conservative party, lost his hat, his seat, and his respect, after he supposedly misappropriated the equivalent of Rs. 9,60,000. Yes, thats all the zeroes. In that figure, we find our salvation. The Members of Parliament are just doing their job. Unfortunately, they haven't realised that as yet.

Neither have we.

Saturday 10 July 2010

The pursuit of Hornyness

When you look at a brochure of Benaras, oldest city on earth, land of a thousand only temples, abode of the mystics…and general dung heap , you see a shimmering Ganges… a spotless armada of ferry boats, and a couple of fat naked people and a whole lot of cows. However, what the brochures fail to show you , and trust me, this is important…is the roads of this city.

Roads are, some corny old architect by the name of Lutyens had said, the arteries of any city. Well, in that case Varanasi has suffered a triple bypass surgery, multiple transfusions, and an appendectomy(for no particular reason). The roads of this mighty old city have now been replaced by ditches. And unless this is an abortive bid by the city to host the next edition of the Paris- Dakar rally, it really doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

But, India, as we know, thrives on non sequiturs. As far as the public of Varanasi is concerned, it gives them no joy to drive through a sandstorm, a couple of dunes, and a municipal gutter just to reach work. It, however, gives them great joy to be able to show off their most prized automobile accessories....no, NOT the 10,000 rupee Blaupunkt stereo system…the horn.

And this is where my rather deviantly styled title draws its blood from. Sorry to disappoint the more lecherous among you. I will really not be discussing horny people…yeah, logoff and go watch some porn. But, instead, I will be addressing that most ubiquitous medium of sound pollution…the car horn. They range from the mild tweeters… that go a gentle “please move out of my way”, to the woofers, that go, “fuck off you son of a….”

Now, what makes a Banarasi truly happy is the sound of his horn. And while there are indications of sadism-masochism in the typical banarasi…it doesn’t really matter if the horn is loud enough, all that matters is that the horn is painful enough, and pushed into action regularly. Most drivers revel in the pandemonium caused by the concomitant cacophony of cascading confusion (yep, so true….you get the picture…they like to blow their own horn a lot. Some benarasis are so happy at the purchase of a new horn they insist on showing it off, even if it is to an empty audience on a deserted road.

Others…simply have paralysed lef hands, a birth defect found in many people due to consumption of holy water from the ganges after birth. Yes well, these dead hands would need their co passengers to helpfully lif their hands up and over the horn, thus resulting in considerably lower sound emission…which, simply wouldn’t do at all.
I don’t blame anyone. In a city where motorists are competing for road space with dogs, cats, elephants, cows, and mutated frogs, they have every right to make every other species aware of their presence. I just hope that they wouldn’t really need to remind us all that often or as loudly.

Thursday 24 June 2010

Maoists, and Recalcitrant Racism


It may have been popularized by Mao Zedong in the 1950s, but the quote most widely attributed to him has now found the most widespread appraisal in a little known belt of rural homes in East India. “Political power flows from the barrel of a gun” was how it was roughly translated from Chinese, but as everyone who has ever been to Chennai knows…there’s always something lost in translation.
What Mao really meant, and it might sound a bit farfetched but hear me out anyway…was that the only way you can give a bunch of hungry naked people any closure is by giving them a few guns, telling them to blow people’s heads off, and congratulating them as freedom fighters. And where the system fails, is when…you guessed it, they’ve run out of people to shoot. Or alternatively, when the Maoists finally gain power they only dreamed of, sleeping under a banyan tree. Because an idiot under a banyan tree is just an idiot, until you give him a gun. At which point he becomes either a terrorist, or a freedom fighter, or a Maoist…or blows his brains out.
And just like that integral involving all sorts of improper trigonometric terms that you never really cared about anyway…this problem is, in a nutshell, unsolveable. The only way to make a Maoist happy is to give him a gun, and a 100 acre piece of land in which to farm, herd and then shoot people. And, pusillanimous as our government might be, it sure as hell isn’t stupid…okay so maybe it is. Confucius said that anyone who uses a cannon to kill a mosquito is fucking retarded. What Confucius didn’t know was that the Indian government had never heard of him…and was in general not really inclined to take the Chinkies for face value. So, the only thing left to do was to send in the army…which sent out radio messages, posters, TV airtime and newspaper articles describing exactly the strength of the battalions, the guns they were using, and even the brand of underwear they would be wearing on the day they were going to have an encounter.
And result of said encounter? Nine Maoists get killed. Yes, In an area where Maoists recruit by the hundred, or mybe the thousand. In a country, where people are discriminated against by the shade of brown their skin is, Maoists, Leninists, hell even Rapists will find enough people to join their cabal. Yes, because we have not found, and maybe will never find an effective solution to the biggest terrorist threat facing our country today, that of the pissed off Maoist.

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Pernicious Profligacy...and too many cooks

So now I've graduated from writing in between classes to in between interns... Not that big a quantum leap, assuredly, but then again...it doesn't take much to make me happy. And now, my thoughts range from the mundane, to the abstruse, in pretty much no consequential order. Let me share them with you(STOP groaning and read)

Like how stupid could the government be?? NOT a rhetorical question. It just struck me as I walked past the ladies lounge today...to go to the gents bathroom, yes.... they are adjacent to each other. I assumed that it was the only way the contractor could justify the expense of placing a frosted glass screen on the lounge doorway. BEcause everyone knows that women would rather not watch men relieving themselves..yes they see enough of that out there on the streets.

And of course, the government(Rahul Gandhi included...you can shoot me if you like later) are a bunch of assholes. Its a well known fact. Like you know an elephant aint gonna fly if you push it over the cliff...and while that mght sound like an absurd metaphor, it really isnt. Just like our government is, a complete white elephant...

Because under the MNREGA or NREGS or whatever fucked up acronym they are calling it these days...the INSIST on hiring 20 people to do a job for 2. The net result being that the 2 who were supposed to do the job just get bored and sit around all day. Lethargy...apathy...plain fucking laziness?? NO.. they just want to look cool. How do you look cool if evryone around you is working?? Simple...put your feet up one that desk and go...HA you fuckers are such SQUARES!! And it looks cool alright...but not when everyone decides to fo0llow suit. But no one notices because they are...you guessed it...busy being cool.

And in an age of quantum mechanics, where some idiot says its absolutely possible for something to exist and not exist at the same time...its really amazing how that works out. Yeah, the same idiot has proved it by executing a computer program..WITHOUT running it. How...you ask? In the words of RIchard Feynman,"WTF?! No one understands quantum mechanics." Which makes quantum physicists either really smart, or very stupid...

The practical upshot is of course...that it might be possible..in the age of quantum mechanics...to be able to work...WITHOUT any actual work. You know who'd be the happiest...

Monday 7 June 2010

Mass Produced

"They can have the Ford Model T in any colour they want...as long as it's black"
-Henry Ford

Henri Poincare decided a century ago, that science, on its basis, did not constitute fact. The generation of fact from science would be akin to the generation of the script of Titanic from a bunch of monkeys supplied with typewriters. What we live in then, is our version of a world. A version that is most adapted to our convenience. In the same way that it is presumptuous to say that Cartesian geometry is an accurate description of shapes, it is also rather obtuse to say that a mere perusal of scientific method could result in anything other than a prejudiced version of natural phenomena.

What people lack now, however, and this is an effect, though rather sidelong, of the Henry Ford generation, is the nature to be scientifically inquisitive. Over, time we have grown rather mass produced. And this is where, just like Jeffrey Archer's stories, we are introduced to two protagonists. And if you read Jeffrey Archer, you might know rather intuitively which one is going to win out. And he always does. And for those of you going...what the fuck is he on about...I'll get to the point right away...


This, then, is a tale of two Henrys... and a story of independent thought versus mass produced herd thought. And you might be intrigued to know that it is herd thought, that..just like Archer's hero, wins out in the end. The illusion of self accomplishment is what is necessary for further scientific growth of our community. People need to believe that they are going to accomplish something meaningful if they didn't believe in science.

It is not a disillusioned man who produces anything of note to the scientific establishment. It is, in fact, the self satisfied, self aggrandising, scientist who manages to convince himself, and consequently the whole world, that fact..indeed is accurately represented by science. When ipso facto, it is the other way round.

But we are the worst perpetrators of all. With our smugness, and our knowledge, and our shiny IIT degrees, we refuse to accept truth for fact, we do it vice versa. And what used to be a quick way to assemble auto parts has now become the most convenient way of assembling human intellectual resource. Engineers now roll off a conveyor belt.

It is not the Mass Production system at fault. It is our pusillanimity. And our apathy. Towards the Great Intellectual Factory that we revere as our education system.

Sunday 16 May 2010

The Curious Case of Careless Cavaliers

"Write a 500 word essay on road safety" -our 5th grade teacher
"Huh?? Road what now??" -our class

NO!! I did NOT just make that up.

Thats the amount of knowledge that the average 5th grader has about road safety. Now of course, that wouldn't matter much. Except for a little show on television called Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? The stupid one...with Shahrukh Khan in it. And if there's one thing that those precocious little tweens have taught us, its that the average Indian is, in fact... NOT smarter than a fifth grader. Now I hear those gears inside your head beginning to rumble, and before you shout out QED, or Eureka, or some such euphemism for success, i must inform you, that it is sooo NOT our fault.

The role models in our society (no not Shahrukh Khan), our dads, our uncles, our moms, our older brothers, okay...maybe Sharukh Khan too, a little bit... have taught us one thing about rooad safety in this fine country of ours... It DOESNT EXIST... Yes, road safety in India is just like a Suhel Seth column, a minor inconvenience, to be ignored by all and sundry.

This is epitomised by our walking on the left side of the road. Now, the only reason why we walk on the left side is because, in most countries in the world, drivers drive on the right. Hence,in most countries in the world this was used as a safety mechanism, to view the oncoming traffic(Thnks Roshan for the info on that one). However, the smart people who print our books, kept the correct side to wlak on as left, while most of our early cars were right side drive, a side effect of the British Raj. As a result, we end up walking in the direction of traffic, and have no clue whatsoever about oncoming traffic, other than when something hits us of course, from behind.

And here, we also have a saying that goes something like,"BAAP ka RAASTA hai...", and while the idiom does not really guarantee you ownership of a few National Highways, unless you are Kamal Nath's son(not related to me in ANY way..). What it does guarantee, is that most people dont even bother walking anywhere but the center of the road. And of course, we do have more bovine, than human pedestrians here. So that makes it even worse, when you are trying to drive through a narrow road. And well, bikers have not really learnt the significance of overtaking from the left. Faced with acres of road space on the left, and you driving on the extreme right, chances are, the bker will probably zoom past you from the left.

And while its easy to criticise the roads and the people traversing them, I would like to end on a positive note. A friend of mine, who wasnt carrying his license, was accosted by a policeman...paid a bribe, and drove off. Now this would be a pathetic reflection on our society and blah blah... Guess how much the bribe was?? A mighty 5 rupees.. :P :D

Saturday 15 May 2010

Profligate List Writing and Mental Torpidity

Its been a while since I actually got down to writing about interesting phenomena that I manage to observe in daily life. Now make no mistake, I am not like those self satisfied bastards at the numerous medical colleges in our country. Hell, I am not like Suhel Seth(Does anyone even read his stupid column?), but then again, no one can be like Suhel Seth. If there ever was a more apt person for the epithet of douchebag... he would have shot him before writing his god awful column. Anyway, the human consciousness and thought flow is a closed book. And try as you might, you really cant get it open. So what the most of us do is, as the proverb goes, judge the book by the cover.

But the real cover story, the real exothelium, the real McCoy, is in a person's eyes. If you think the eyes are a window to the soul, you would be right...if you don't, get your contacts changed. So wtf am I on about? Everyone knows this, you idiot!! I can hear you think already. Well, my beef is with the vacant eyed stare. Like the sort you give a prof, when he's taking a viva, like the sort you might be having now...

Because, you see, the ubiquitous vacant eyed stare, is REALLY irritating when you are talking to someone. And I must confess, I have been guilty on occasion(okay, who am i kidding?). So, is this an apologetic blog? Or an apoplectic one?

Well neither...this is a blog on how to irritate people. You got that right...imagine ur prof yelling at you when all of a sudden, you just zone out. And your eyes go out of focus... Now that's what we call a good pisser. Try it sometime, if youre stupid, or nihilistic enough... And yeah...its NOT another list of 5 useless things you would need to do...critics.......Eat my shorts!!!

Friday 14 May 2010

Mostly Oil

"To think about it, development has created serious lack of talent in our world...Not one single person in the world has the requisite expertise(in metals, carpentry, polymers, and design) to craft..... a single pencil."

-Leonard Read, I, Pencil

If you think that the most mundane of activities that you do...the simplest of cosmetics you apply...the food that you cook...does not have a direct impact on the environment( and the economy) of our country, you would be seriously mistaken. In fact, due to the various phases of development of the world order, the Industrial Revolution, Automobile Revolution, and the Space Revolution, we are facing the single most significant challenge to our planet since the dinosaurs faced that giant meteor 65 million years ago.

Yes...that challenge is the Great Challenge of How To Overcome Our Own Paramount Stupidity(known in some circles as Global Warming...and in other circles as showing off...)

Because in our stupidity,and our race to discover a shortcut to a place that we didnt know existed, and couldnt conclusively prove would be better than the place we were in, we decided to take the least amount of pain imaginable. And find the most pyrrhic of solutions to our need for fuel.



Enter oil. The most convenient source of energy imaginable...Just set a match to it, and it lights up..giving you heat, and maybe enough energy to power your daily life. What we didnt take into consideration was greenhouse gases, and some of the dirtiest political and corporate games that would be played out in the coming centuries, that would make entire countries slaves to that black fluid known as liquid gold. Everyone knows that's a misnomer. Gold, couldnt even come close... and India...with its huge appetite for gold(the largest consumer of gold products in the world) is just finding out.

Oil and natural gas account for 80.3% of India's imports. And while this might sound almost reasonable...it also account for a large part of the trade deficit which stands at over $55 billion right now. And, India, which is prosperous enough despite the government's best efforts, is now making it a point to sell off its oil assets which would of course lead to greater imports, again. Now this might sound farcical, but the facts make it resonate. While most of the oil surveys that take place are conducted by big, non-Indian corporations, their names have a suitable "Indian" ring to them. Cairn Oil, a Scottish company, in its Indian avatar, does the oil exploration here, in Rajasthan. Of course, any oil it finds is then sold, at a price, to the Indian Refineries.

And Cairn is well respected by the Indian Government, who are thankful for their services.

India is actually setting up refineries in Venezuela. At a cost of $20 billion. When Cairn has shown there are proven oil reserves to increase India's oil output by 25% in 1 year, in India. Kuwait Oil has planned to set up an oil refinery here, worth many billions, and Reliance Petrochemicals plans to build the largest refinery of Asia here. All this, and our national explorer, ONGC, is busy bidding for cleanup projects, of Kuwait Oil, and SELLING natural gas, to Kuwait Oil again. All this, while being purblind enough to see that the bigger drain on our economy comes from that 80.3% dependence on importing oil.

In one big chain of stupidity and recalcitrance(the Indian government's refusal to accept its role in global warming), we have staked our entire future. Carbon Credits, Copenhagen, Jairam Ramesh... can all be equated to an avalanche of disasters.

Its about time we broke the cycle.

Thursday 22 April 2010

Intelligence

"I was born intelligent...reading your blog proved me wrong. I will now proceed to hunt you down and kill you"
-Anonymous Death Threat(I get loads of those...)

So yes..this is a touchy subject...and yes, I dont do touchy subjects. So, the logical question you would proceed to ask me now would be, Is there Life on Mars?? Shit, I knew I shouldn't have smoked that crap... But well and truly, this is one subject that most people I know have an opinion on.

Now I am (un)fortunate enough to have cleared the most reputed(and the shittiest) entrance exam in the country..the JEE. Yes, thats right...they are so "bhokaal"(a hindi word that means fried tomato...or undisputed unequivocal narcissism...i forget which) they are content to call themselve the (pronounce thee not tha) JEE. People who are in the same boat as me consider themselves highly intelligent. They think to themselves... and proclaim to anyone who's interested that they are smart...and who knows, they just might be..

But the point here is...a fucking entrance exam isn't really a measure of intelligence. It may sound like a weird concept...but think of it this way..there is NO feasible way known to mankind that allows us to measure intelligence easily and accurately. At best...we get a rough picture...so we call someone dumb, retard...or genius, brilliant... but we just don't know how intelligent someone might be. Now that isn't a very satisfactory answer to some of the biggest PITA problems in the history of mankind. So I have come up with a solution. And yes...it involves writing another long list of really fucked up absurdities. Diehard fans rejoice!!!

1.Get rid of your ego...with true intelligence comes humility

2.If you're intelligent you're also funny...and that means you GET the jokes targeted at you. Even better, you also get the perfect retort.

3. There are three types of intelligence in my book- Speed of thought, Visuo-spatial and Memory. Now this is something that I came up with while having a bath one day(one of many baths I shall have on the way to my degree). But think about it, does make sense... So the first kind become lawyers, the second kind are the artists, and the last crack the JEE and become absolute nutters.

4. Yes, people who are really bad at one thing may be really good at another.
.
5. If you already knew all of this and think I am wasting your time, you are a fucking GENIUS. Now go somewhere else.

Its just plain sailing from here on in. Intelligent is as intelligent does, to misquote forrest gump. Yeah. Insight is easy. Intelligence is hard.

Thanks Goonj...and why my best writing is a parody of my best writing

Now the art of writing a good blog is to NOT be angry all the time. Yeah, I'll just pause and let that sink in for a bit. I got introduced to a really great blog(I call it a blog...its actually a fight) about 15 minutes back. Here's the link...if you're interested...http://khamba.blogspot.com/

It's a nice blog and everything(like the Holocaust was nice for the Nazis that is), but after a few articles you begin to wonder why the dude is actually angry at all this stuff. And then comes something that you like perfectly well...and HE goes ballistic about it. Now writing is meant to be cathartic...and venting your feelings is of course, one of the most cathartic experiences available. But this "dude" just decides to fuse the two out of no rhyme or reason. And of course the anger. The sort of shit that could give Rage Against the Machine a migraine and send them home.

Makes you wonder if the author of aforesaid blog has had a traumatic childhood, a series of unhappy(abusive?) relationships, or is a closet homosexual. Also makes you wonder if all that anger would rather be left alone.

And Goonj team, I really dont want to say something like "good work...well done...loved it" or account of it being so fucking patronizing. All I would like to say is that if you REALLY want a satirical blog to print in your magazine...forget mine...it isnt a minute's worth in front of this khamba "dude". But then again...if you are going to criticise EVERY Tom Dick Harry and Jane, you better remember that 4 people could kick the shit out of you anyday(yes..Jane too)...

Thank you Goonj. I actually read the whole issue cover to cover(something I dont do with Digit). I hope that's a compliment ;)

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Intramural Schadenfreude and what to avoid in posts on Facebook

"And fools who came to scoff...stayed to pray" -Ammonia Avenue, Alan Parsons Project(I kinda forgot the original source)

Well its about time i wrote a wide ranging blog. And since my scope is open to the extremely wide range of the tea shop outside my hostel, a certain hyderabad gate and that black bull outside the auspices of the highly inauspicious fruit stall that I frequent, I have decided to write on the almost infinite scope of the new favorite American and/or Indian pastime (yes, taking over from sex and meaningless blog writing) FACEBOOKING...

But first, a bit of elaboration on the title. Now for those of you who find my titles rather chic and discretely humorous, I would suggest you see a shrink, but for those of you who, rather disdainfully find my titles obfuscate, or at best perfidiously prevaricated, this is your day..oh joy... Well, most of the facebook retaliations that I am going to talk about come from the sort of schadenfreude that is to be expected among people who don't really like each other much. Now this usually comes from the sort of people, who might be in your branch(like the total dickheads in mine), your lobby, your city...or bear no relation to you at all(yes, I like to call that the random burn, and it IS the best kind). Now don't be mistaken, schadenfreude isn't the name of some late German shrink who could convince you that you wanted to kill your father...and other disturbing stuff...no its about a sort of malicious enjoyment of someone else's grief. Of course, this doesn't always happen if you don't like someone. It's what our ceramics sciences prof would call: necessary but not sufficient. Yes, I don't like his classes very much, either. Coming back to the point of course, now that you know what stupidity is, and oh yeah, what schaden...etc etc is too, you can look up the other few words on google. Or if you already knew what these words were and are now cursing me for being an utter and complete waste of internet surfing time, fuck you, and go watch your stupid porno..

But seriously, I am going to cease meandering, and come directly to the point. For those of you experienced enough at facebooking to avoid the potential landmines that you might encounter every day, good for you. However, I am going to be writing a rather extensive list on what the hell you should AVOID, on facebook anyway...

1. Stupidity. If someone makes a stupid, utterly brainless comment on a post that you just happen to have liked or commented upon, do what you do to Shoaib-Sania news stories these days, IGNORE IT. Telling someone his comment is precociously stupid is precisely like telling a drunk he has an alcohol problem. The best reaction you can hope for is a "HUH??" and the worst is a prolonged fight ending with the both of you on the floor together clutching each other like lovers.

2.Religion. Lets leave religious semantics to the priests and the old people in your colony, shall we? You don't know the R of religion, so don't go about spouting nonsense that you have no idea about. Also, you might not know this, but religion is, what we like to call, a slightly INFLAMMATORY topic. So, please just let it be.

3. Terrorism. Now one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and the third man's late realisation. Avoid commenting on posts that portray people as terrorists...for all you know, it could just be a ruse by the terrorists to get your home address...okay, maybe not, but don't do it anyway.

4.That weird status message that some girl put up last night thats now got 43 likes but doesn't make any sense. If you DONT get it..just like it. Pretty girls live in denial....

5.Any link to ANY page with the word fuck in it. Trust me,its not worth it...even though you might hate pakistan, or islam, or pink fluffy bunnies...its soo not worth it...

Yes..thats it. And keep facebooking/social netwroking please. Its exactly the sort of thing that will make cars, parents or education redundant 30 years from now...

Saturday 3 April 2010

JEErs and CATcalls...

The lamentable fact in this country is that entrance examinations are probably the national pastime for all young adults. Its an unnecessary act of heartbreak, emotional nerve-wracking stupidity that seems to have become a rite of passage to adulthood for most of the Indian teenagers around. However...this is not a blog of derision...NOT a blog about the inescapability and the inevitability of that gruesome monster that is the Joint Entrance Examination. No, this blog is about how, in a stupid, convoluted, rather fucked up way...it WORKS. Yes, everyone says its a fucked up system...that discourages, rather counterintuitively, the very principles it is supposed to uphold. Yes, the people who run the system KNOW that it is fucked up...and very broken(in the same way the government's welfare schemes are broken...or that expensive vase that you just decided was a frisbee one day got broken). But it WORKS!!! And how.. India produces over 350000 engineering students a year, it's world renowned for the (lack of)quality of its engineering graduates, and despite none of our colleges being in the top 100 of the world... We still produce some of the biggest names in corporate legend...and enterpreneurship history.

Yes...we are probably one of the foremost nations in terms of edcational prowess in the world today. Simply because Indians are the best sort at reverse engineering...and (legal)creative accounting(Ramalinga Raju notwithstanding). We have the unique ability of taking a system, and destroying it...before remodelling it to suit our very obfuscate(to ourselves that is) needs. Simply put...we can take any system...fuck it up...and make our own Indian potpourri out of it...don't think so?? I have one word for you... Rajnikanth.

So what we have done is taken a perfectly good aptitude test system...and twisted it into a rote learning, Kota-sightseeing, TIME classes joining, billion dollar enterprise. As a result...everyone is happy... the Kota tourism industry is booming, TIME classes are flourishing...and our parents are thrilled at their wards actually DOING something for their future. People are idiots, as a general rule, and where the herd mentality doesnt strike, the power of money does. Irrespective of the fact that a clerk in a bank makes more than a startout engineer, after the Sixth Pay Commission(yes I will be writing a blog on that too..), there is always that iota of hope that the erstwhile engineering graduate might just be THE one to earn some double digit salary(in lakhs...we aren't thaat poor a country). And now I'm just going to stop paranthesizing everything and get to the point...

Yes..we have a flawed system...but this flawed system works very well. Lets face it, we have shit colleges...shit profs, a really shit counselling system, and probably the most shit idea of aptitude tests in the whole world. And we are a bunch of really desperate, materialistic people looking to make as much money as possible in our rather short and meaningless lives. And while I would like everything about our educational system to change...rather radically...NOT that stupid bullshit that Kapil Sibal insists on doing...but REAL change... let's face it, it's not going to happen. When it comes to the Indian tertiary education system... it just has to be, in the most despicable way, said that All Izz Well. That just about sums it up. Oh, and DIE Kapil Sibal DIE. I do hope the CBI doesn't read blogs...but then, knowing the effectiveness of the Cyber Crimes division...it should take them a mere 29 years to find and arrest me...

Tuesday 30 March 2010

No Country For Sick Men

"Health is Wealth" -Chinese Proverb

"Screw the Chinese" -Yours Truly

Yes, there are quite a few options that being an invalid in the middle of summer in a college without a good health system gives you. No, none of them are very pleasant, which is of course to say that an anal retentive in the middle of the longest constipation you have ever had might be a bit more pleasant. However, it is interesting the number of sheer avenues that open up when you do get down with something is only rivalled by the sheer nymber of avenues that open up in front of you when you don't want to go anywhere. Oh yeah, the period immediately after you get sick is one of the most productive periods in the history of your life. Yes, it begins with a period of extreme relaxation... sang froid, even, followed by a period of extreme introspection. When you realise, alternately, that you are a really decent guy, or a really furry rabbit... Or both. That is when you should realise that you really ought to have taken your medication, or should stop introspecting, preferably both.

Now, for those of you who might be new to the sort of bliss a fever provides, I have endeavoured to list for you here the sort of things( and by things I mean wholesome activities) you can do whne you have a fever in the middle of a really hot summer.

1.Pretend you are the King of The World... yes, and not just some lame Titanic dialogue either. Being sick actually gives you the sort of crazed drug induced delirium to allow you to pretend that you are in fact the undisputed grand ruler.

2.Pretend you are about to be assassinated... should spice up your life, and has the rather pleasant side effect of alienating you from all those really irritating people who keep asking you, "How's it going?" You're sick ffs, what do they think would be going?!

3. Actively try spreading your germs. Treat it as your own personal competition. For the misanthropes among you...this should be a blast!! Take personal malicious enjoyment in your conquests, as one after other people succumb to your virulent disease.

4. Win a Case Study Competition. From personal experience, its really easy to win a case study competition when you are sick. After all, you then know exactly how the stupid organiser feels..as well as the stupid judges. Or you're too stupid with drugs to know the difference.. or care about it. Either way.. you can do it!!

5. Try and pass it off as AIDS. Smile inwardly at the looks of horror you get when you tell people that you have AIDS. Then try getting them to borrow your razor, your aftershave or your hair oil. Oh and make up creative stories about how exactly you got it, preferably involving more than 1 girl.

Now that you have these tips with you, I'm sure your fever induced depression would now be a thing of the past. Now you can utilize your time, and be sick, all without any compromise. Voila...

Monday 29 March 2010

Top Gear

Rather astute observers might have figured out by now that i only write about one of four things, bullshit, cars, oil, or studies. Rather astute observers have also told me to go to hell, or preferably a slightly less tenable place, and also to shove my head backward through a vending machine for pop tarts. How this may be achieved, is not really a matter of unsurpassed urgency though, as the astute observer has been dispatched a kick in the head by yours truly...

However, this blog is not about that, or about the little dog whining outside my room, or about the cough that refuses to go away. No this blog is about a far more portentious issue. Yes, this blog is about, and I say this in the most unequivocal manner possible... The Greatest FUCKING TV Show of ALL TIME... Top Gear, on BBC 2. For the astute readers among you going like...Huh? I would suggest you not come within the sort of range of my feet that would allow them to inadvertently demarcate themselves onto your person....

And so, yes, unequivocally, Top Gear is THE best fucking show of all time. And why you may ask? Well, its because it combiness all four areas of interest that I touched on at the start. Okay, maybe not studies that much, but a show covering studies is an oxymoron anyway, so we won't really be going into that. Well I just managed to watch the 1st 3 episodes of the new season, and yes a big thank you to my benefactor, who provided me with the services of his rapidshare acccount, and they are just superb(the episodes that is). The first episode covers, in the following order:
1. The Aston Martin DBS Valante
2. The Ferrari California
3. The Lamborghini Gallardo...the new one...with the 550 bhp
4. Eric Bana

They top this up with the second episode, which features:
1. A trashcan

And a third, which features, along with a few cameos:
1. A hot air balloon
2. The Lamborghini Gallardo Balboni...with a white racing stripe

Now me recommending this show to you would be something like Kim Jong Il recommending you vote for him, or the Chinese recommending that Google remove Tianmen Square from its searches...or your hostel warden recommending that you NOT bring a hooker back with you to your room.

Watch the shit. Quite simply its going to be the best show you're ever going to watch, period. IT will blow your mind, and leave you wanting more. And, when you finally think you've had enough, and should really get bsck to that journal you've really been menaing to write for the past few days...you'll tune in to the next episode. Guaranteed.

Friday 19 March 2010

Relegation and the Half Baked Indian

"Who needs action when you've got words." -Nirvana, Plateau

This blog was started off by accident last night while I was having my dinner. The people sitting next to me were discussing(what else?) the IPL. Or rather, berating the IPL. Now the leader of the discussion, was a rather "knowledgeable" fellow, was sharing his views on how the IPL in its current avatar was, and I quote, "a rather chutiyatic league". For those of you who might be slightly unfamiliar with the Indian dialect of Bhojpurinized(is that even a word??) English, and even more lost when it comes to slang in that vein, I rephrase that as "a rather BAD league". He then proceeded to inform his fellow diners about how the IPL, could take a leaf out of the EPL, yes, the acronym for the immensely popular English Premier League. How??, somebody had the nerve to ask...

Now after giving this someone a frosty glare, he said... well, there is a league just below the EPL, called the Coca Cola League(presumably they play for soft drinks)...and well, the top two teams from this league are promoted. Of course, this means that the bottom two teams from the EPL would be relegated. Now this was all well and good... until someone asked... What does relegated mean?

Its probably the words...We are a generation of Half Baked Indians which won Aravind Adiga the Booker Prize for the White Tiger. Or maybe its the poverty that the westerners just lap up, take Slumdog Millionaire as the best example. Either way, its pretty self evident that we should jsut stick to cricket and not venture into the unknown realms of football or tennis, or Olympic Gold Medals. Yes, here are some of the sports Indians are good at..

1. (Watching)Cricket- This is the obvious choice of course. In a country where all sorts of alleys, gulleys, and trolleys are used for an infinite variation in what is quintessentially a proper sport...

2. Chess- While lacking the physical (and mental) stresses that makes cricket such a thrill, chess still has the mass following of 2 people. That doesn't stop Indians from being really good at the game however. Now if only we could beat those damned Russians...

3. Women's Badminton- So what if Deepika Padukone took up acting...we didn't really need another hot badminton player. And who really watches women's tennis anymore?? Badminton is the new tennis...Saina is the new Sania.. and yes the public has a short attention span.

4.Entrance Examinations- NO...I did not start writing a new blog without finishing this one. Writing Entrance Examinations is the favourite sport of all youth aged between 16-20, and has a fan following unrivalled by any of the above sports. And its propbably the only sport Indians are world beaters at...

5.Software (Under)Development- Yeah, you got that right...and it had to figure on this list. Presumably it was an Indian who invented the weather gadget..so you need never look outside your window ever again...

Wednesday 10 March 2010

What Price Global Warming?

"There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening in the Himalayan glaciers." -Jairam Ramesh

"It is an extremely arrogant statement." -RK Pachauri on Jairam Ramesh

"If the Minister for Environment is popular, he's not doing his job." -Jairam Ramesh, taken wholly out of context

Exxon Mobil has supposedly spent a fortune on disproving that it exists... Leading teams of scientists have questioned its veracity...and good people in high places have to refuse to admit to it, as Al Gore would have it, because if they did, then the moral imperative to do something about it would be so great, it would no longer be feasible to ignore it. However, this blog is not about that all conquering global question...What is the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken?...nor is it about that other, slightly less discussed but infinitely more significant question, Does global warming exist? No...this blog is about why we, and a LOT of other people would be significantly richer by assuming that it does not exist. Until the oceans drown our entire population of course. But that's just coincidental..and unsubstantiated...meaning that we are wholly unsure of the depth of sea level and the rate of vada pao in 2020.

Yes, people have the most cogent of reasons to ignore the threat of global warming as it is, money. It started with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, a much maligned and much delayed joke for a protocol, that wasn't immediately signed by many nations... India included. The US has never ratified the protocol either. And the reason for this would be that it's all well and good to be a nature lover and Greenpeace and shit...but the loss due to implementation would be anywhere from 1.2% to 4.5% of GDP. Holy crap!! That would be more than the primary education budget of India...was what most politicians would have thought, and the matter was conveniently swept under the rug.

Even now, after the disaster that was Copenhagen, when the Honorable Minister for Environment talks about a strong negotiating position on climate change issues he is talking about the 100 billion dollars supposed to be handed out to developing nations in order to help them cut their carbon emissions. A beneficiary of the carbon credits system, albeit rather serendipitously was Lakshmi Mittal of course, whose Luxembourg based steel industry Arcelor consumed very little of the carbon credits assigned to it. A billion pounds was the amout that they stood to make in a few years time as incentive for not polluting the environment...as much as they could have done... And this sort of incentive would be greatly appreciated by one of the richest men in the world controlling the largest steel company in the world, no doubt.

Face it...the only greenery that affects us in any significant way is to be found in our wallets. The only reason we choose to mire in tautology a fact as significant as global warming is because we just don't want to compromise on that extra percentage of growth that would let us sit back and marvel at the rise and rise of the Indian Economy...instead of the rise and rise of the Indian Ocean.

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Taking this women's lib thing way too far...

"The debate over 33% reservation is insulting to both sexes..men because they've never had a reservation to anything...women because they think they have a right to 50% anyway.." -Precis-

The politics in India is characterised by what I would call impatience, and what the political parties of India would call long term vision. Because people, politicians or otherwise rarely think in the long term. You know what they say about potatoes, if you give a man one, you feed him for a day...teach him how to grow it, you feed him forever.. teach him how to distil it and he wouldn't care either way. The politicians of India would teach the man how to distil a potato after giving him one. And this isn't exaggeration in any way either, as the Election Comission has discovered money and liquor among some of the more direct incentives to get people to cast their vote. But, and this would be a very relevant question, why do the people running things in our country spend so much time running after votes, and so little running after progress? Or, in a nutshell, why do they decide, after coming to power, to use their term to completely redefine the system in THEIR favour?

Now I received a text message yesterday that you might have read. It stated that if the Titanic had drowned in Indian waters, the lifeboats provided to the unfortunate passengers would have 33% reservation for SC/ST/OBCs. Yes, well this follows the mother of all flawed logic peculiar to India, that all minorities are oppressed, and that the only way to unburden these sad,backward minority groups is by giving them their birthtright. Which, of course, is nearly free admission into any and all educational institutions, or some free jobs, or give them a few seats in decision making bodes in our country.

Because you see, in India, EVERYONE is a MINORITY. We are a nation of oppressed,underprivileged, discriminated against people...with lots of special needs, that can only be taken care of by reserving certain educational,fiduciary,and pecuniary perks. RESERVATION is the answer to everything. Because people are myopic, as a general rule, and the only action that is definite in their hindsight, is the last action to have been taken.

And just like that, you would think women would have been empowered. After all, given a 33% reservation in the country's highest echelons of power should guarantee that. But, my feminist side, not that I ever knew i had one, rebels against the very thought of a third of seats reserved for women. Why, you may ask? Well, all things being said and done, and women being equal to man in every way possible, the only true feminist is one who asks for 50% reservation. After all, isn't it fair to have an equal division?

Saturday 6 March 2010

Be The Change You Wish to See In The World

Written while listening to Maria and Broken Man by Rage Against the Machine...strongly recommend listening to the same while reading...the blog will make a LOT more sense...


Because it's easy to criticise,condemn,deprecate,destroy,eschew,eradicate... you get the picture... The thing is, it's just so damn easy to want others to change, to reform, to benefit the world in some way that you so conveniently forget to do yourself. It's just so DAMN easy, that I don't think you would be very satisfied doing just that and nothing else. It's so EASY.. that I expect more from you... To take the hard road.. to rebel albeit without a cause. To lose yourself in the moment when you feel the recalcitrance of your spirit bury your conventionality. The safety, the security you hitherto basked in, snatched out from under you like the ground beneath your feet, that gave way to thin air as easy as the twig that formed your backbone...snapped under the weight of the yoke of your oppressor.

Because we ALWAYS find ourselves short changed. Deceit fills our world.. and delinquency permeates our society. The thing is...it's easy to write about it... to protest without affirmitive action... to leave it be. The greatest farce in the world is the SEP.. the Someone Else's Problem. It's your problem if you know about it. It's NOT enough to write about it.. to talk about it over chai and samose... what you need to do is take the hard route. WHich you might think makes me the worst sort of sycophant..which u might think would make me out to be one supercilious blogger.. as the righteous fire only strikes me at a time that I deem convenient.. to an audience that knows that it is not in their power to change the world.. That sort of shit is reserved for politicians and bollywood actors.....

Archimedes... I believe he said.. Give me a lever long enough.. and I will move the world..

Given a cause strong enough..ANYONE can move the world...

Wednesday 24 February 2010

The Last Post...and why I miss hostel life

Yeah, you read it right. This is, in effect, the last post of my rather short lived, but prolific blogging career... for February. For those of you breathing a sigh of relief, at not having to put up with my absurd fecundity, calling a stud(short for studious) a nihilist... and odd wordplay(odd in the same way a three headed dragon sitting on Hans Stoehr road would be called odd...) and the general load of bullshit I so effortlessly drop. And yes, come March, I will take up the cudgels once again, and resume with my curmudgeonly blogs. And of course, for those who steadfastly ignore my writing, I have only this to say, good for you. Now... getting on with it..

The thing about this post is... it's an ode to you, patient reader. And since, I am writing this for a second time, yes the first post was deleted due to, what lawyers would call force majeur, and what I call fucked up google shit(I know I wouldn't make a good lawyer...) I will attempt to keep it brief. So, anyway, I just got to thinking, how much I miss my hostel. And of course, there would be many of you who share the same sentiment. So, without further ado... presenting the five things I miss about my hostel... tara ra tat taraaaa...

1.The BATHROOMS. Yeah, my hostel has unparalleled loos. What sets them apart... is the stink emanating from their dark recesses, simply has no equal. And I even experimented with dead lizards at home. Believe me, the bathrooms are simply inimitable.

2.The ROOMS. Nice, warm and cosy. After all, it's hard to imagine anything cosier that a 4ft*8ft room... inhabited by 2 people, and sometimes, by a whole dozen.. Not even DLF could come up with a similar architectural marvel

3.The ROOM-MATE. Serves as a nice prelude to married life of course...and steels us against the possibility that our wives maight be... Himesh fans, homicidal maniacs, or just plain old quirky.

4.The INTERNET. Blazingly fast of course, and provides a wide range of sites... like google, google news, and the front page of wikipedia. And of course, certain minor problems cause it to crash, for the better part of a week, but those are jsut minor problems, totally inconsequential.

5.The FOOD. The variety is mindboggling. From chili potato to fried potato to potato chips, we have it all. And of course, for proteins, assorted insects and maggots. The mess people believe in a complete balanced diet. And we thank them for their thoughtfulness.

And after reading this, if you can't wait to get back to your hostels(and I share that sentiment) then I would suggest you don't. Yeah, run away from home, back to your beloved hostel. After all, you know what they say... home is where the hostel is..

Monday 22 February 2010

The beautiful game...and the Indian Connection

"The English Premier League...is the Greatest Show on Earth"
-Sky Sports Broadcasting

The total amount of money that flows into football annually is mindboggling. No other sport in the world could even compare with the sort of pecuniary success that the beautiful game can call its own. The basic assumption is that when a game is as universal, and as appealing as football, it becomes more than just a global phenomenon, it becomes a cash cow. Even America, which has three of the richest leagues of sport in the world, the NFL, the MLB and the NBA, has proselytised itself to the sport. And while SAU-ker still occupies second place in the hearts of many Americans, it still occupies a large space of the revenue.

Now, the bastion of the beautiful game today is the EPL, the Premier League, the Barclays ... you get the point. The top flight of English football is now the top flight of world football, so to speak. And this blog is about the richest league in the world. However, even the richest football league in the world, can't match up to the American juggernauts that I have mentioned before. Yes, this is the league which generates billions of dollars in revenue, where the wages paid to players exceed 1 billion dollars annually. But it is still not close to the top American sports of baseball, football (yes, the American version) or basketball. And while this blog isn't about the dominance of the American dollar over the Euro, or over the whole world for that matter, it is interesting to note that the revenues generated by the American version of football (no, not SAU-ker) were double those of the English counterpart. Yes, that goes for the attendance too, EPL clubs have an average of 35,000, which fyi is the best in Europe, no laughing matter. American NFL clubs, on the other hand, have in excess of 65000 people thronging their stadia for every game.

But where football really comes into its own is the worldwide appeal. And, of course the worldwide nature of the EPL is no exception. Half the players playing in the team are non English. For bigger clubs like Arsenal or Chelsea, on any given matchday, the English population of their squad would be a dismal minority, 1, maybe 2 players at most. However, the really disturbing fact lies not in the nationality of the players, but that of the owners. The English are now facing a unique situation. They have effectively outsourced their league. The only thing English about it anymore are the stadia. Oh yes, the Emirates Stadium… just about says it all.

So, what happens when the money runs out? Now for some clubs, Chelsea(Abramovich $7bn), Man City(Sheikh Mansour something or other $17 bn), that isnt a possibility. However, for smaller clubs, like Portsmouth... that would be a disaster. Most of the bigger clubs are in a lot of debt, too. Off the top of my head, Man U are 500 mil. approx., Liverpool are 250 mil. and Arsenal are around 400 mil. for their stadium construction. But the worst hit would be the smaller clubs... Portsmouth, and of course the ignoble Gaydamak, is my best example. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, relegation and ruin.

However, what's really irritating, IMHO, is the Indian interest in football clubs. Yes, Mukesh Ambani's love affair with Liverpool. Rather than develop football in their own country, they would offer generous sops to clubs abroad, hoping to gain popularity, and brand value. Yes, and the precedent with Queen's Park Rangers is exemplary. When Lakshmi Mittal, multi-billionaire bought out nearly 50% of the club, people expected this small West London club to be the next Chelsea.However, a year on, and they are still exactly where they are. Zero Investment. Just goes to show that Indian Tycoons, aren't really motivated by the green of the pitch, but by the green of the dollar.
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