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...

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.

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...

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.

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?

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...