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 The roads of this mighty old city have now been replaced by ditches.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.

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.

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...

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.