The Immortals

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

-William Ernest Henley, Invictus

Most people would write a short story, or a poem, or an open letter to a Chennai boy or Delhi boy or some other sort of peripatetic character. It falls upon me then, dear reader, to give you some sort of respite, from all of this banality. You see, it is all well and good to write entertaining shit, witty shit, and obviously it gives you some sort of comfort from the mundane and dreary existence you are no doubt forced to live. However, there comes a time when all of the bullshit that you accept for daily reasonable news must be shaken up, stirred, and put inside an olive, just to complete the James Bond reference.

You see, Bonds there are many, especially in our college, and dear reader, you would be hard pressed to throw a stone at our most populated chai shop without hitting one of them. Although, what the consequences would be to this action is debatable, and mostly not considered to be in your favour. Strangely, we have so many types of bonds that classifying them will involve some sort of Dewey decimal system. We have the Bodies of this world, and then the Bakchods of this world, and then some. And all convinced, in their own little cocoon of inanity, in their sublime little bubble of bullshit, that they, in fact, are the best the world has to offer. They would laugh at every joke, irrespective of whether it was in fact a joke or not, or whether it was on them or not. Then again, they would tend to crack a few jokes. And all of this with the absolute disregard for common sense, or how do I say this..subtlety.

The thing is, you think you are immortal when you are 23 years old. Everything seems like it can't hurt you, or touch you, or even whizz past you with a strong metallic whine. And it is this sense of immortality that permits you to do the things that you do, when you do them. It is this sort of positive disregard for absolutely anything that life could throw at you, that allows you to be great.

And all of this ends as you grow old, dear reader. And you begin to feel a bit more mortal. Your joints begin to ache, and your liver isn't as good as it used to be. Almost all of your thoughts are second guessable, before you can even think of them. As you grow old you tend to realise the extent of your own vulnerability. Most people, cannot even think about this because most people are too engrossed in their own lives to care about when or how or why they would die. Most people tend to scoff at people who gently (and generously) inform them that they might as well show a bit of circumspection before it comes to bite them back in the ass.

But, you and I, dear reader, we are not most people. And it is all well and good to be immortal and everything...just as long as you look out for that bus.

We Try Harder

"Avis is only no. 2 in rent a cars, so why go with us? We try harder..When you're not the biggest, you have to"

It has been a long time since I wrote a blog. I would put it down to severe mental absence and semi-severe writer's block, both of which are non fatal diseases, so you need not rejoice, dear reader. In the absence of decent topics to write on, vituperate, spew forth on and the like, one necessarily reverts to type. However, it has been so long since I wrote a blog, that i have all but forgotten what my type was. So, i have decided to take the easy way out, and poke fun at random people whom i don't know, and have no intention, or possibility for that matter, of meeting. Strangely enough, I judge them by their actions, and not by the sort of people they are, kind of like judging the Mahindra Scorpio by the number of accidents it's been in, or like judging the moon...by its average visibility on a stormy night.

Most of the people who make the decisions that affect most of our political life do it without our knowledge or consent, and are usually the least qualified people to make them. But we have never let that bother us, now have we.

So, the Indian political system is a joke, but Indian politicians seem to have gone one better. They have now become the Jokers. While Mayavati is off using elephants as a metaphor for the much abused Dalit community, Kapil Sibal is busy trying to make an ass of himself. So what have we started the new year with?? Here's a review:-

1. The death of free speech:- So google and facebook are being tried in court for something that is not their business, that they didn't do, and would be helpless to stop, a few weeks after Kapil Sibal said that something had to be done about all those(highly entertaining) Manmohan-Sonia photoshopped photos..Go figure.

2. Elephants now symbolise the poor and downtrodden people of UP, which is incidentally about to become 4 different states, each with its own set of poor and downtrodden people, and probably its own species of elephant.

3. Google+ is soo out of tune with the masses, Google has to put a blue bar next to its search menu just to get you to do something on the site. For god's  sake, Google says, just click the damn thing.

4. Now that people are actually in 2012m talking about how the world will end this year seems a bit lame. Most news channels(the Hindi ones) have stopped running it as their prime time story, and well, the mood seems to be one of subdued optimism. We're all set for one hell of a party on the 20th of December though.

5. Trying harder seems to be just a bit better than crawling into a hole and dying. Doomsday prophecies do that to you, it seems.

And just when the Avis ad, brutally (and conveniently) honest, seems to hit the mark, you should also remember dear reader, that giving up is probably the easiest thing you could do. And since it is already 2012,(yes..already..you're old) it couldn't hurt, to try harder, for one last time.

Up in the Air

You know about how when you need to get somewhere real far in a hurry..dear reader, the Indian Railways, that epitome of punctuality just doesn't do it for you. So, in this country, we usually take a flight, which means we can stare at pretty airhostesses, get some free food, and get to look at the Earth at impossible angles from the horizontal. Flying is a thrill, no matter which airlines you choose, primarily because you're so used to the railways, getting anywhere in under 4 hours without cockroaches crawling out of your seat seems luxurious. And flying, apparently is also a very very bad business decision, judging by the airlines in our country.

Which begs the question: Why do so many businessmen invest so much into airlines. I mean, all those shiny new jets cost money, don't they. GoAir, owned by Jehangir Wadia, who incidentally also owns a biscuit company many of you may have heard of, Britannia, has placed an order worth $.7.2 billion for new aircraft, and a few biscuits on the side. This is not a small amount of money to invest in anything, and when all else is considered, money could generate much better returns if invested in something else, or maybe given to Ivan Boesky. The point is, why, if airlines are dropping left, right and center out of the sky, do businessmen still insist on starting new ones, at tremendous losses to their pocket and their image. Are the problems faced by most airlines congenital? or are they the victim of some massive government lapse in policy?

Well, the reason, dear reader, why you can still catch a flight to Aizawl(not that you would want to, of course), is because you want to, and can afford to. It's as simple as that. You see, Indian flyers have a threshold value, set ticket prices higher, and no one will fly. Set ticket prices at the threshold level though, and all of a sudden you have waay too many fliers. It is the flirtation with fares that has proved most dangerous to the airlines. Sure, they may blame rising fuel prices, a weaker rupee, lack of government support..and little green men. The only reason that most airlines got into this industry was because they thought they could hit that threshold value of fares, and thus see a mindboggling volume of customers, which would, in turn compensate for the extremely low fares that they would be charging.

A threshold is a dangerous thing though. If you put fares any lower than they need to be, the impact on the bottom line would be catastrophic. And especially if you do it in the middle of a customer slump, and rising competition. Yes, the government of India isn't very supportive either, in fact, it has its hands full with a certain Air India, which makes losses of Rs 5500 crore a year, or about a lakh rupees a minute(yes..that fucking much!!), which of course, wouldn't have got into this whole mess if it would just close down and pay its employees off for the remaining of the year(it would lose only Rs 3000 crore then). And well, maybe it shouldn't have ordered $9 billion of aircraft either, that might have saved it some Rs 45000 crore. But, hey, let not point fingers here.

As long as India has a population, and as long as businessmen have startup capital, airplanes will continue to fly in this country. There is nothing as seductive as the dream of seating a billion butts in flights, nor anything as lucrative. Thank God for airhostesses...

The Righteous and the Wicked

"Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice." --King Baldwin IV

Now lots of good people in politics , must ignore their soul, because if they have been suspected to have one, they would be eaten alive by their party, their constituency, or even the media. We have a moral responsibility, all of us, and that includes politicians, to do good, for what good is a life that does not benefit your fellow man. However, that moral responsibility is rather difficult to get a hold of when you have material responsibilities on a plate that also includes one of the most powerful jobs in the country. Make no mistake, even a lowly State Minister wields more power than you or I will get to experience in a lifetime. In their own little worlds of mala fide hubris they are their own gods. They hold absolute power over the people of their constituency, of their state, and in some especially egregious cases, the whole bloody country. And what they fail to realise, that they're not gods... but SERVANTS. Yes, politicians, your friendly local MLA, and your even friendlier Chief Minister are, were, never supposed to be gods ruling over the earth.

No, they were supposed to be our servants. Listen to our commands, do our bidding, et cetera.

Except that in this country we have a really bad habit of turning powerful people into gods, instead of cutting them down to size. A look at any southron actor will tell you this much, hell even northerner movie stars have temples erected in their name. These people are just as good, or just as bad as the normal people you deal with in daily life. It doesn't make any sense to think that actors will make good politicians, or that politicians would make good rulers, or any other damn thing for that matter. In fact, here's a rather short list, describing common sense practices to be followed, in order to bring the people who run our country, down to actually running it.

1. Cut the number of seats in the Lok Sabha/Rajya Sabha/State Assemblies to half. The logic here is that it is much better to have one man doing(or not doing) the work of two men rather than vice versa.

2. Reduce the amount of money made available to politicians. Be it block development fund or constituency fund or whatever, it really doesn't get spent anyway. Set all funds into an independently audited central bank, and make all payments for projects loans from that bank to individual organisations, payable with interest.

3. Remove minister's emoluments, monetary or otherwise. Come on..would you really appreciate it if your servant came to work every day in a cavalcade of Scorpios? Politicians are our servants..not our rulers. Once you reduce the money, dishonest people and the mafia won't view politics as attractive, and therefore won't enter politics

4. Forget Anna Hazare. Yes the man has rock solid ideals, and a brilliant Lokpal bill to pass..but after him, what?? Do you seriously expect that the Lokpal will be as effective an organisation 20 years from now?

5. Conduct a screening system for issuing voter id cards. This would feature a questionnaire on basic facts and current info and news. I would suggest that Prometric conduct the screening, what with us fast becoming an IT-age country, UID and all.