Gorbachev turns in his grave

Internet trolls, while being incredibly stupid, geeky, disgruntled, forever-alone, sexually deprived, butt hurt dwelling bachelors most of the time, do spring up a witty retort once in a moon landing, taking you completely by surprise. While surfing Reddit, I came across an interesting Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with a former Red Army Sergeant who was stationed at a Siberian prison camp from '71 to '73 and later defected to America. While taking normal questions about people escaping the camp (and later being found frozen to death in the woods. Mother Russia, you scary) and general opinions about the US ('Cos rednecks have to talk about their country, even if it is to a ruskie), the conversation invariably led to Gorbachev, the man who broke up the Soviet Union. 

The long and short of it was that our agent did not like Gorbachev, which was expected. Russians have always been slightly confused about him. You don't throw away eighty years of intransigent Communism overnight). He lamented that he "couldn't blame anyone for being an asshole" because they were "all dealing with the one big asshole in Moscow, and that one big asshole was screwing all of us in one way or another."

Funny, taking the case of a patriot who had just given such a passionate discourse would be the last, most tactless thing to do; which means that it would be first on the Troll's list. The world is an evil place. My worst fears were confirmed when I clicked to load more comments.

"In Soviet Russia, assholes screw you."

Brilliantly played, sir, but you're still going to hell. And so am I, for laughing until my sides ached.
The whole session was a brilliant read. 

http://tinyurl.com/9qthkc8

Up next, something on Derek Bailey and a worthless art form worth tens of millions. (No, we are not talking about Cecilia's restoration of the Ecce Homo Fresco. Or are we?) 

Review

Stop crying about the Rise and Fall of the Third Knight. Nolan is already busy with his new project on how a man with short term memory loss becomes an overnight vigilante to get even with the twin magicians who stole his dreams while thinking about the number of ways in which he could grant Michael Caine a role.

The holidays are coming to an unsavory end, and I've ended up hating myself as usual, like when I start on a pack of Krishna Sweets Mysore Pak. The world deserves a bloody thrashing.

A lot of oaths to be muttered, completely forgotten about, rudely woken up to, and halfheartedly salvaged. To manage time better, to exercise more, eat fruits, stop the looming uptick of an exponentially increasing mess bill, you get the drift. 

To also come up with better posts, frequently. Read more books. To listen up all the badly recorded songs of Joy Division.To keep oneself up to date with the recent comings and goings of the internet. The latter comes with a 'Colon P'. 

Till then, here's a potato. And a review of Skrat's newest and most awesome album, Skrat in the Shed.

Do check the album and my review out. 

http://wp.me/p2xkZi-59

The Raunchy Joke book

This one from the archives, sixth grade hols I guess.

   The initial euphoria of finally acquiring library membership #1022  at Kumaran Lending Library had rendered me part zombie, with a number of the Goosebumps and Animorphs series' titles borrowed everyday. This fiery reading spree was partly fed by the crushing ennui that usually sets in around two weeks after the start of the hols and partly by a savage race to fill up the sections of my borrowing registry faster than Arvi did. While his tryst with Archie and  Sydney Sheldon had him burning midnight oil, my own with Robin Cook and Tintin led to increased strain and later, myopia.

    One particular evening when I had dragged myself to the library to try something different this time, I decided to borrow one of them joke books. I had already tried reading the ones available at home and there was a decent collection available at the lib. So happily getting a 'nice sounding' joke book, I made my way back and was just about to read it when mom noticed the title. "What book have you got?!", she asked, rather incredulously.

"It's a joke book, The Raunchy Joke book", I replied. 

"Do you know what raunchy means?"

 I shook my head. "Isn't it like crunchy, you know, 'Crispy one liner bites'?"

"Please go look up Raunchy in the dictionary. This is why I always ask you to use the dictionary. Your vocab is very poor..." and so on.

Later in Ninth grade, was relating the whole anecdote to the lunch break pals.When we were all exchanging lighthearted guffaws, one of them stopped short and pondered, "When did you say this happened, bro?"

"Sixth grade hols, I think. Why?"

"Um, and your mother asked you to look it up in the dictionary?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Did you read the jokes?"

"Duh no, not after looking up the meaning. Now that I think about it, I stopped reading joke books altogether after trying my hand at 'Rugby Jokes' and not understanding a thing. Why, dammit?"

"Whoa. So your mother expected you to understand the meaning of 'raunchy' at sixth grade?"

"Well, I guess- What? Whoaa."

Respect, mom.

Blagging Again

" I went mad for a while, did me no end of good... The point is, you see, there's no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might as well give in and save your sanity for later."

          - Ford Prefect

This quote pretty much explains the semester that passed by, seemingly trudging on at first but terminating faster than a grindcore microsong. Forget college, holing up at home and running to a leather institute in Adyar everyday for a blasted 'internship' isn't doing me any good either. Not exactly the picture perfect holidaying, filled with guitar and Ghatam learning interspersed with photography and reading and other cool stuff I had imagined.

     Abruptly moving on, I find myself obligated to tell you that this blog underwent a major identity crisis a few months back. That, coupled with a chronologically well placed writer's block became an excellent excuse for some good ol' slacking off, bumming around, and generally being useless, so much so that even Guggu's CLRI inspired threat of skinning and curing me alive unless I picked the pen up fell on deaf ears.

   Oh, and why the identity crisis? Was reading blogs of ex-school/college mates to get new ideas and pass them off as my own. And for some reason I couldn't get past the title or the tagline. A few exhibits:

• Suyash's blog "Say Whaa..?" is "A bevy of thoughts locked up in a beautiful mind".
• Anirudh's "Blog about opinions" has "Snippets of thought from a brimming mind."
• Sreedip's myuntamedmind.wordpress.com, the blog being Doubts of a Wild Mind~! . 

You see what I did there? 
For days and days together, the brain was racked a lot of times, the five stages of grief were experienced and a lot of management techniques such as 'corporate renewal' and 'retrenchment policies' were applied to The Pot Jamming Sessions in order to give it a reinvention of sorts, try to reflect pseudo hipster stuff like the others. You know, profound and shit.

Ha ha... Yeah, right.

When asked what the unifying theme of his work Freakonomics was, the author Steven Levitt started blustering, to which a lot of economists jumped in and offered what they saw as the theme. This continued until the philosopher Robert Noznick interrupted. 

"How old are you, Steve?" he asked.

"Twenty-six."

Nozick turned to the other fellows: "He's 26 years old. Why does he need to have a unifying theme? Maybe he's going to be one of those people who's so talented he doesn't need one. He'll take a question and he'll just answer it, and it'll be fine."

See?

Of course, that anecdote was for people like Steven Levitt, a brilliantly talented Harvard graduate. Poor droids like myself, extreme lethargy is the best known cause for maintaining status quo. Therefore, I'm back to my usual ramblings, posting desultory, redundant satire on this minimally themed blog.  

On a happier note, it's good to be back, finally. Keep watching this space for more sessions.

Entry

(Entry for Cactus Flower 2012)

The Death Sales Pitch

                The Avantika Express whooshed by in the dead of the night, making itself clear that it was in no mood to stop at a station in such a deplorable state.  The station in turn showed the finger to it as it held its head high in the clouds, reminiscing about past glories and fresh paint, failing to accept reality. Near the station were clichéd, small, slum-like apartments in which sat slouched a person, one hand on his head and the other unconsciously scratching his forearm.

Questions and conversations filled this person’s head. The railway clock outside his window read 02:30. To take his mind off things, he tried a little game he’d learnt to play with himself over the years of being a loner (He did have his ‘friends’, yes, but they didn’t quite fit the bill, not his wavelength, no). He closed his eyes and held a glass frame to his mind, observing every thought which drifted past, but not becoming the thought himself. Words, colors and memories flooded the gates. He had grown up in the orphanage. The childhood he had lost, roaming with gangs. He had found refuge in drugs, moving on from toner solutions to pot to smack. He had dabbled with every vice before discovering the costliest, gambling. Gambling! It was a Romeo & Juliet love affair, and now Romeo and Juliet were being forced to kill each other here! A single tear traced his cheek and fell without a sound. He forced himself to think of something happy, but the trail of thoughts turned murkier.  

His hand went instinctively to the small bottle of rat poison on the small table. He cursed himself loudly. Not now, he said to himself, his creditors had given him until morning. There was no way he could come up with that kind of money though. He cursed himself again. He had given up. He wanted out.  I need to sell death to myself, he said. His short, failed stint at reforming himself as a salesman came back to him. He needed a sales pitch.

   He played some music, tried to take his mind off things. It did little help. He took an aspirin.

                It’s a good thing people die all the time and they’re bloody good at it too. Apart from the customary “life-karma-cycle” which usually follows death talks, it would be prudent to say this: That the world reflects a miniscule sense of sanity could be owed to the dear Reaper. Death keeps the living one terrified, scampering lot, salvaging little bits and pieces of life they have left. Those who are alive are in a permanent stupor, high on cheap carnal desires and accumulating wealth. As if they could bribe Yama! No, the living envy the dead, envy the fact that while they are left hopelessly walking about the Earth with no real objective, the dead, well what were the idiots up to anyway? Nobody knew. What a mystery.

 Humans fear death just like they fear darkness and its somber depths. What if the grass was black on the other side?

His hand itched. He needed another hit, but unfortunately he didn’t have any left. He needed to get away from the vicious cycle of hits and cravings and that enough seemed like a good reason. His eyes jerked again towards the poison. Outside, the Habibganj Indore Intercity express was courteous enough to stop at the station.

 A moment’s pause. His life flashed before his eyes again. He had two minutes. He took it.

Later, as he stood at the vestibule trying to avoid the TTE and look as inconspicuous as possible, he thought about the small bottle on the table. He smiled. Need to work on that Sales Pitch.

-          Prasannaa Venkatesh 

Snowdens of Yesteryear

GRE tip for the day (Not a regular thing, no):

   The word Satiety is the feeling or state of being gratified to or beyond capacity. Usually used in the gastronomical context, the word becomes sated when used in the verbal sense. This is of course a pain in the ass for grammar Nazis when people tend to use satiated instead of sated. Satiate is a synonym and looks to derive from Latin Satis which means enough. According to Merriam-Webster, "Satiate and Sate may sometimes imply only complete satisfaction but more often suggest repletion that has destroyed interest or desire. Surfeit implies a nauseating repletion. Cloy stresses the disgust or boredom resulting from such surfeiting."

   You are confused. Therefore, I'm sated. What happened to original thought, wit and humor? Where was that cloak of satire masking a deep sense of insecurity, along with one or two cracks at IITs that used to characterize The Pot Jamming Sessions? Why did I have to stoop to my very nadir and copy/paste from random sites about Satiate and Sate? In short, why so much plagiarism, you may ask. I'm just putting as much information as possible on the platter before them Wikipedians block out Wikipedia to protest against SOPA and PIPA. Its a veritable student's nightmare, blocking dear old Wiki. Sort of a trailer to the Apocalypse. The Mayans were right.

     David J Griffiths, US Physicist and educator, author of the much revered Introduction to Electrodynamics, BITSian icon, came over to give a lecture on 'What's so funny about quantum mechanics'. Crowds thronged the audi which was pretty packed a good half hour before the lecture began. Of course, you also had the doods who claimed "they bunked class even when the bloody author came to teach", therefore dispensing any allusions cast on their impeccable 0% attendance level. So cool they are, no?  

   The guy was given a rock star's welcome as he walked through the aisle, standing ovation and all. The wannabe racists that we were, a few friends and I tried to guess whether he was a southie or a Yankee from his accent. The conspicuous white mush and the weird 'condom-meganicks' pronunciation notwithstanding, we were unable to decide whether he was a redneck or not. He certainly didn't talk about no immigrants or about Tebow losing. He talked a lot about stuff I didn't understand but found very interesting.Weirder was the Q&A session with students asking him stuff about quantum mechanics which sounded very similar to Yossarian's "Why is Hitler? Who is Spain? When is right?". Maybe I was being deliberately retarded. Funny. 

Ghatam Street

   It had been almost two weeks since that painful journey in what they called a SpiceJet and almost a week since I had gotten used to walking barefoot in the house, feeling clean tiles, a welcome respite from the layer of dust and sand which usually covered my hostel room. Itching to discover useful ways of wasting time apart from the usual books and movie 'projects' which I had undertaken, most of which were past deadline, I decided to buy a new Ghatam.

   After making a few calls and inquiring about prices and doing a bit of asking around, facts came to light. The air-conditioned, upmarket music showrooms were owned by daylight robbers who sold Ghatams at ten times the price they brought them for. Not to degrade my instrument or anything, but it's only a clay pot, albeit one of a uniform texture, pitch and heat treatment but nonetheless, a clay pot. And if a Ghatam costs you an arm, a leg and pretty much your whole torso to buy, without Vinayakaram's autograph to show for it, you know the world is coming to a sad capitalist end.  
   To cut down on the cyphers at the end of the price tag, we headed to the very source, the 'factory' in Mylapore, where apparently existed a street with a dead-end. Every family on this street had once depended on the different shades of brown and the vastly diverse shapes clay could inhabit. As time wore on, the art was still passed from one generation to the next, but the money in it declined, and they were forced to seek  better paying jobs. A few vestiges of the profession remained, and only one family made Ghatams in that street.
   Small, freshly molded dark green toy pots laid out for drying by the hundreds, pots and strange looking vases immaculately being carved by swift and nimble hands which guided the clay as it took shape and of course, Ghatams of every size, thickness and Shruti, pitch were present.
   What stuck me as very strange was the whole 'architecture' of the buildings, built with absolutely no gaps in between. This particular dead-end street was slightly cut off from the usual Mylapore (For that matter, what is usual Mylapore? Stupid Area). Disproportionate buildings which ran high up were no more than four arm-stretches wide. We were led into a 'house' which wasn't very wide but was three floors high and ran as far as the eye could see! I later realized that they were actually many homes which were simply built with common walls like a slum, but very unlike one, as cement and bricks instead of tin and tarpaulin and plasma TVs instead of soot from burning wood adorned the walls! They were well-to-do families. The street was an economy on its own.
   As the husband was out working, the lady of the house displayed a few Ghatams on the floor as I sheepishly tested a few of them, having completely no idea how to select one. Picking two which sounded good and of appropriate size, we were astounded when the lady charged us almost thrice the amount we paid the last time. "We don't make them anymore. Only a handful of customers want Ghatams, so we have started outsourcing them from my uncle who lives in a village near Thanjavur." She refused to budge. We paid them, realizing that while the art of making Ghatams died out, a few families like this one had established a monopoly, naming any price they wanted to normal customers and music showrooms.
   We left, thinking about this uncle in Thanjavur and how old he could be (The lady was herself past fifty). What about after he...? Who would sell Madras Ghatams in Madras then? 

Them Dads

Been a month. Aiyyo.

Another semester. Another fun-filled semester of failed expectations. The writer cannot exactly recall much about the sem which just passed by, slowly and surely as the winter which tiptoes in through the backdoor, owing to his poor memory. (I still don't exactly know where we went for the DoPy trip, somewhere near Musssorie, or was it some Gunj?) Two of his wingies were slightly unnerved when they woke up in the morning to a knock on their doors and their fathers behind them. Don't exactly blame them, but who pays a surprise visit to their son's college early morning without the bleakest of excuses to show for it? It's not like the college is set in a sprawling metropolis for them to take a small 220 km detour anyway. ("Hey, son! Just checking out that new Adidas showroom for sweaters, so I thought I would drop by, you know. How you doing? What's that smell?"). If you're wondering, Pilani does have an Adidas with sab bilkul orijhanal peeces . Seems legit.

   That was not the point, anyway. So the dads minded their own business and we were all cool about it. So what if one of them could not sleep (owing to the nerve-wracking, gut-wrenching, blood-curdling screams of Yours truly) and told us off when we were 'celebrating' my birthday? So what if we had to slightly lower our music volumes and tone down our language and change the way we knock on doors and keep the corridor lights on during the night and speak in hushed tones around them and... stuff? We were pretty cool about it. Then it broke.

I woke up one bright morning, swung open my door and what I saw blinded me. 

The clothesline. It was, like, full, yo.

His dad had washed my wingie's clothes. All of them.

I took a peak at my mess of a room of a laundry basket. Clothes here, there, every-bloody-where. Here I was, undergoing continuous, back-to-back, crucifying laundry crises, biding my time, pushing off the day I would finally sit down in the cold, cold winter and do mine in the cold, cold water, and his dad pops up and  showers him with fresh-out-of-the-basket undies. Pardon my language. I'm raging because my dad just got me guitar when he paid me a (announced) visit.

Lucky Sethi. 

A Quadrode to America

Warning: A series of events not in correct chronological order. Am Tarantino, yo.

A long, long, long time back, when the price of petrol was hiked to 48 roobees...

"... Should do a tour at least once in the holidays..."

"...Hmm, there are around seven in Madurai itself..."

   I kept phasing in and out of the conversation, picking up bits and pieces of garbled information as buildings and vehicles crept past, a dull background to a frame which was the car window, distorted by glass, half raised. We were eating out that night, part of the unfortunate Saturday night routine, when virtually everyone in the city was out, replete with slow moving traffic, nightmarish parking problems and booked-full restaurants. Our family was a walking cliche, dad on the wheel while mom doing the backseat driving, passing parking advice and leaving dad slightly fuming. I suddenly sat up.

  "What's a Dhivya-Desam?", I asked. Resorting to a long, detailed explanation on the 108 'special' temples of Vishnu, the gist of which was the aforementioned, she ended with, "Srirangam is one. There are some 106 in India, I think. The other two are in...."

"America", I finished, for some reason. Slightly piqued, dad parried with an indignant "No. Heaven". 

"What's the difference?"

 The result was a very, very rare expression, something you usually freeze for the rest of your life...

Not so long ago...

"When do your exams get over?"

"14th or 15th, I think. Will check."

"When are you reaching Delhi?"

"15th or 16th, I think. We should reach Chennai by 17th or 18th morning. Or so".

"Why are you always unsure about everything in life?"

"Po Ma!"

"Cheri Cheri... Bring unopened or unfinished pickle bottles back. We'll finish them here."

"Hey, do you want Toblerone, Mars or Snickers? I get them in ANC. I could bring a few chocolates for Krish."

"Enna Pilaniya illa Americava? Have you paid your dues? Will I get your CG card..."

Long time back...

"You think America is all F.R.I.E.N.D.S? People sitting in a coffee shop, having a good time and discussing who has a crush on who? No way. This is why I don't like that sitcom..."

I nodded, then shook my head, just to be sure. I had completely no idea what was going on. Had seen only one episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. in life, and that too with no subtitles... Knew the soundtrack though...Sounded like my 'fav' Backstreet Boys. (I repeat, this was a long time back)

"America is not all fun man..."

(The rest of the conversation I don't remember, but it did mention something about high standards of living leading to house-cleaners arriving in SUVs and charging a bomb. It also mentioned not accepting things from strangers and burglar alarms and lots and lots of bubble wrapping their kids.You get the drift)

Yesterday...

"Dude, just saw both."

"Both? Zeitgeist AND Inside Job?"

"Yeah, man. Lost all faith in any standing institution. The Americans are pretty ducked..."

"Seriously"

 "But there was also this relief, that our own govt. is no way near being that organized in conspiring against its own people. (In the US, they want to secretly unify the American, Canadian and Mexican currencies into the Amero) Here we can only think of creating more and more states and districts. We can never think a century ahead. Even our ducking five-year plans are failing. A Zeitgeist is never possible in India."

"I was also thinking the same thing!"

"India, man. Win."

A DySoc Episode

    I attended a class in Dynamics of Social Change, which I and frankly speaking, no one had attended in the past three months except for that very loci looking loci girl who nobody talked to, except that even more loci looking loci guy. Not being exactly condescending towards the course (which deals with very abstract stuff most of the time) or locis, I'm not interested in both and had only gone to see the results of the report I'd turned in about a week back.

   So as fate would have it, the prof was talking about social disorganization and delinquency, how violence and anti-social activities are a result of nuclear, broken families and the cybernetic society and what not. He drew a chain: Nuclear families -> Loneliness -> Boredom -> Anti-social stuff. Forgive me for being alarmed, but this boredom was exactly the state I had been in for the past couple of months in this very boring semester. To cap it all, he mentioned, "You guys are living in the hostel, alone and bored. Suddenly a friend comes and says, "Hey, let's do something fun", and before you know it, you're doing something anti-social on the internet."

   I decided to attend all his classes from then on. I also decided to go to the temple that day. 

   Now before you fatalists jump to the worst conclusion at the drop of a LAN cable and conclude that I'm sitting for hours together in front of the dirty screen and wasting away my life blogging, here's a bit of background info.

   The mess secretary (or was it mess representative?) of VKB mess is my good friend APS, who won by a slim margin and brought in change. This also included 'progressive steps towards transparency and dialogue' like the creation of a facebook group for the same. What he did not foresee were the far-reaching consequences of trying to reach out to a lot of angry, depressed and dead  tongues. 

  The average second-yearite is filled with a lot of adolescent angst simply because he's not a tween yet and thinks people aren't giving him/her enough social recognition required of a sophomore. His tongue has also gone through various stages denial, anger and attempted suicide in the past year, reinforced with a lot of cliched mess jokes floating around. So as soon as one particular pissed-off average second-yearite posted, "APS you sucks!", it snowballed into a major dis-the-mess-rep competition on an open forum which our poor fellow simply couldn't handle. 

   Before you know it, this small grammatical error became a slogan of sorts, with people declaring a solemn "APS you sucks" instead of saying grace before having their food. If the food was extremely good, "APS you rocks" replaced it.

   An idle mind is the devil's workshop. Me and a few friends sat down and created an internet meme "for fun" with his photo. We also added "Went to mess. You simply sucks" and "Mess employees extra friendly? Mess food extra bad" and other diabolically thought-of captions for it, and shared it on DC, like textbook A-holes. It was an evil thing to do and the DySoc prof made us feel ashamed for it. Would I have done such a thing like that if I were in school? Nope. What were we thinking of anyway? Went and deleted the whole thing later.

PS: Sad part is, he wasn't even responsible for the food part but for general functioning of the mess. Very sad.

Happy part is we weren't that bored (Read anti-social) enough and didn't make the mistake of posting it on facebook. So nobody saw it. Whew.
PPS: DySoc is awesome dude.
PPPS: Still have a couple of memes left. Message me if you want!

A Timely Update

Warning: This is not an advertisement. Drop that frown and listen.
   I was Stumbling, because I wasn't watching Modern Family and I still had another half hour to kill and facebook wasn't coming up with anything interesting apart from outdated re-posts by friends who were living a light year away and a century behind. Remind me to post about how joblessness/availability of net connection in rooms ensures that a small, elitist (and therefore, condescending) group of college-goers stay internet savvy and  always get wind of the latest viral video/meme, way before their cavemen friends.
   Lets not digress. So, I was Stumbling.
   Well, there was this website. Its called The Music Map.
   What does it do? Its like Cleverbot,  a self-adapting system, but this one learns about the outer world by asking its visitors what they like and what they don't like. Like their music tastes. And based on entries by millions of visitors, it suggests bands to listen to, based on your favorite bands. It nicely puts all these 'similar' bands on a nice "map", the funda being the closer two artists are, the greater the probability that people will like both artists. 
   Now I'm actually a stickler for not classifying music by genre (Read "The Grand Unified Theory") but the Music Map is a pretty kickass way of running into bands you had never listened to and you never thought you would like. It also tells you about the powerful force of joblessness of millions and millions of people, in creating a database of thousands of thousands of bands. There you go. 
   Do check it out on http://www.gnoosic.com/ 
   And if you haven't heard of Cleverbot either, go get some leaves, stones, sticks, some deer hide, a beard and a huge club. http://www.cleverbot.com/ is a "web application that uses artificial intelligence to hold conversations with humans". Yup, you can talk to him/her/hmm. And he/she/shh will talk to you.
    It's reported that the high suicide rates at Kanpur & Kharagpur can be primarily attributed to socially awkward students having hour long conversations with Cleverbot and asking themselves (to no end) what they are doing with their lives. Sad, no?


PS: Checkout Reddit too. And try inventing the wheel, life is not all about facebook.

Thayirun Jaadham

The humble curd rice is a brilliant way to bloat up that ponch of yours without all that tedious mucking about with Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. The recipe is simple too. 
  
Take one helping of cooked rice fresh from the cooker but cooled to slightly above room temperature. 
Nicely spread it around the plate for max. surface area.
Add roasted curry leaves, spices and condiments from the Anjarapetti and watch it crackle over the rice.
Pour into it one measure of thick, solid curd and watch it alchemize into rice and spices. Take care not to let it mix with the pickle. Not yet.
Drop in half a spoon of Avakkai thokku for touching. This is Indian Manga, don't confuse it with the Japanese.
Make a circular hole of diameter 2cm and pour hot, spicy sambhar into it, in memory of all bongs who have died eating sweet curd rice (Mishti Dhoyi) all their life. Ugh.
Sprinkle coriander leaves and chopped onion, reminiscent of all things kickass.
Eat moderately fast, as others might finish it.
"Adi Venna Aana Kutti" ("Last butter, my small elephant". Hard to explain)


Alternate recipe which tastes just as good (but only after class):
One cup curd from the mess, one helping of semi-cooked rice. Mash up. Lays chips. Eat like a boss (Don't mind if others crack curd rice jokes while stealing chips). Take an ice cream (for awesome afternoon-sleep-induced dreams).


Curd Rice PJ: 
Why is curd rice a good conversation starter?
Because it's called Dhahi Baath. Yeah.

Banter

Me: So, what do you want to do in ARBITS? Firstly, what do you think ARBITS does?
Jr.: Isn't it OurBITS? (Hand motion indicative of collective bonding and love)
Me: Association of Rock, BITS.
Jr.: Oh. (Awkward)
Me: Yeah.

(On the way to Pahadi, a small hillock)
II: Why did you do that?!
NS: Do what?
II: You just threw that (plastic) chips cover on the ground!
NS (With a wan smile): But it was... empty.
(II stares, stunned. Owned, actually)

Random Man (At the Ghatam): Matka kiske liye? Paani barte ho kya gharmi mein?

Me: Nahin, play karne ke liye. (He is confused)

Man (At my emergency fan): Yeh kya, heater hai kya? 

Me:  Nahin, fan hai. Battery mein chalta hai, Bijli se nahin. (Though batts were recharged by power from socket)

Man: Oh Badiya... Kahan se ho? 

Me: Chennai.

Man: Something something Baap kya kaam something something?

Me: Vey NIT Trichy mein professor hai..

Man: Accha, NIT Trichy...

Me: Aap k-k-kaun...? (Yeah, I had completely exhausted my Hindi capabilities)

Man: Oh you dont know me? Im your supree, superintendent... You don't know me?

Me (standing up): Oh! good afternoon sir.

Man: Arey, koi baat nahin... (Leaves with a smile, and later to himself) He doesn't know me...

Me: FIFA '11 sucks dude. I still swear by FIFA '98.

Venky: FIFA '98 has a key in the keyboard for everything. '11 is for pros.

Me: Your mom.

Venky: Why my mom?

Me: Because my life is bro.

Venky: Your life is what? (Not-worth-continuing-this-conversation-face) 

Me (smug): We should record these. Profound stuff, you know.

Hiatus

   As you can see, there are better excuses to give for seeing a deadline whoosh by than the ones that involve general laziness, pseudo-nerding and thinking profound thoughts in the comfort of my wafer-thin bed. I shall also say that I'm sorry for being such an ass and shall post more frequently in the future. I'm after all better than all my dear friends who started a blog (with colorful gay backgrounds and alternating small and capital letter titles like "mY tHoUgHTs!!") and later conveniently met with a "writer's block" (as Suyash puts it) after the first post itself.
And so here I am. Lets quench your thirst.
   The last few days have been quite brilliant. Went for a trip to Mussorie and places around it and had awesome fun. The 16 hour long bus journey notwithstanding, it's quite an experience to watch the landscape shift right in front of your eyes as the miles pass by. For example, the journey from the Pilani in Rajasthan to the Haryana border is as my dad says, "kilometers and kilometers of nothingness". The journey through the heart, fields and highways of Haryana gives you the expression that women are extinct and Haryanvis do nothing but booze at the local tekha and chill near the roads. And Mussorie is a catalog of history frozen in time, replete with British manors and hilly roads greenery spewed all over the place. Excellent Momos too. I shall write about that later.
   Pilani is going through tough times now, what with lightning storms marking the start of the sem, ravaging through the sports fest. Now we have extreme 4-5 hour long power cuts frustrating things up, day and night. I'm thanking my stars for getting that emergency fan-cum-light at the beginning itself. This tech wonder which was gifted by my parents to help me study during blackouts is now being put to much better use- sleep, ensuring peace of mind and a nice ponch. As they say, we have survived for 60 odd years and shall keep weathering the storm as long as the water table in this desert doesn't run out and the roof doesn't give in.

A Different Ghatam

   The writer is a self-obsessed, narcissistic egoist with a lot of time at his disposal. He takes pride in Googling his own name (at first) and later fine tuning his search keywords (a lot of times) so that he can check out his own facebook profile or blog in the search results, thereby deriving great pleasure from it.

   For instance, if you Google "Prasannaa Venkatesh", it reports a spelling error, courtesy my mom's numerous numerology experiments (Double 'n' and double 'a' does it). Of course, the search and image results point out to various namesakes who a)have either accomplished a lot more than me b) are Mudhaliar/Iyer boys on matrimony c) are simply jobless wannabes, managing multiple profiles in various social networking sites. I'm nowhere.

  "Prasannnaa Venkatesh Pot" would have also lead to ego demolition if Google+ hadn't been owned by Google and therefore not entitled to show up first in the results. Disappointed and hurt, I typed "Pot Jamming Sessions" and prayed for some spirit uplifting. The result was entirely unexpected.        

"A blog's a pot jamming session waiting to happen..."

   Jubilant cries of victory ricocheted off the small walls of my room as I thumped the air, looking at a page which seemed to be appreciating my blog. I couldn't believe that my blog was actually being perceived as an epitome, a benchmark which other collegiate blogs would follow and strive to achieve. I read on eagerly.

   The paragraph continued, "... The one who's gonna light, is the one who will care enough to get the OCB, the raw materials, the stuff..."

Wait, What?

"The one who lights, who gets the raw material is the blogger. The raw material is the blog content. The blog is passed on... If you try reading some other post, it's a beauty overdose. And so it follows..."

   I would probably get arrested if I print any more of that shit. It took quite some Googling of those 'technical terms' to understand that the idiot was talking of a whole different pot altogether and not the Ghatam and definitely, definitely not my blog. It's like being put through The Total Perspective Vortex in The Hitchhiker's Guide. I guess it took me the mother of all coincidences to figure out that simply put, I was not the center of the bloody universe. Injured but enlightened, I sat down to study ES-I.   

Catharsis

   So the mess rep/sec elections took place with a number of fretting and fuming batch-mates, having been forced out of their afternoon slumber by candidates and cronies, coming out to vote. The first years were cursing them too, but very, very quietly. And I was at my irritated best, or worst, whichever way you want to put it. But yes, I did exercise my right and did do my part to keep this democratic farce's flag flying high. Anyway, my wingie won. He didn't treat us for it, but promised us better food, which was the need of the hour. The mess food was never something to write home about, and there is only a limited amount of jaggery-laced Sambhar, artificially colored Dhal and poisoned cabbage sabji which one's system can take without going V for Vendetta over it.
   As I was walking down the corridor, I saw the newly elected mess-rep crouched, squinting at his computer screen over a word document, a couple of friends around him. "Areyaar, naya menu bana raha hoon. Items Batha", he said. His friends nodded, fixing their gaze at me. "What do you think I should change?" he asked me, jovially. "I would rather you maintain status quo and I crib about it for the whole year", I replied.
Multiply that statement by 675 million registered voters. Whoa.
    I'm not trying to get the reader all guilty or something over here. It's just that I felt cool for making that supposedly apathetic, indifferent statement and later felt bad for feeling cool about it later, when the next day's paper arrived. In any case, the food is better than SV mess, where its either cabbage all the way or a week's worth of Aloo, Paneer, Aloo-Paneer, Paneer-Aloo and Aloo-Aloo and other contorted permutations which only Descartes can think of.
   Hey, Google has changed Blogger's interface. It looks all Google plus-esque now and is supposed to be neater and cleaner. Of course, If you have learnt anything about the writer from the lines above, its that he did not like change at all and immediately wanted his old interface back so that he could crib about it.
I paused. I thought about it.
  Poor Google, trying so many new things. Trying so hard to bring about change. In its products, in its brand and in its image.
  I kept the new interface.You're welcome.

Fail Attempt

   Of course, I should have realized like ages ago, that I was simply trying too hard. The levels of pretentiousness a person can get away with on facebook and in the real world are way, way different. It's okay to execute horribly distorted, cropped and very provocative statements punctuated with periods instead of commas like "Roxanne. Fail." or "Lame. Disgusting." and escape with it on fb. Does not happen in the real world, my friend.
   I had just seen Shaitan (A mucky story about messed up tweens) and was simply stuck blind by it's 'badassness'. I loved the movie so much, that for a few days, I was into the 'profound' and 'deep' thoughts it tried to provoke and the mirror it held up to society. I kept on harping about it (much to my sidie's frustration) about how it was a cult movie and how Bollywood had suddenly grown up. The point was, I got too carried away and did not realize that movie was supposed to be watched with a pinch of salt and not scrutinized, simply because it was something that was not intended to be mulled over. In any case, I badly wanted to tell my friends at Chennai and Trichy about the film, and look cool about it. I sent an sms, "Shaitan. Win." (Read Soul of Wit below)
  I repeat, I wanted to look cool by being all internet jargonish about it. We all do.
   The advantage with facebook is that if one does not understand a particular, provoking wall post, one can simply ctrlC, ctrlV the same onto a new tab and let Google do the explaining. It's not the same with cellphones. It was simply stupid of me to hope for any sane person with a Cerebrum to understand the bloody sms.
   Well, the end result was that I got a taste of my own medicine. The replies were as brief, as cold and as cool as the jab, ranging from "What?" and "Hmm?" to "K" and "Kk".
   Friends, they keep you on Earth...

Carnival of Rust

  Went to the Pilani Mela about a week back. We usually take a few juniors along, juniors who have been hitherto cribbing about missing city life. I did.
   But first, about the annual Mela. Located about a mile away from the campus and earmarked by that huge Shivji statue beside it, are the grounds which play host to this very 'vibrant' and 'colorful' (hmm...) fair which happens once a year. As one enters the place, one is greeted by graying ( and rather grubby) Mickey Mouse heads bobbing in the air, part of a huge slide made of inflated rubber for small kids, manufactured with the sole aim of making fun of people of short stature.
Hey Pavan, I think you can are allowed on that slide. You're short enough.
   After Pavan bleghed his ass off, we all proceeded to the best ride of the lot, the break dance. The whole of last year, 'brak dance' terrified the living daylights out of me. Now with the correct spelling and a fresh coat of paint (Actually, no.) the ride still looked puke-addictive. Now I'm no chicken, but there is a limit to the number of centrifugal vector additions my extremely motion-sickness prone body could take. Apart from the tilted axis of the whole base, the seats are allowed to swivel around at blinding speeds, leaving you gasping for breath and clutching your ponch. The juniors took it well, some girls going even twice. Oh, the emasculation of it.
   Then, there's the "Mauth Ki Khuan", literally translating to Well of Death. As the Pilani DJ(?) puts it, they have 16 year old professionals who are not afraid of death, riding a motorbike and a Maruti 800 round and round the creaking walls of the 'well' as we stood in awe from above.  
   Speaking of creaking, I would like to mention that most of the amusement rides here were probably built for G. D. Birla a hundred years back, and the management decided to trust in god to keep the rusting, crumbling structures from total implosion. One would mistake the Mela for the sets of Final Destination 5.
  But the most beautiful part of the damn Mela is not the rides or the shops or the multitude of a myriad collection of shops and sweets and bangles. All about the experience you know.
Profoundness in 3... 2... 1...
   I walked in, 18, cribbing about this village and how it's got absolutely nothing to offer. I turned a kid, 7,  on seeing the rides and how much more fun they were, with friends.Then there's the motley assortment of people from other nearby villages. Old men in Dhotis and wearing Rajasthani Turbans, their wives ambling behind them, slightly servile in attitude, young (local) girls in Churidhars with their brothers jumping about, excited just to be there, married women shopping for their households, young coots in low waist jeans. They were all very happy, with this. They didn't need the consecrated walls of concrete and steel to keep them content.
 Happiness is relative. You just have to set your zero low enough.

Politics

  The existence of this annual debate held in the auditorium for the candidates contesting for Prez and Gen-Sec to present their points and to 'reach out' to the junta has always held my serious reservations. If you can't speak English coherently, you lose, even if you have a brilliant manifesto. Me being fiercely non-political, I went to the Audi Ragging session yesterday to watch some ass whooping by the Election Council. The blunders committed by the EC notwithstanding, I managed to catch a few laughs. Usual Chom vs. Gult politics only.
   Forget home, where people are idiots. The writer has always held the strongest and proudest of views that the Tamil community has always shied away from politics and didn't give a shit about who was being elected at BITS. Strength lies in numbers and numbers isn't exactly one of my state's strong points here. Yesterday though, weakened that opinion. My friend the Sudhan, suddenly appointed himself campaign manager for the female gen-sec candidate and begged us to cheer for her, just because he was 'in' Hindi Drama Club, which she was a member of. He was so charged up during the debate that he forgot to have dinner, leaving me flabbergasted. If there's one thing I've learned about him, it's that he never misses a meal, even if he's not hungry, as he "might lose energy."
I will write about that another day. Politics does weird things to people.   

Excerpts of Independence

First things first. An apology to all ju's who felt dissed. I should have probably written something anti-Semitic. It seems a lot 'cooler' to do that and draws less flak anyway. (Kidding, I love Gates and Zuckerberg)

Another Independence Day. Another parade missed. Another good lunch expected. Another Holiday.
I decided to do something different this time.The newspaper arrived. I had changed to The Hindu from Times of India this sem because it was the more sober of the two and I felt cool about being part of the intelligentsia who read The Hindu.

It was a bit too sober this time. In an article titled "A Fractured Freedom",

"... And yet - in vast stretches of antique teeming land - darkness, uunfreedoms and despair persist. On farm lands, sweat shops, brick kilns and mines, men, women and children are compelled to toil for dirt wages...Artisans, weavers... in penury....Caste... Countless more (freedom struggles) to be won... "

Was damn depressed dude. Was even more depressed by the fact that a few days later, like all other news, I would forget about it. So I went an read an Aussie Indian ex-batch-mate's blog (?).

"...market-based economy and extensive foreign direct investments have propelled India’s standing to fourth in the world in terms of Purchasing Power Parity as stated by the International Monetary Fund. Our government has deployed a variety of measures to encourage economic growth from with by lowering tariffs, import duties and dropped tax rates..." 


Sometimes, I just don't get them pseudo-economist bloggers.
   Just so that I don't look like an idiot in front of the reader, I did understand everything written and was actually delighted to read it and felt damn proud to be a true blooded Hindustani. Then I had a brilliant lunch at the mess (Like a BITsian), prepared by the poor devils who work harder than anyone else on holidays.


To more than anyone else, Happy Independence Day, Mess Folks.


PS: There was a blog about them juniors before this. My dad made me remove it.