And the sun shines!

Twitter killed the blogger. Yep.

For once, I'm not whining. I'd even hazard a walk on the chirpy side and say life's a big cup of vanilla ice cream at present. Little has changed mentally, however. The coming of some fragments of joy have been interspersed by the usual mind-numbing queries. But after I don't know how long, the former is trumping the latter, considerably.

Work has been interesting in the past two months. It hasn't been too different to be honest. May be the way I look at it and treat it has changed. If so, I'm not sure how that happened. May be an inevitable end has a role to play in one's approach to the end itself. The fact that you hope an issue ends a certain way does affect your perception of it I suppose.

On a normal day, I'd be brooding over this and trying to figure it out. But not now. Now, I'm cheery, chirpy and I sound like I've swallowed a bowl of sunshine for breakfast. If this is what bare-minimum levels of contentment would do to a person, I'm not sure I want it.

It's all going to crumble down to the default state soon anyway.

Just move on already

There is something I don't understand about us Indians. What is it about terming everything under the sun as offensive? Do we actually get offended? Or do we just want something to outrage about? Being offended, I think, is a very strong reaction, not very different from hatred. Question someone on them painting something as they 'hate' and they're quick to downgrade it to dislike.

If it's not some stereotype in an American movie, it's some obscure village in Serbia you've never even heard of, banning a book you probably didn't bother to read other than those recital competitions in school. Nobody wants to outrage at a certain Indian stand-up fellow being typically racist about everybody in the world (hey, he's doing it about everybody, so it's not racist,) but you want to go hammer and tongs at some random dude who probably bet with his mullah friend that he can make it to the national papers by issuing a fatwa against a form of exercise.

I am not asking you to outrage less and not waste your energy and all that. Saving your energy is of no concern to me. But if you do want to scream at someone at the top of your lungs, scream at the person who gave food to the semi-nude tribal wanting to see a dance, not at the cameraman who filmed it. If you want to get offended, be so at your politicians who have effectively voted themselves into power and done nothing for you, rather than tweeting the hell out of how Kolaveri is an insult to Tamil film lyrics and all that jazz.

Do what you want, I'm nobody to tell you not to, but when stupidity is mooning you, you've all but joined the stupids if you don't outrage about them.

Fruition

I'll confess. Ever since I walked out of having what has been undoubtedly the single most exhilarating experience of my life so far, I've been attempting, in my head, to put it into words. And somehow, not surprisingly I'd say, I've failed miserably.

A dream, as I've come to realise, is only valid if it is first dreamt of. For me, watching the Indian GP was not a dream come true. You know how when you were young and thought, "One day, I'll go to Chepauk and watch Sachin bat" or "I'll go to the Eden Gardens and be one among the sea of cricket fans." With F1, for me, it was always the overtly ambitious dream of going to Malaysia and watching a race in Sepang on watching it in Melbourne. Not even in a highly delusional adrenaline filled state did I ever dream of watching a race right here in India. And when that came true recently, I was lost for words or expressions.

When I entered the stands and found a seat, I could hear the unmistakable rumble of a F1 car approaching me. That ear singeing cacophony at 19,000 rpm on top gear. That oh so famous moment as the cars go off throttle and exhaust gases bend inwards and outwards to produce that now familiar crackling. Every single part of that ultimate doff of the hat to all things related to physics worked in perfect harmony to bring towards me my first ever sighting of a F1 car. Fittingly for the occasion, I thought, it was the Lotus of Karun Chandhok. (I later learnt that Karun had overtaken Adrian Sutil sometime before my stands so that he could be the first one to put down an official time on the sheets for the Indian GP.)

The three days ended in a flash. The build up of the excitement was completely worth every single rupee I spent. Yes, there were a million things that weren't up to the mark. You would have read it in the papers or seen it online. But those things just don't matter.

After a few years, when I recall this unforgettable experience, (yes, despite my memory being famously attributed to that of a snail on morphine, this is permanently etched along with cycling and driving) the guard who didn't let us carry bags and cameras inside the circuit on the first day wouldn't figure in the story, the appalling sight of people buying Force India flags wouldn't be a part of the tale, the sight of tens of people mulling around the food counter when Vettel was blitzing the track on his pole lap would find no place in the recollection.

What would figure though, is that perfect symphony of that V8 engine revving at 19,000 rpm, that lucky picture I clicked of Michael Schumacher manoeuvring the exit of a chicane WITH ONE HAND OFF THE STEERING WHEEL, that image of Mark Webber carrying the Indian tricolour during the drivers parade, that idiotic marshall who decided against everything proper to sweep dust ONto the racing line, that moment when I froze when Michael Schumacher went past my stands during the drivers parade and I was completely sure that he looked directly at me. 

And finally, that single moment when all those years of unbridled depression seeing them taste defeat and the uncontrollable happiness of revelling in success, knowing that my screams of joy were in unison with the tifosi family spread far and wide, finally met reality - when I saw that scarlet Ferrari flow down the track, that was, in a way, salvation.

I guess some things that you experience won't ever be rubbed out of your memory.

Two men getting their pants in a knot

This is the tale of how two completely clueless men went about acquiring the skills to buy 'nighties' to be put to use by the mother of one of the aforementioned men.

It was late on a Saturday evening. One guy was a local in Madras, the other had come all the way from Pune for work to the dosai-city. Plans had been made around noon to go and get a pint or two sometime in the evening, after their work for the day was done and discuss the events of the past two days - the conference they had to attend had quite a few interesting things to talk about. But, as the omnipresent, omnipotent and omni(insert other such praises) Murphy would have it, the mother of the non-local called up and apparently, her sources told her that Chennai has good 'cotton nighties' and that the son needs to buy them asap.

Of course, any plans of inebriated work talk was immediately scrapped and the local made a call back home to ask his mother as to where one might procure the famed 'cotton nighties.' After certain assurances, a trip was made to one long-standing textile shop outside of the shopping centres of Madras. Once there, the two men deftly asked one of the shop's employees as to where one might get to choose these 'nighties'. After hurriedly looking behind the two men for any female unit(s) accompanying them, the female employee hid her mouth with her hand to hide the rampant giggling and signaled 'first floor.'

Grudgingly climbing the steps up to the first floor, the two men had already got past the giggling, they knew they should expect more. The row of 'nighties' were displayed not on any aisle, but at a corner of the first floor which was overlooking the ground floor and the entrance to the shop. "Perfect," the local thought, "this is exactly what people entering the shop would want to see, two men grappling with a tape measure to buy 'nighties'."

And that was precisely what the two men did. Slowly walking past the bewildered looks meted out by other females buying these 'nighties' (oddly, one burkha-clad woman was buying them too, they must be really popular, these 'nighties'.) "Tape measure irukkuma?" asked the local to the (obviously!) female attender. She had exceptional strength to hide her giggles and hand out a tape measure to the poker-faced chap from Pune. Immediately, the chap held out a certain 'nightie' for the local to measure. And measure, he did, from one seam of the shoulder to the other. "19 inches," he said to the other guy. "Too much, I think," said the Pune guy. The local, it would suffice to say, was quite convinced that he should not ask the other guy how he came to that particular conclusion.

Repeated and rather frantic calls were made back to the mother unit in Pune in order to avoid any mix-up. "What can the length be?" "Yes, mother, I am actually at the store." "Yes, the employee assures me that it's cotton." "What do you mean it has to be thick? How would I know what is thick and thin in a 'nightie'?" "Yes, I will attend that wedding with you. Who's wedding is it again?"

After a good 15 minutes of varying measurements and repeated assurances by the employee that the chosen 'nightie' was "pure cotton saar," the required number was bought and taken delivery of. Once the 'nighties' went into the cover though, the two men were overcome with both pride and a strange sense of achievement. Walking out of the store, they quietly sniggered at the men carrying covers and waiting outside the store, some with and some without a kid in their hand, for their better halves to complete their shopping.

If there is something called an old wives' tale, surely, there must be something called Tales of valiant men who spent a good part of their married life waiting outside a store for their wives.

Dear irrational person

Sometimes, it's just easy to write something scathing and hurtful about you. I could do it in a jiffy and it'd hurt you till your last breath. But what I want you to know is that there are times when I will control myself. Not for your sake mind you. You usually flatter yourself like that.

What I do is always dependent on what I want to do and never on you. Let's get that straight. I do not, and I am making this abundantly clear seeing how telling you in your face has no effect, give a flying fuck for your irrationality. I loathe it. I look down upon it. I pity you for being in such a deluded state. But I will never ask you to see things the way I see it. Not only would that go against everything I stand for, that'd only confuse the hell out of you and your puny little brain that is insanely blinded by all that you assume, irrationally of course.

Whilst just reading this, you're going to be fuming your top off, I know that much. But you should know, this is a very restrained attack - yes, this is an attack alright - and that there is a lot more from where this comes from. It is not that a fuller attack would affect you more, I am not a very hurtful person in general. I usually don't even make an attempt to know someone enough to let them get on my nerves. 

And I should thank you for reiterating my belief in the general prevalence of absolute cock and bull irrationality that made me shut myself down to people in the first place. You are everything that turned me into a cynic a few years ago. You are everything I detest in this world. And now, when people ask me why I am the way I am, I have a living example to quote. And warn about. I should thank you for that.