In defence of Bank Robberies

The other day I and my friends were discussing about the different career options we were left with. This post is an off-shoot of that discussion when we suddenly realised that we had been assuming a sense of superiority over a certain breed of human beings, till then. This is to atone for that sin of ours...

There is this charming aspect of bank robbers (or robbers in general) which is often ignored unless it is exhibited by someone of the order of Catherine Zeta-Jones, or suchlike, in a heist flick from the Hollywood. But, I realised their irresistible charm, as late as last week, though I have always had a vague idea about their existence since my childhood (mostly from those heist flicks in which the protagonists come with smart plans to loot huge sums of money from ultra-secure high-profile banks which have stuff like high-precision digital fart-detectors installed).
But this write-up is not about how smart their methods are. If you are interested in that, walk out to the nearest DVD store and pick up a dozen heist films and watch it over the next weekend. Not to forget that this might even ingerminate an idea for a new kind of heist in your mind. In which case, you can either choose to implement the idea and become a martyr. Or, you can write a film script out of it and sell it to the Lakshmi Movie Makers; or, even to Warner Bros., if you fancy.
But, I digress. This one is about the laudable attitudes that those noblemen exhibit; and so it'll be.
Robbers, especially bank robbers, are actually quintessential idol-materials for the bourgeois class, just as the stars of the filmdom are. Let's see why. The bourgeois junta wants money; which they are given when they work. So, they want work. They are given work when they are educated. So, they want to educate themselves. They are educated when they give money, which completes the circle. To cut off this recursion, they in turn expect (quite tragically) their parents (who just got themselves educated for the sake of money) to work and provide the necessary money. This chain of actions extends on and on endlessly, that ultimately the common man forgets why exactly he did whatever he did and ends up professing theories much worse than this write-up when asked about the origin of this vicious cycle.
But bank robbers act differently. They are daring, iconoclastic. They defy all the common norms of living, and how! They realise that all they need is money (like the rest of us) and take the shortest possible route. They drop in to a nearby bank, a place where what-they-want is available in plenty, just snatch considerable chunks, walk out and make a living out of it. Pretty straight, if you ask me.
Let me stop with this final note. It's high time we acknowledge all these qualities in them and have an annual event for bank robberies; Call it the Grand Robbery Mela (we can have a couple of wiki pages too). In which we will keep a bank dedicated for bank robberies and deem robbing that bank as legal. The bank may have all the state-of-art security set up, have people investing in it and can work like any other bank; except that anybody who is caught robbing this bank is not punishable by law. That will be fun and deserving folks will get what they want; rather than we losers having it.

{It might have been be easy to digest this piece if you had already read this. Hmmm.. these stuff might make for a terrible mini-series.}

The elusive 2 bucks between chivalry and penury

Start note:
From now on, this blog will get mundane by the day.
A new series (which, in all probability, will stop with its first edition) will feature in this blog; in which various incidents, which will serve as testimonies for the fact that this blogger is indeed a complete nutcase, will be recalled.

This happenned long ago.

It was early in the morning. The sun hadn't shown its face yet. The time must have been around 5 a.m. I was returning back home from my college. The majority of the travel was already made and I was waiting for a bus (I had to switch buses to reach home) to my hometown which was an hour away; and it was just like any another day. Only that I had a girl (and a very pretty one at that) by my side; and she wanted to have some tea. It's not a regular case that a girl proactively suggests to have tea in a roadside shop. But, she did. The way, I hear, it works is that girls don't walk upto a place like this shop all alone and have some tea. So, when she said she wanted to have some tea, she perhaps meant that I take the baton and bring some tea for her and myself if I want one. My chivalrous inclinations are close to being ineffectual, if not exactly absent. But, I had all that earthly sense required to walk over to the shop and bring some tea for a friend. But, there was one problem; a seemingly simple problem. I didn't have the necessary money. The 2 bucks which was all that was required.
I was not exactly penniless a dozen hours ago. But how I spent what I had speaks volumes about my attitude.

{Here we need to cut to a busy frenzied men's hostel, for a tiny flashback}

The day before this morning, our second semester had ended and we were all relieved. Everybody was busy packing their bags. The stomachs were already craving for great food. As is the general case at the semester ends for the localites (from T.N.), many were short of money. If your friend, who generally is well-equipped with his rich vocabulory of cusswords, approaches you calmly and asks how you did your exams, you know what he is upto. Such was the situation. To recall it now, it is very funny to see how each one of us floundered all the money we had and made sure that we had only the exact money required for our journey back home for the vacation.
Our gang was not too bad on the economic front and we all had pocketed enough money for the fag end to take ourselves home safely. But the problem was that we had some hours to kill after the exams got over in the afternoon, before we take the buses/trains by the night; to our respective hometowns, that is. So, we arrived at this decision - the one that lead to that fateful moment described above. We decided that we will end that beautiful semester season by seeing a movie. We quickly got ready and headed over for the evening show in a theatre called Maris Mini (or was it the porn theatre that was called Maris Mini? I forget!) to watch the biggest hit in the town, Minnale. The movie had already completed more than 150 days and was relegated to this mini theatre for jobless folks like us who kept watching movies again and again. Now, we were all financially equipped till then. More important to this story, is that I was financially equipped till then. But, fate would have it otherwise.

{Here we need to cut to our computer centre, for a tinier flashback}

A couple of weeks before, during the semester examinations, I received this mail from that girl that she is gong to book the tickets in one particular bus to go home for the vacation and she can book a ticket for me too (through her dear uncle who stays within the local limits; and to whose place she visits to satisfy her hunger for tasty food, I presume) if I want it that way. I replied back saying that I would indeed like my ticket booked. Now, she was not a very dear friend and the only connection between her and me was that we came from the same place. It was very nice of her to ask this and I accepted it flatly with not much gratitude, as if I deserved a ticket from her. But, that was characteristic of me.

{Cut back to the little theatre Maris Mini}

Ashok (one of the vile friends who accompanied me) was reasoning why he would not pay for the ticket and I should do it.
Ashok: "Dei.. unakku thaan un aalu* ticket book panni vechirukkaalla.. Enakku oorukku poga thaan panam irukku.. unakku ticket reserve panniyaachu.. so ippo ticket'ta nee thaan edukkara!".
The socialist in Ashok was speaking, I realised.
And for all the naive and innocent person I was, I agreed to what he said. I went ahead and bought the tickets for the grand team of 3 people to watch the film. The theatre was pathetic to say the least and had a mono-speaker on the right end of the screen; and we had paid something around 40 bucks per head for this. More importantly, all from my pocket. But, I enjoyed the movie nevertheless, with least botheration about the fact that I had less than 20 bucks when I am supposed to travel for about seven hours in the night. Once the movie was done, I bade goodbye to the folks and caught a bus and reached the main bus stand.
There in the bus stand, to top it all, I indulged myself further. My dear reader, I further filled my appetite with a coke!

{fades out as the protagonist has a couple of gulps of the priceless coke he just bought}
Little did I know then, that there would be a moment when I would be expected to buy a cup of tea for 2 bucks, a simple act which fate would deny me from doing.
{fade in back to the tea shop}

She asks, "Shall we have some tea?"
Of course, I would have loved a good tea. But, I having a cup of tea will just increase the already alarming probability of I reaching a situation in which I will have to to confess how ended up penniless, to a pretty girl (repeat, a very pretty girl).
I replied back, with my thoughts and fingers lingering around my empty wallet, "No.. I generally don't have tea." I further condescended to tea - "I hate the way it smells.."
And then stolidly accompanied her, walking well behind so as to avoid any chances of she expecting (it's a meagre 2 bucks after all) me to take the wallet out, till the shop, watched her pay and drink all of that tea.
Once we got into a bus that leads to our hometown, I told her, "You take the tickets for me too. I will give you the net sum later. I guess I don't have the change.", pretending to be making an off-handed request.

* - Aalu roughly translates to a girlfriend, and of course, Ashok was bantering about when he referred to her as my Aalu, as yours truly never got anywhere near. My EQ ranges from 7.5 to 7.9, btw.

End note:
I wonder how funny she would find this account of mine if she reads it. But never mind, this blog has hardly a handful of readers :).

Mr. Zero goes to the Bookfair (pun intended)

This blogger is a complete nuthead and wades through the life for very unobvious reasons. Most of what he thinks, talks or writes is about (or, related to) films. This time he revives a little bit of his enthusiasm towards books, which has come in intermittent fits in the past, and goes to the Chennai Book Fair 2006.
This time he ventures into the bookfair mainly for some Tamil books (IHHO, this bookfair is just not the place for English books). He is truly an ignorant chap when it comes to Tamil books. Not that he is a voracious reader of English literature. But, at least, he had those fits of enthusiasm at different times.
That, he somehow managed to get his stories (and even some dimwitted poems) written in Tamil published in his college Thamizh Mandram website is something he is able to look back and laugh at.
The only Tamil poem this blogger ever recited (yeah, he never wrote poems, a la Gunaa; once he recited this "poem" jocularly mocking the poem competition his literary friends conducted; however, they went ahead and published it in their website!) read something like this.

Thoorathil paarthaal, unnai kaattum...
Arugil paarthaal, ulagai kaattum... Kannaadi!

The poem is paraphrased and pullis and aacharya kuris added for desired effect, if any.

Back to yesterday. He makes a rich haul of 6-7 Tamil books, a personal record; much of which were suggested in this blog; like Aathavan's En Peyar Ramaseshan (one of the prime reasons for the reason of his visit) and Kaagitha Malargal; and also Sujatha's Eppothum Penn. He also picks S. Ramakrishnan's (who, he hears, wrote some excellent articles in Aanantha Vikatan; but somehow chooses not to buy those - Thunaiezhuthu and Kathaavilaasam - because he expects some acquaintance of his to buy/must be already having it) Urupasi.
Even the last year he did visit the bookfair; but didn't look beyond film-related books. From what he remembers, he bought the screenplay of Santosh Sivan's film Terrorist. {There were screenplays for a host of movies made in other languages. But he doesn't exactly like the idea of reading the screenplays of other language films in Tamil. He prefers either seeing the film subtitled, :p, or at least reading an English translation}. This time, he buys this book, if his memory serves him right titled Nadippu Enbathu Enna?, written by Mahendran (he has already read Mahendran's Cinemaavum Naanum and the screenplay of his masterpiece Uthiri Pookkal, before) and a bunch of issues of Thirai, one of those low-profile high-brow Tamil film magazines (like Uyirmai and Kaalachuvadu), the contents of which he mostly disagreed (quite vehemently) with, in the past.
Also among the picks were Sundara Ramasamy's Oru Puliyamarathin Kadhai (about which he has heard his friend rave about) and Vaanagamae Ila Veyilae.
The funniest of all, he buys this book called Naalu Moolai, a collection of essays by Ra. Ki. Rangarajan published in Annanagar Times, just because the cover looked good![*] Though, he would rationalize it by saying that, he did have immense liking and respect towards Ra. Ki. Rangarajan, because of the simple reason that the same writer co-wrote the dialogues of the film which he considers as the best of Tamil cinema.

[*] - The man in the same stall kept suggesting this new book about the Travis Bickle'ish lives of software engineers in India (apparently, a first of its kind in Tamil literature) whose title he has forgotten now. He should try it later.

Thank-you Note:
Lazygeek and Chenthil.

End note:
Time for some good reading!

Update (on Jan 17 10:46 a.m.):
This blog has no readership whatsoever. But, just in case, if somebody chose to click on the link to this blogger's published short story and entertain himself/herself, he/she might have to use IE; and even worse, install fonts from here.

Who am I?

I am just a sperm who got a lucky. I realise I have already lived too long compared to my sperm-bros. Though apparently I seem to have lost all my memories of that phase of my life, I must still say, from what I perceive, life should have been much similar there. There were some folks who were deliberately slow and had no plans of reaching their supposed-to-be-targets. They were called the weak ones. Now I realise how unfair it was to call them the weak ones. I confess I called myself "lucky" only by mainstream standards and because it made the line look cool (an indulgent writer's POV). Personally, I can't really say that I was lucky or they were unlucky.
Yeah, I am just a sperm who got "lucky". A very lazy sperm at that; who lost all its naivé optimistic zest when it reached the largely coveted spot. I am a "winner" who is basking in his past "glory"; not bothering about his next spot. On an average case, I have much more time to look forward to.
Much as people try to convince me that man (or sperms for that matter) doesn't get to live forever, I still think life is infinite for all practical purposes and hence there is no internal thrust to fastly reach the next spot. May be, I am confusing indeterminate with infinite. In fact, yes! {Here the reader has to pardon me for suddenly jumping into classical mathematics} In classical mathematics, an indeterminate value can be anything. But, applying it to philosophy, an indeterminate value can be anything precisely because it's value doesn't hold any significance. Thus, an indeterminate value can take any value and still can be perceived as being the same. So, you don't feel that somebody is catching up with you. which makes you feel that you are living on and on. Thus, some of my sperm-bros who dropped earlier didn't lose much, I understand. But hey, I didn't lose anything at all! In fact, now that I am already a "winner", I have nothing left to lose. That's exactly why I am basking in my state of losslessness.
This dude contemplates suicide, time and again. Funny as it may be, I never got those suicidal thoughts. I really don't seem to question futility of any kinds. Living in complete coordination with the pervasive (or infinite) futility makes the sense of the pervasive futility disappear completely. And I start thinking about which restaurant I should hop over for my dinner. And there, I complete the full circle. All in a minute.

Of Spirits and Spiritualism

The Prologue:
The vodka[1] doesn't know you drink it. You have feelings about it, but it has no feelings about you. The vodka doesn't know what you paid. People shouldn't get emotionally involved with their vodka.
- Anon

The Post:
Of late, I have started feeling that booze is over-rated. This was the last significant theory I had come up with to bore my friends. Here, I have also found some obvious parallel between Vodka and God. Vodka never does it to you. You do it using Vodka. But, human beings always want to attribute certain things to external influences. God is one. Vodka is another. I really don't question this phenomenon, because I embrace irrationality as it comes. If not for that quality, the human race wouldn't be what it is. This attribution of our acts to external and internal influences have always been a point of discussion and arguments for our ancestors, and suggestions for external influences have always been interesting. Thats for another blog post. Or, may be not.
So, this degenerates into another ramble after I realised that booze is no more what it used to be for me. I am disillusioned, like a devout theist suddenly pondering why God never actually eats the prasaadam which is made for him. Yeah, the sudden rational questionning about the destination of Prasaadam is quite unfair to the God. But, I am not gonna budge. Now, I keep challenging my friends that mabbu is within. Perhaps later, I might (in all probability) come a full circle and become a theist back again. But for now [2], I am a teetotaller-convert!

The Epilogue:
Mabbu glass'la'yaa irukku? Manasu'la irukku....
- Zero, as on Dec 11, 2005.
{It is to be noted here that the author apparently had 3 sessions of booze and deep contemplation after making this particular quote and is completely convinced of its validity}

Footnotes:
[1] - The reader can replace all the occurrences of Vodka with his/her favourite drink. Mine was not Vodka. But, it somehow was apt from a writer's POV. Something like a Tequila was too cult'ish for this post.
[2] - It is a pure coincidence that such a stance is taken during the dawn of another year. But, now that it has coincided, I might as well call it my new year resolution! But, does "I might not drink much as of now" count as one? :D

QOTD #4

I have just realised that, regardless of the fact I love my job or not, I would always love quitting it.

- Zero, as on Nov 21, 2005.

Cigarettes

The Prologue
Statutory Warning: Reading this post is injurious to health. Before you think I cracked an abysmally insipid joke, I suggest you to get going with the post and figure out at the end how much good sense this "statutory warning" makes in the larger context, apart from being a lame joke.

Chapter 1: Cigarettes
Here at 3 in the afternoon, with one of those weekly team meetings just over, I move back to my spot and stare blankly, for quite a while, at the monitor before deciding to write this piece.
Another guy whose participation in the meeting was as bland as mine - thus letting him be in the same empty state as me - doesn't do the same. He drags one of his chums off to the terrace, pulls a stick from his pocket and lights it up. He does it. So does every smoker, thus evading those empty moments, that arise after one laughs at his manager's jokes, by doing something; unconditionally. Habits, my dear reader, habits! Habits make a Man.
No emotions, no discussions, no contemplation; just a few fleeting moments of unreasonably (here some smokers may raise an objection; but that was a compliment) pleasing act, as perhaps Hitckcock would have put it.
Before the reader presses Alt-F4 irritated at getting to hear such a preposterous "reasoning" *for* smoking, I would like to emphasize that my reasoning in itself is senseless. But, that's exactly where I am hitting at. Without being senseless at times, life wouldn't be what it is.

The Epilogue
Some stare blank. Some smoke. Some write. Some read what others wrote.

Stupid QOTD #3

Its fine to have opinions on gobi manchurian; but not on people who have opinions on gobi manchurian; at least, not when it's to do with a 'gobi manchurian'. :)

Lovelution

How poetry ever got written -- that never struck me!
- Richard P. Feynman

The Prologue:
I agree to the above statement to various degrees at different times. But never did it strike as completely false to me. And in a peculiarly similary way, it applies for love too in my life.

The Post:
Recently, I read Bharath's write-up on this thing called love (though I felt it was more about loss of one's love), and started musing what it meant in my senselessly stupid life. I talking about love is like camels talking about bungee-jumping. Even as I type this, I realise that I have given a rather nice form to love (bungee-jumping), here. Sometimes, I end up comparing it to several unsavory things (toilets, for example).
Not that love was/is impossible for me. Its only that I don't seem to have actually felt considerable amount of love for anybody till now. If you want to get a fairly accurate depiction, think Rajesh from Gautam's Minnale (I don't quote examples from inane movies or those which I don't admire; but the characterization, with the right amount of ineptness, never got closer than this). Hold on. Before you think I was roaming around bullying people around wearing thick black jerkins and bunch of fancy chains around my neck, the comparison was strictly meant for the level of interaction with girls and the directions it took during the few times I did interact (which is mostly when we are pulling the legs of some poor guy linking him unsavourily to some quiet/enthusiastic girl in the class).
The general (and hence senseless too) perception is that, in the social setup in which I spent my time as a teenager, for a guy to fall in love with a girl (or at least run/crawl after skirts in general), he had to be this hip guy (another inept description; but the material seems to deserve it) or the mushy-mushy "you-are-what-I-live-for" love. Unfortunately, yours truly was neither and (hence?) belonged to the rest {a real fat percentage at that, who never actually fall in love until some day they get married} theorizing love among friends (not quite similar to Vivek in those several "college-romance" flicks, but in the same ballpark; note the innumerous inane references in Tamil films throughout in this post).
Honestly looking back (and pointlessly theorizing why I was the way I was), I never grew up from being the boy who fiercely competed with fellow female classmates in acads and local quizzes during my school life to become the prototype adolescent who flirts in a real dumb way with the fairer sex. By the time I grew up and started appreciating the finer aspects of the female species (like Psmith would have put it), I was far off from being the dude whom I would describe henceforth (for the sake of discussion) as the "I-need-girlfriends" type (another phrase conceived by Pa. Vijay for Boys; need I repeat that it is another reference to an inane movie?). I admit I had crushes; in fact, lots of them. But, none of them turned out to have even 1/10th of the mush quotient (no disrespect here; to reduce the mock-factor, let me make it 'emotional quotient') required to be actually called love or to deliberately introduce some familiarity with the girl concerned. The result was this total absence/stray occurrences of interaction with females. And like the true boy-next-door-in-a-town-in-Tamilnadu {unfairly neglected in the representation of youth in Kollywood cinema considering the sheer numbers in which they are bred in real life; except for those rare cases like Sethu}, I was better off being one who laughs his ass off when a guy mumbles/explains/cries about his true love for some femme fatale.
This post does ring a bell with my "love life".
Yes, I did sit in last bench for most part of college life. I use profanity of all kinds in all languages. I did sometimes think (perhaps, quite stupidly) my sense of humour (take it with a pinch of salt, now ;)) is alien/didn't match with many of the females I had known (at least from what I had heard about things they *choose* to giggle at). I yak a lot of bullshit in any topic but can't really say if I can/can't "start a topic with a member of the oppoisite sex", because I never deliberately did it (loads of ego, perhaps). I am not anywhere close to being a fan of rock music too (though my close friends worship it). Yes, all thru my college life, I belonged to this boys gang in which nobody had a girlfriend. {On the flip side, I hate Gaana songs and I really hate Deva. I am a guy with two left feet. I watch all kinds of movies. eat any food; somehow I maintain this vegetarian thing which might jolly well go for a toss any day.}
But the key difference is {I learn from here that it is called post hoc ergo propter hoc} that while that dude is explaining "why we never get them" (thus giving a cause-effect relationship), I never seemed to have even tried hard to get them (thus thinking of this as a correlation). To sum it up, I never indulged myself into love and took some immense stupid pride in it.
When in a relatively saner state, we (I and my friends) have tried to reason (for discussion's sake) why we are what we are, and came up with different reasons which ranged from frequency mismatch (assumption of intellect), too emotional for the pieces of wood that we are, multi-layered futility {which, I realise, is the most important factor - this observation updated much later; on Feb 6, 2:15 p.m.} etc. Sometimes we were even told that it will happen to us one day when we get "matured".
I don't question why things are the way they are. Well I do - actually way too often - but, only for the sake of a discussion. When it comes to deeds, I just float like a piece of wood (a rather dull description of a rather joie de vivre life ;)). Hence, as much as I don't question the existence of love, I also don't question the inevitability of a marriage (an arranged marriage at that). Interestingly(?), in Minnale, Rajesh eventually meets his kind of girl. Every man has an opinion of his kind of girl (even as I type this, I feel this definitive urge not to write it; call it a big fat ego not to reveal your need for something to anybody or plain shyness). Mine is some girl who is very similar to me - who can yak about bullshit (preferably with a vocabulary with rich profanity that challenges mine :); am not an expert, btw) for hours, which will make me feel at home. In short, she should be able to comprehend this senseless/worthless/stupid ramble and its undercurrents :).

Epilogue:
I guess, I kinda understand the need/desire for a female company in the life of any man. But I seem to ask, "well.. what's the hurry?". Yeah, I am like Jeff, the Dude, in Big Lebowski.

How not to have yourself arrested 101

The Prologue a.k.a The regular ramble
This blog that is half-dormant wakes up when I seriously try to reiterate the obvious; or quite unusually, when I really have something to say. Or do both these things mean the same? It certainly appears so.

The post
Another day. Another thing. Suhasini has joined hands with Kushboo after apologising to her on behalf of tamilians and has received brickbats from all quarters ranging from the Nadigar Sangam to what not (and a new case is also being filed). I don't feel the slightest of the responsibility to apologise on behalf of the rambunctious bunch who raised this as an issue at first place, though. Apparently, Suhasini did and is in the loop now.
More importantly, I wonder if a non-bailable warrant can be issued against somebody who didn't turn out to attend the court hearing on a case which is worth contending for the stupidest of the cases ever filed. Isn't there any validation before calling for a court session? Or, was that the Mettur Judge actually felt Kushboo did something which is worth a hearing?
One of my acquaintances pondered over this:- What would have been the reaction from this wild bunch (sorry, Peckinpah) if it was, umm, a man - and a born tamilian at that - said the same thing? Now, that reveals quite many dimensions of this issue. There are still people out there believing that they actually have let Kushboo live in T.N. and she better dance to their tunes (which apparently she did in the past :p).

The Epilogue
I believe staunchly that all living beings (and their beliefs) are equally stupid. And, time and again, there's somebody out there who comes dangerously close to dash this theory off.

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, isn't coding the process of introducing them?

Remembered reading this quote somewhere. Can apply this ditto to life!

The right to be Stupid

I don't want to have opinions, though I have been accused quite many times to have many many opinions. At least after long years of mindless arguments (though I continue to have them :)) I am pretty sure that one should not have opinions if he wishes to wade through this life like he would sip his morning coffee - quite mindlessly and nonchalantly, yet with an actually undeserving happy feel. But, thats hardly the case in real life. We all tend to have opinions and there is no real line which we can draw as the limit.
First thing in the morning, thanks to my addiction to blogs, I hear of this thing (from a very likely source for me, George).
And here, I find myself having hardly an opinion on it. Nothing seemed to strike me. Not Freedom of speech, not Bloggers' rights. Nothing. Sure, I am shook myself to know that a guy had actually quit his job for standing with his opinions about some goddamn institute. Gaurav may be one of the very few to do such a thing. But, the blank reaction comes when one asks what is my opinion on this? That one should fight for his rights? What kinda rights? I had found many people stupid. Yet, if I keep ranting on, say, an Abdul Kalam (thanks to his talks on future, dreams and success), I will sure receive brickbats from many quarters and I guess there is even some provision in constitution to put me behind the bars. So, what is the point? Is it that IIPM doesn't deserve to react when somebody points out some glaring stupidity in their claims as the President could afford to?
Well, I am not making any point here. Its an explanation to myself as to why I am shook by this incident and yet not having any opinion on it.
One might say that the moral of the story is: "If you play with matches, you get burned".
Someone else might say the words need to be chosen more carefully with enough vitriol, like this: "If you introduce yourself to pigs, you might end up in deep shit".
Comparing IIPM to matches (and this whole story to the quoted proverb) is hardly the thing I would like to do. Nor am I going to say the latter fits the bill. But, both of them mean the same. Don't they?

Which came first? - II

Again, Which of these came first? and which one followed?

a. Atheism,
b. Theism, or
c. Agnosticism

Answers?

Which came first? - I

Of all the thoughts that really fascinate me, backtracking through man's history (or a more generic form of life) to guess how man discovered various entities in life/nature/world/universe from scratch is one of my favourites. Or, to be more precise, my most favourite topic! So, here it goes....

Which of these ideas struck man first? and which one followed?

a. God,
b. Luck, or
c. Murphy's law (in its spirit, of course)

If clarifications required, read about God, Luck, and Murphy's law.

Now, Answers?

S. Anand (a.k.a.) My first post without references to Zero, Infinity and Kurosawa

I wonder if S. Anand ever wrote his opinions/thoughts; Or, is it that he is paid to write some rambunctious rebellious [no compliment, that one] articles [preferrably involving some caste] on/about Tamilnadu. How else would you explain this [Link via here]? And after writing this and this recently.
Read the whole lots.

P.S.:- Though I generally refrain from personal rant on the contents of these articles (paying my homage to the movie, you-know-which!), most of his articles revolving around religion/casteism (to a pseudo-level, u know) triggered this piece of rant.

QOTD #2

I am feeling really bored and and it seems to be as unreasonable as my birth was.

The zero-circle connection

Ever wondered why 0's figurative representation was a circle? Add to this that they are the most cannily natural in the world/universe [The likes of e and pi being the uncanny ones]. Assuming that Arya Bhatta decided its shape, I wonder if he wondered about why he chose that shape, as much as I do/did. For me, its a stroke of genius!
But, many a times, I arrive at this particular simple reasoning which anyone would give when posed with this question.
A primary-school physics theory goes like this - Suppose a man starts from a particular point and comes back to the same point. By theory of physics, he has travelled a distance of 0 units.
This very well could have been the reason for that shape [If you see, counting and representation of numerals were invented from mundane real-life experiences rather than trysts with surreal genius]. Such a simple explanation and I find myriad philosophical interpretations of it.

QOTD/TFTD:
In trying to explain the most complex things, we end up explaining the most obvious ones.

P.S.- The discerning reader would note that the above quote is an example for itself.

Incorrigible optimism & its underlying theory

It's been quite long since I understood I can't have my takes on peace or any other futile but overbearingly optimistic thoughts/processes. May be, I know too much to believe in a better humanity and an all-peace world. But, more I think on those lines [that is, more I actually know it's quite an impossibility for us to improve (and that its not that we exist the way we are destined to. But, it’s that we could have existed in only one path and that’s the path we have taken. Also we will be taking the only path we can take)], the more I think we all fake this theory too much. The thrust for something in life is omnipresent and I will be playing a pseudo-Sanyasi, who finds sex futile for his life (only after copious doses of it, mind you*), but still cannot resist it at times and decides to bust it all off, if I claim otherwise. So, back to square one**!

* - Don't you think I end up rephrasing many clichéd proverbs?
** - I would have personally liked a phrase like 'back to the start point' or something to that effect referring to a circle. Because, talking about squares is so naive!

Drunken Philosophers

Prologue:
Woody Allen muses about life in the prologue (may I reinvent the word in the movie's context?) of the movie "Annie Hall" with a quote about two elder women talking in a restaurant (about how terrible the food is in the restaurant, and at the same time in small portions). Here are some such musings (though this happenned much before I saw Annie Hall) about how contradictory life can be to what we think (at a surface level) it is; and heck, somewhere around, even we seem to be aware of it's irony!


Chapter 1:
"Don't you see?" - Ashok exclaimed, frustrated at Vels, wondering at his inability to see what he is able to see. Add to this the fact that both of them were in their fourth round of booze.
After a split-second pause and then a gulp, "Zero and Infinity are pretty much the same. That’s why I think it's all a big neat circle!"
"Which all?"
"Everything"
"Like?"
"Life!"
"So, now you jumped to life! Huh?" - Vels retorted.
"I was talking about it, all along.. Isn't it?"
There was this unusual silence when the bearer came and placed a jar on the table.
"Look. I agree I am drunk and all that.." - Vels nodded in ack - as Ashok elucidated his theory.
"Haven't you felt this? Taking in more and more of something pulls away the interests you have on it and you effectively don't do much after doing so much."
Vels blankly kept staring at the last round of whisky that’s supposed to heat up his food pipeline and light up his mind’s thought line, and was wondering if Ashok was referring to the whisky they were having. But, if that was the case, Ashok was from being correct. "Lots of whisky, more love towards it", he thought.
"I don't know why every other person I meet has this T-Shirt with 'Why a beer is better than a woman' junk. "One large beats both of them equally good"..
"Yeah.. I too hate beer, man. The mabbu* per unit volume is pathetically low."
Ashok resumed the discussion much to Vels' despair.
"Suppose you start learning something and act according to it. As you dig deep into that something, you slowly are disillusioned. More deep you learn it, more you realise you need not have learnt it at all. There is sense of incompleteness in the quest. Then you slowly stop acting according to what you have learnt. act as in double-quotes, which can mean "following your principle", "doing good to the society" or anything in that league. That means, logically its like you have unlearned everything and you are back again to square one."
"..." - This was Vels' attempt at a retort.
"I know what you are going to ask me", asserted Ashok with a sense of supremacy, which one can afford to have when he is with a guzzler (and only that) like Vels by his side.
"The concept of 'acting according to what one has learned' can mean anything.. As we acquire knowledge of things around this world, we make an interpretation of it - What's good and what's not; what we should we do and what we should not; what we enjoy and what we don't. But, slowly the inevitable disillusionment occurs on everything. For example, you must have, at some point of your life, felt like you want to somehow make a difference - force a change in so many things. So, I would go on to say that 'acting according to what one has learned' could be like doing anything, a so-called-positive-thing, we are doing can be put under this category - to force some change. Then you realise no one can force any change... There is this unchanging phenomenon that you sense. Futility becomes our middle name. But again, we put your mind into something else is an altogether different matter worthy of another day at this same pub. The cliché goes that 'The Universe/World is in the way that it's meant to be'. When my father told me this, I thought he didn't put much thought into it and that he wanted to get away with some answer for my inquisitive questions. But, now I realise how true he was."
Then, Vels came up with something that made Ashok chuckle in delight with intellectual respect for Vels.
"May be even your father was talking the same to a sane idiot like me when he was in his 20's and you will tell pretty much the same to your son as well, when he asks for a fancy bike which his friend, whose father will happen to be a CEO of a MNC, had bought. You will tell him that nothing will make no difference.."

Chapter 2:

Ashok and Vels continue musing over the world, life and themselves. Only that, this time they ramble in equal parts.

V - "This life is a double-edged sword. Isn't it?"

A - "In my honest opinion, it's not even a sword! Life can't be described by any word, but itself. I am generalizing the quote from 'Citizen Kane' here. That's why we have the word 'Life'. Isn't it?"

V - "Okay. but if it was a sword, it wud be double-edged. isnt it?"

A - "...."

V - "Let me state myself clearly.. coz I am not here to prove to u the premises I assume. Everybody has got his own. I just want to verify the inference with you..."

A - "So what if I don't agree with the assumption itself.. because if you want me to agree with the inference only as against the assumption, how wud you call it 'verified' by me?? Isn't premise yet another inference made from some other premise which in turn wud be another inference?"

V - "err.. What about axioms??"

A - "there are no axioms in this world! But then u would ask me, how could something be made out of nothing. then I wud use the theory of maaya to explain. But that would again make you correct as well.. besides me and others, of course!"

V - "but then tell me.. Whats the truth you believe in?"

A - "In searching the truth, we fail!"

V - "did you?"

A - "what?"

V - "Did you fail searching for truth?"

A - "I didn't search for it."

V - "So, you didn't you fail?"

A - "I did.."

V - "Then, what's the point?"

A - "Nothing. Why do you look for points?"

V - "Why don't you? Doesn't not doing something involves the same amount of mental work as doing it?? Don't you believe in something? For example, I staunchly believe in truth.. Something like that.. huh?"

A - "Yeah.. I am staunch believer of bullshit.. thts a truth I see myself in.. But this too will pass on."

Epilogue:
I don't need no shit and nothing makes no difference.


* - The colloquial word in Tamil for 'drunken effect' (there's not straight translatory word, u see)

Long Time.. No Post..

Now, lemme admit. I am a movie freak. If at all, I am shedding off my cynical (and my pet theory is: cynical ain't pessimistic) look at life, its for cinema. That is why, this blog has been the step-child for me since I started; The straight-child (in want of a better word) being this. New posts are getting rarer and rarer (as if there were many already!). Existing posts are some random ramblings (which I intended this blog for). But the ramblings must come at a brisk pace.

Of late, What have I been thinking, of late??? will come back once I got what it was/is. If you are wondering WTH is going on, this post will be in writing-stage for quite long time. So, "I will" actually means "I had", when you are reading the post.

Just ditch the experiment in the narrative in the last paragraph.

Update: Apr 11, 7:07 p.m.
That i might get fired soon keeps me in check from going on and on browsing the net.

Update: May 9, 03:36 p.m.
I hate this whole <b>caste-match-thing for 2 ppl to marry</b>. It mite be really stupid to say this hackneyed lament and put it in ur blog as well. But currently this goddamn thing (in reluctamnce to use the F word) is the shit, I feel I should get out of.

And, I also want to close this long-time-in-drafting stage post with this. Time: 3:46 p.m. May 9.