S#$% Happens

There was a famous phrase in college which people frequently uttered after tests. Two words which could give you a clear idea of what happened inside the examination hall.

It went like, "S#$% Happens."

However, the problem comes when it happens to you in real life and when the effects seem to be unending. When life just refuses to let go of you and keeps pulling you back into the quicksand of non-existent problems that refuse to let you live in peace. Whether its your body, your mind, your soul or your surrounding is immaterial. There are times when the suicidal tendency takes over and you sit quietly on your bed stealing a glance at your ceiling fan every now and then. Or when you decide to ride your bike at above ninety kilometres only hoping that something makes you brake really hard and the pain ends once and for all.

But some of us get so deep into the S##$ that we are never able to pull ourselves back and we just keep going deeper till one point comes when it doesn't matter any more. When everything we do is ignored with a little understanding nod of the head, when people say, "He used to be a brilliant chap, but after a point he lost all interest, s@#$ Happens"

No one bothers to sit with you and help you out. But then again, why should someone do that? Don't they have some work of their own? Why should someone try to help you when they might as well help themselves.

Then comes the time when the you embrace the mediocre safe life that every other normal mortal is living in the world.And when you die, the last words you tell your folks is "Shit Happens!"

About plain cheese 'moinee' and CDC class...

Two chaps, during their undergrad days, used to walk all of eight hundred meters to a corner of the campus for a break. One of them used to eat an ostentatious sandwich with one plain slice of cheese, smothered in mayonnaise, in between two really thin slices of bread. The other guy was content with just a tumbler of coffee. What concerned the other guy the most was that the shopkeeper had gotten himself into believing that mayonnaise is always pronounced as mo-ee-nee. Besides, the idea of eating raw eggs (a prime ingredient of mayonnaise) irked the other fellow.

But that was the past. It was a totally different story last evening when the other chap had to have plain cheese and mayonnaise sandwich and cheese omelette for dinner. Suddenly, all the memories came flooding back. Of diverse plans to change world, that were hatched, sitting on the horse shoe bench or lying supine on the soft grass of sky lawns. Be it Criticism of literary work, music or just hard-to-ignore spendthrift habits, they found stuff to discuss, everything ranging from innate to insightful. It is often said that people change with time, but I have this gut feeling, if those two guys were sitting at the same place, eating the same stuff, they might just become two undergrad students ready to change the world. All over again.

An afterthought, plain cheese moinee doesn't taste all that bad after all.

The end of another year...

Another year comes to an end. Nothing much happened. Except that, time and again, my physical resilience was tested and time and again, I failed. Reminds me of a less know top-gun remark by the bald commander, "Son, your ego is writing cheques your body can't cash!"

But all said and done, there were some things to feel nice about. The ability to work twelve hour shifts, whether at night or day was a revelation to me after all the illness. On the workfront, it was a year where I learnt more than I had in the four years in college. I guess they are right when they say college is where you make the grades, you learn when you work.

Then there were three visits home. Quality time spent with my folks, cousin getting married, overall, it was a great year at home too.

The year peaked in the end though, with one visit to Delhi that, I hope, has changed my life forever and another visit to Kolkata that only consolidated the belief that I remain a changed man. Too cryptic, but too personal as well.

By the time the next new year comes, I have this gut feeling, I will be sitting somewhere else, doing something else. But till then, there are no qualms about another year going by.

Travelling on Business

Some observations about travelling on business, especially if its within the country:

1. You don't have to look at the 'total price' line on the air tickets
2. You have no Check-in Luggage
3. There is no need to make the difficult choice between an autorickshaw and a taxi. (A taxi is a natural choice :P)
4. Never bother about finding a Hotel in any city. There is a guest house in every concievable corner of the country.
5. Never bother about long distance calls. They are always taken care of.
6. Never worry about gatepasses as they are always waiting for you at the gates of whichever refinery you visit.
7. In the end, its always fun to be travelling on work.

(Non)Violence

There have been times when I have tried to think about social issues that face the country and what we could do about them, to think in terms of masses and people below poverty line. How positive change could be brought to their condition. But alas! I have so many real problems (or conjured ones) of my own that I hardly find time to think and talk about them.

I came across this article today about two kids killing off their school mate in style. Real english movie way. Shooting at point blank range. Just that they don't understand the stigma they have brought upon themselves for the rest of their lives.

In our country I think there's a basic need to be strong and resilient in the face of adversity. We have to put to practice some really simple principles of restraint and continued effort to get us what we want and at times what we deserve or what is most rightfully ours. More often than not we have to fight for our rights, and if we decide to kill people for every little trespass, we are done for.

Come to think of it Gandhi's idiology was not too bad at the outset, the only difference in opinion lies in the fact that Gandhi expected the adversary to be softened by continuous non-violent persistence at reaching the goal and the softening would give rise to empathy, in most cases however, its sympathy (if the opponent is too powerful) or just plain irritation (if he is just another one of those sarkari babus) that works. But as long as the ends are reached through reasonably non violent means, I guess I am successful. There are places where sheer force is of no use and others, where sheer force is not even called for. All these situations can be countered by persistence. And in the end, obviously, if there's a need for force, you must have the balls. That's when the guns need to come out, not before. Reminds me of the famous Munnabhai line,

"Jab doosre Gaal pe padh jaaye tab kya karne ka, yeh Bapu ne nahi bataya"

The second day...

Another Review, but this time a true one. Unfortunately we just had a very good reason to view a movie and again, since Beowulf I had stopped believing what a review said about a movie. Hence I walked into Audi 1 of Fun Cinemas in Agra at 9:45 in the night to top off what had, till then, been a rocking day.

Being from Bengal where every kid has a natural affinity for soccer and having spent the first fifteen consious monsoons of my life kicking around a soccer ball in the slush in every position from centre-back to right out, I thought I would enjoy the film. But alas, that was not to be.

It just didn't have the feel of a soccer movie about it. The grounds were small, looked more like the ones we use for six-a-side tournaments than the actual 52 yards. The people involved were lack-lustre and there was almost no eye for detail! Its basically a really sad movie. The dialogues were repetative and the emotions seemed to have been lifted from different situations of different films. The old refrain about a past hero returning to redeem his honour, the battle for survival in a cruel world, the inevitability of shaky decisions...everything seems to be in line with the two other prominent sports movies made in the country, Iqbal and Chak De. But somewhere, the individuality was missing. No game can be won by appealing to the players' self respect only. You have to talk tactic, talk jargon, talk formation and strategy if not to teach people, at least make your viewers think that they are watching football. There was none of that in the movie. The film was definitely filled with a few mistakes and one blunder that came at the fag end and destroyed any shade of positive that could have been taken back from the movie. Have you ever seem a soccer player move up fast along the left flank and centre the ball inches away from the goal-line and then run faster than the ball itself and head it past the goalkeeper into the net?!

It's ridiculous! It's no faux pas, it's a blunder.

Arshad Warsi should stop doing roles like the one he did in Goal if he wants his career to remain on the same curve it has been following since Munnabhai. John Abraham was acceptable as a career concious footballer, but Basu appeared too promiscous. Not that she could do anything about it, it's the script that is to blame. Boman Irani was good as the coach, but even he couldn't work magic with a half-baked script. Everything that was good with the movie seemed to have been eaten away by poor editing, worse dialogue selection and a deplorable Footballing sense.

If I were asked to describe the movie in one sentence I would say, "Its a classic example of a unresearched, poorly edited and hurried attempt to cash in on the sudden craze about sports films and like any product which is a result of skewed objectives, it must fall flat on its face."

The adrenalin was not there, it just did not seem like football. Sorry guys, this one was so not watchable.

That makes it two flops in as many days!

Twice in two days!

I was duped! First by the film critics and again by the film critics, with a little aid from my well meaning friends.

It all started with reading a brilliant review of Beowulf (where, to my disgust at a later stage, Beowulf was likens to the peice of art that is 300 in terms of technique and eye for details!) in the TOI and rushing off to agra on a bike to catch the movie before it was too late. All I got in return was a Hindi dubbing where the king of Denmark welcomes Beowulf with the very Familiar expression, "Haan Beowulf... Aur Batao" (!!!) Since then it was a complete down hill journey. There was only a squirt of blood (which didn't even come close to justifying the word "gory" used more than once in praise of the film) here and there (and to compare that with the scarlet fest in 300 is like comparing red wine with Bloody Mary!). And before I forget, there was the much hyped golden nude scene which wasn't even worth a dry whistle from a fourteen year-old getting his first glance at the female form.

Come to talk about the storyline and you suddenly realize there isn't one. Maybe the dubbing blurred out most it, but even then, transition from one scene to another was more like a random draw of coupons than anything bound by a defined outline.

The characters of Beowulf seemed a watered down version of the hero that was depicted in the British Epic and even the facial expression were really difficult to decode. Fear and Anger seemed to be the same emotion. I had this idea that only human beings can't act, for the first time someone proved to me that even animated characters can be bestowed the same distinction. But then Beowulf was good considering the tragedy that happened the next day.

The Butcher's Son.

He stands at the corner of a tin shed, beside the only wall of the otherwise open shelter where the goats and broilers are kept. He wears a stained lungi. He is not more than twelve and the first strands of a fledling mustache have just started appearing above his upper lip. He does not know his tables, alphabet or even his national anthem.
Yet he is learning his trade well. He catches chicken from the cage with unsure hands but locks their wings with a deft twist of a finger. Once his brother finishes weighing the bird, he transforms. From the adolescent, still unsure of his bearings, he becomes the hardened executioner. Quietly, he twists back the throat of the fidgeting fowl and takes it out of public view by lowering it into a large plastic drum before slitting its throat with a couple of strokes of a blunt knife. The dying bird is dropped into the canister to reach its eventual destiny coloured in its own blood.
The butcher's son cleans his hands, not looking at the bird even once, not bothering about the stains on the wall, but then he takes the apron off and looks at his new spotless lungi. A few red dots appear, quickly spreading out as they are soaked into the fibre. The butcher's son is devastated, it was his new lungi. He couldn't hide his tears, its not everyday that he get a new lungi. He is still a kid, but then, he is the Butcher's Son.

Spotting the difference

Its that time of the year again. The time when we are all supposed to feel happy for some reasons which keep changing with age, location and circumstances. I would not like to indulge in another non-conformist observation of the bengali Phyche, I am just trying to figure out the need to feel happy or or-not-so-happy JUST because its Durga Puja.

Its been five years now since I was home for Durga Puja, I am sure its the same for many other people, but hardly anyone whose travel plans are not hindered by prohibitive flight costs and visa problems. These five years have changed a lot about the way I used to percieve the totality of this festival. I had taken for granted that the ambience will be thick with sound of fire crackers and the air, heavy with smoke of gun powder on the morning of the first day of Navratra as people celebrated the arrival of the Goddess. AsI had seen it happen for eighteen of the twenty three years I have lived. Once out of Bengal, Mahalaya was nothing different from just another day, but even then there were people (Staunch Bengalis, needless to mention) who would get together in a hostel common room on a chilly October morning and take control of the Television after a squirmish arising out of regional sentiments to make sure that the thirty minutes program on the arrival of the Goddess was not missed.

However, even this proposition was lost last year when I woke up to a sunny morning at Bombay to suddenly realize that that was the day when the air was supposed to be thick with gun powder smoke.

The size and scale of celebration of Durga Puja vary with the ambience as well. Somwhere its a modest little celebration for a closed community (Pilani), at places its a wasteful show of wealth and redundancy of the same (Hiranandani Gardens, Mumbai), somewhere its scale is an indicator of the strength of the community (Refinery Nagar, Mathura) and yet somewhere else its just what its meant to be, a festival celebrating the spirit of humanity where we all gather around one place wearing new clothes, taking part simple rituals and sharing the joy being where we belong (my little hamlet, somewhere on the brink of modernization, which I call 'home').

Of life, love and ....sex.

Once again, I am back to praise the bold new face of Indian Cinema. First, Guru, then Nishabdh, followed by Life in a Metro and finally Dil Dosti etc. I had half a mind to not go for the movie after reading the "two and a half review" in TOI in the morning. That coupled with a disastrous AIMCAT ( not that I usually crack them out of shape, but this was one a bit worse than the usually unsatisfactory ones) almost flushed the plans for the movie out of my mind till someone called to inform us that six tickets were already booked. All the way to the Theatre the only things that were going through my mind were cut-off, time-management, math, DI blah blah.

Had to miss lunch to get into the theatre in time... but in the end it was worth the watch.

A glorious flashback to the great college days, of asking weird questions like, "what is life? what is love? why am i doing what I am doing? or Did I always want to do what I am doing or is it just a circumstantial response to the sweeping away of well-laid plans by one swift ruthless stroke of destiny?"

I was back in my world of delusion, trying to figure out the significance of Godot or trying to delve in the confused emotions of and decyphering the cryptic dialogue in Look back in Anger. For people who like a movie that sticks to predetermined format of a screenplay, strong character, weak character, song and dance, don't go for it guys, you might as well watch Jhonny Gaddar and get entertained. This movie is all about gray, there is no head or tail. As Apurv says, "What do you do if the coin just refuses to drop flat on one face?"

This movie is different in a number of ways. The existential crisis of a fresher is beautifully projected in the foreground of a rapidly changing social mosaic where sex is not as much a blasphemy as it was. The search for the meaning of love takes our protagonist to the shady bylanes of the famous GB Road in Delhi. While romancing a schoolgirl (who, true to her school girl logic, believes there's only black and white, no shades of gray) on one hand spending nights together with a common whore he tries to delve in the complexities of love and sex and why each is different in her own way. Imaad Shah has done well in playing the character of a confused yet not cocky youth, to perfection, looking for the meaning of life, even at the risk of sounding like a pseudo intellectual. If there were a stock exchange in tinsel town, I would put my money on this guy. Shreyas is Brilliant as the typical middle class bihari, with an impeccable, "Thok De Ka!" though his accent does slip at places. He's got to do more films like this than stuff like ASMM where his talent is neither fully utilized nor appreciated. Nikita Anand plays the confused wannabe-supermodel well enough, however either due to editing faults or poor selection of dialogue, her character never totally opens up, but then women are always mysterious. The music is hummable and screenplay, commendable. This one's a must watch for people like me, still suffering from the post college blues. And here goes the clarification for those who still think you can take your kids and go watch the movie- DON'T!

Gobbledegook.

I stand at the sideline and look at all the big players, playing and winning at every possible game. I look at their happy faces and try to touch their intangible achievements with the hope that that'll give me the feel that I could never give myself. But there again I fail because there's something God never gave me, the ability to pick up my pieces and make another attempt, the ability to be the proverbial phoenix. I am sorry because I am just another normal human being with big dreams, bigger limitations and mammoth failures to my name. I try not to indulge in self pity and put up a smiling face to the huge wide world. I try to hide that feeling of deficiency with a wry smile scratched across my face. But at times, all the restraint fails and all thats left of the being that is me, is heap of smoldering remains of what started off as a crackling fire. There again, I smile and say, "Its better to burn out than fade away."

I hear people laughing and talking about what he did or she did, what he made and she found. I smile and think about what I could have done and I didn't do. And I sit on this chair, in front of this computer and keep pumping incoherent chains of random thought into the internet.

Thanks to Google, they've made so much space on the net, nobody would deny me my cribbing domain.

RAW ENERGY

Now this is what I call Mud Surfing!




I couldn't take my eyes off this snap when I came across it in The Hindu a couple of days ago. It's a glimpse of the annual cattle Race at Palakkad in Kerala.

Why Gump pipped Shawshank...

4th September was the day when I finally unravelled one of the biggest mysteries of Hollywood. I used to hate this highly acclaimed film called Forrest Gump because it took away all the Oscars from Shawshank Redemption which millions of people, along with me, think, is one of Hollywood's greatest creations. However, there definitely are some reasons why the best film award went to Forrest Gump. Firstly, the movie speaks of hope more forcefully than Shawshank Redemption and hope and faith in the face of physical disability always seems to work better than the hope of a prisoner, however wrongly imprisoned, does. That's the kind of hope that's a little difficult to accept, let alone idealize. That way, I would like to think that the only thing that killed Shawshank is its gory background, the cruelity of prison life, the bare truth. And, everyone know, the bare truth is not so well accepted as the doctored one.

Another thing that pulls an American towards Forrest Gump is the sarcastic take on the image of the American war Hero! The way the american lieutenant thinks its better to be blown up by your own bombers than live on after the war and make a life for yourself, drives the viewer to the wall. I mean, dude! there's some thing beyond all the bloodshed! Forrest Gump is everything that is acceptable to the American Society of 1994. Opposition to war, the heartfelt loss of some of America's JFK, the demystification of Watergate and all of it seen through the life of a cripple who runs due to a miracle, loves due to another, gets on the cover of Fortune magazine due to another one, plays football by chance and lives because he could run. The wayward Jenny gives you the views of the radical American kid with a tortured childhood and with Forrest fathering a physically and mentally excellent kid, it all fits in like clockwork. Something that will inspire one and all. From the peaceseeker to the hippie. From the soldier to the Shrimp Farmer. These kinds of film are made for oscars. I would still maintain, Shawshank deserved an oscar for all the right reasons, its a pity it was released in the same year.

One last observation, say what you may, Tom Hanks couldn't do half of what Morgan Freeman did with the Narration!

Biking

Took a detour to Agra on my bike last Sunday. As a part of common practice, Sunday mornings are too scarce to be whiled away on a motor cycle on a moderately busy highway. But with the level of boredom coupled with intense frustration with life in general and job in particular, I decided to make the journey. Only to have a look at something different for a change.

The landscape has got much lusher while we were busy toiling at our piping and erection work. The babul trees lining the highway wore a gleaming, bright green hue along with dense foliage that has sprung forth from all nooks and corners. The fields on either sides of the highway are at different stages of being ploughed and planted, one of the farmers has even built a raw shack with four hovels for support and a thatched roof. Something thats typical of Bengal but hardly ever noticed in UP. Notably, the farming techniques in UP are much advanced than those of Bengal where you could still spot the farmers egging on their bullocks tethered at the end of the tortured plough. UP has taken to mechanical ploughs, harvestors and threshers in a big way. Its a matter of concern when you have a look at the rotary threshers seperating tonnes of grains from chaff in a day in comparison to the meagres 40 bundles of paddy that is thrashed manually by the harvestors on wooden or concrete slabs in my Bengal.

But then, I am prevaricating. The lusher landscape freshens up the mind like no other entertainment. That coupled with the wind blowing hard against the face, forcing the unwilling tear to fly past my sideburn along the unconventional arial route instead of streaming down a stubbled jaw, the fatigue in the elbows and knees from long hours of biking at average speeds of 85 to 90 Kmph bestow a feeling of retribution for all the wrongs done unto myself.

Its good. Good for the soul.

The best and the worst

The last post was followed by a blur of events and activities which happened so fast that there never was enough time to devote to updation of a blog. On another hand there was a lingering feeling confirming my fall from grace in my own eyes. I couldn't bring myself to believe that I was significant enough in the whole huge scheme of things to make my musings matter.

Two trips to Delhi one after another, followed by a Plant Shutdown when I was taught the importance of real hard work, continued illness for more than three weeks, a desperate journey home to get back to acceptable physical shape and mental state before my sister's wedding. Stuff happened, lessons were learnt and ideas were formed.

But that's the past. I am back from home after the longest vacation since June, 2006. I am back at my desk, making estimates, paying bills, calculating pressure and temperature and trying to feel happy and optimistic about a dreary future. Someone told me, an optimist lives longer. My answer was, it only increases the pain. Poor chap decided against counselling me further.

But thats not what I sat down to write today....

Have you ever moved from a state of ecstasy to despair within a couple of seconds? I never knew it could happen in reality till yesterday. I was listening to an old bong song last evening, about how the same colour means different thing to us at different ages. ( red, for example is the colour of a ball when you are 4, the colour of lips when you are 14 and the colour of communism when you are 24). I started laughing out loud and then as the realization dawned I ended up shedding tears like a weeping ninny. Times stolen past my vigilant eyes.I turn 24 next year.

Rantings...

I was sitting at office kicking myself mentally for having started my professional life with the largest business house of the country when I started scribbling something on a sliver of paper lying on my desk... and just so that I don't lose the scribbling I decided to digitize the effort:

"Every person is born with a purpose. No one is free, no one is useless. The moment you understand your purpose you will learn to live. But till then you will be embroiled in the constant existential crisis about one uncomfortable question, WHY ME. Why so much mediocrity after the exposure to abandance of excellence? Why this imporvishment of faculties after the cornucopia of sensual pleasure? Why does my life alone have to roll down hill without a stop? Why do I keep asking "Why me?" every night before I sleep. Why me?

This is called a lack of freedom. This is called being bound to senses. This is why you are not free. You have to learn to live for yourself, without regrets, you have to make decisions that you wouldn't want to blame on anyone else. You have to stop asking for advice. Live for yourself. For a change."

Cardiology = Pump Maintenance

We work with huge devices that run with a roar and lift volumes of fluid to dizzy heights. Large, dangerous machines which have given us the capacity to move the world, the kind that are too huge to imagine unless you stand in front of them and see them work. Life is easy with them.
But think of having to work with such a critical pump when its running continuously. When you are not allowed to stop the machine and still have to remove a snag in it. My engineering sense will call it an impossibility in the beginning and foolishness at a later stage. But thats exactly what a cardiologist does.

Everything that happens to the heart can be compared with the working of a pump in general and a reciprocating pump in particular. Be it surge, pressure drop, cavitation everything can be talked about in terms of a reciprocating pump in every sense. When these people wearing white coats and grim expressions amble along the sterile corridors filled with tense relatives of patients, you realize that even without the grease, spanner and an odd peice of emery paper here and there, these people are very much maintenance engineers. Just that they are involved in the most unenviable task of working with devices they cannot willingly declare "Redundant".

Waiting for the rains...

It hasn't rained yet. Life seems more parched and thirsty than ever before. Physically I am drained beyond recognition and the mind is running around in directions unknown. The plethora of feelings that I used to experience once upon a time have shrunk into an ugly petrified stone. I have nothing of myself left.

Life is hanging on hope. Hope that I will be able to get out of this place in this lifetime. Hope that the tunnel won't be too long after all. Because I still am hanging on to those words,

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best thing of all."

Medicine Shop

List of all the medicines I consumed ( and was required to pump into my body through a puncture in my left hand) in the last 10 days:
1. Metronidazole
2. Paracetamol
3. Norflox
4. Avil
5. Dexona
6. A variety of Vitamin Capsules
7. Anti inflamatory Analgesics ( Basically a lot of paracetamol with a little bit of something called iboprofen or something like that!
8. Zinetac
and another three different pills that looks really sad!

And now that I am finally off medication... breathing seems like a gut wrenching exercise!

"What's wrong with you?"

There are some things in life we take for granted. Some of them being society of like minded people, a set of physical and emotional conditions that keep you mind balanced and a definition of happiness.. at times, the sheer absense of sadness is defined as happiness and at times there is something more that we look for... probably this is one time when I am looking for that something extra.

People ask me objective questions like "Why are you sad?"," Why are you cribbing?", " There is nothing wrong in your life, why do you make it sound so bad?". I never answer those questions.

They never adress the problem at hand. If I knew why I was so sad, I would definitely have adressed the situation.

I just don't know. I am depressed for no reason that I can think of, I should be prefectly happy and upbeat, but something just doesn't seem right. Probably I still haven't recovered from the culture shock that I was not prepared for.