Lost

We got lost today on our way from AFMC to MG road. I didn't think that was possible or do-able. But what are friends for if not for broadening your horizons.

football...

I do not understand football on television.
There. I’ve said it.

Don’t get me wrong, I quite like the game. Very entertaining. Especially the part where you holler obscenities at the opposite team, stomp your feet, pick up the ball and slam it into the other guy’s solar plexus. It is a great outlet for pent up anger too. Where else would twenty-two grown up men get to kick each other in the shins and get off calling it sport?
If you’d rather run around the kiddies’ park trying to kick a ball into the nearest hedge growth and in the process slam into a dozen people you could easily have avoided had you been a snitch more coordinated, go ahead. If you find ‘heading’ a projectile between two beams till you get a contre-coup injury gratifying, fine by me.
The smell of fresh air and armpits.
Aah! Nothing could be better!

But what purpose does football on T.V. serve! And why, pray, must I be made to sit through it?!
Believe me when I say I’ve sat through more than my fair share of football matches trying to comprehend the ‘active’ in offside. My guy said he loved football, F1, Metallica and me. I never quite got around to asking him the order. Possibly because of a vague feeling that he, like Jenny, would say ‘alphabetical’ which would land me at the end of the list.
He’d be glued to the telly for days at a stretch during the FIFA matches. Not only for the game but also all the reviews, dissections and highlights of the days play... Gawd!! Highlights are for when you’ve missed the game, not for memorizing it! (This from a person who would invariably start to fidget within the first hour of a movie). The guy would go into spasms of ecstasy each time ‘his team’ scored a goal and would set to work demolishing his nails during the penalty kick even if we were watching a re-telecast…
Yes, I indulged him by watching most matches, for apart from the fact that he ate, slept and dreamt football, 16, as I look back now, was an age I did do quite a few things more because they were the norm than because of any particular liking for them.

Sania mania ?

The day’s Pune Times advises Sania Mirza she’d be better off firing her salvo’s on-court.
Gawd! Let the gal be, already!
As if it wasn’t ridiculous enough to have half the Indian populace debate the merits of playing in a burkha! She’s playing tennis, for heavens’. And frankly, I applaud her for putting the clerics in their place with her comment that as long as she was winning it was no one else’s business whether her skirt measured 6” or 6’. You go girl!

But, to get to the issue, is there any such thing as freedom of speech in democratic India?
Yeah, sure. If you are insignificant enough. Only, don’t expect to be heard, that’s all. But if you happen to be someone whose views can be heard and if by some unlikely twist of fate you happen to be so naïve as to speak out about what you believe in… then God help you.
Take the precedent of Khushboo. The venerated Tamil actress now faces 20 criminal cases accusing her with ‘insulting’ the Tamil community. All for having expressed her views on safe sex. Actor-director Suhasini Manirathnam had to put forth a formal apology for coming to Khushboo’s defense on being issued a show-cause notice.

What is it about a celebrity speaking out that makes our hackles rise so...
I mean… what?? Is your pristine, prudence-purity beti suddenly going to streak across the street and shag the first lout she lays eyes on just because “Sania Mirza says so”? And, for the record, all the kid did say was:

"So there are two issues here, safe sex and sex before marriage. You don't want me to tell you that you have to have safe sex, whether it is before or after marriage. Everyone must know what he or she is doing."

Is it so very difficult to comprehend? She isn’t campaigning for people to have wild sex on the streets. All she is saying is that just in case wild sex on the streets is on your itinerary, a condom wouldn’t kill. Duh.

“She should restrict her liberal views to herself” said A. Ikram, the Ulema of the Darul Uloom, Centre for Islamic Studies.
VHP leader Acharya Dharmendra had a different point of view:
“I am an ardent fan of Sania. But she is trying to destroy the institutions like marriage and other social institutions by saying certain things which are beyond imagination,”
Beyond imagination…? All I can say is that I’m really sorry for you dude.
The sorry part about all this is that Sania knuckled under and had to deny all her earlier statements advocating safe sex. “I would like to clearly say on record that I could not possibly justify premarital sex, as it is a very big sin in Islam and one which I believe will not be forgiven by Allah,” Mirza said Friday. I for one think she ought to have stood up for the issue.

This is a bit out of context, but you’ve just got to hear what Acharya Dharmendra has to say about RSS leader K. Sudarshan’s suggestion that Hindus should have at least three children:
“When we cannot control the population of the minorities, to maintain the balance between the minority and the majority, Hindu women should be prepared for more labour pains”.
“If we cannot check the population of minorities through good efforts, we should increase our (Hindu) population.”

If these are the sort of people that are protecting our culture, no wonder we all consider it out utmost moral duty to lynch the genuine people who dare to speak out. It’s a slander-fest, dudes and dames, so let’s all pitch in, huh? And if you join ABVP now you get a totally FREE, larger than life and twice as natural poster of Ms. Mirza along with a book of matches and a bottle of kerosene. Prerequisite: An IQ score of not more than 69 and talent at mixing cocktails... the Molotov kind.

(As to why I’m reading the rag, my final exams start next month, so, obviously I’ve developed a sudden interest in, well, everything other than my patho textbook.)

To Siddharth with an 'a'

I intend this blog to be anonymous
I apologise for inquiring as to whether you were born an a*** or if you had lost all your sentient parts gradually to disuse atrophy
N yea, nice blog.

to The Others who 'veiw profiles but do not comment' :
Siddhartha does have a quirky, funny way of putting a point forth, so check his blog out :
http://immutef.blogspot.com/

Also, check out this wonderfully rum story i came across:
http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

Half a world asunder

I was talking to Shraddha today when out of the blue came the realization that we have slowly but surely drifted apart. Now that I look back at it, the odd part is that I hadn’t noticed it till now. We used to be the best of friends at that wonderfully innocent age when having a ‘best friend’ wasn’t something too maudlin to indulge in, yet.
We were giggling, cheeky teenagers together and quite insufferable in our delinquency, or so I’ve been told. Anyhow, I thought I’d pander to my rare bout of sentimentality and put up a poem I had written to shut her up when I left for this place. It is quite corny, I agree, but I was 15.

For A Misty Eyed Fairy

‘Tis said each time a fairy cries
A wee lil’ star is born,
That softly spreads its silver strands
Ere the sky is cloaked by a golden morn.

Each trembling tear that leaves her lash,
Down ashen cheek, down quivering lip;
Each little pearl is placed with care
By the raven sky’s own fingertip.

Each silver tear you’ve shed sweet dear
Has traveled down diana’s lane;
Each drop is now night’s sparkling gem.
So grows God’s own daisy – chain…

I'm 19 for heavens sake !

I realised today that we never do grow up. Not in the true sense of the word anyhow.
I tried, in a most grown-up, uber dignified way to get out of having to drink milk. . At first I simply told mum I didn't want it in an offhand manner and set the glass on the table.. but she saw right thru that one. So I resorted to telling her that it smelled funny (which it did) and then to claiming that it tasted like turnips (which it might as well have considering I dunno what turnips taste like in the first plc). I even considered making faces and looking zif I was choking on it but I realised that that would be getting rather pathetic .
I tried most stunts in the book and then some but mum actually stood there n supervised me..
And for a very real moment i wondered whether she would now proceed to making me recite multiplication tables like she did back when I was 5.
What I'm getting at is that if you want to get out of drinking milk, asking mum is a sureshot way to having all your plans backfire.
..No..
What I'm actually getting at, albeit in a very roundabout way, is that ,well, we never do attain that nonchalant grown-up air where moms are concerned.

Googlebomb President Musharraf

During a tape-recorded, 50-minute interview with the Washington Post, Pakistan president Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that "A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped." claiming rape has become a "moneymaking concern" in Pakistan. Here is a recording of the quote in the 12th paragraph of the Sept. 12 story. The remark was made in regards to the case of Mukhtar Mai, an illiterate woman who spoke publicly about having been gang-raped on the orders of a village council in 2002.
More about the reactions his comments sparked at the BBC website

The 'insensitive jerk' link is me doing my bit to googlebomb prez Musharraf. Read more about it at Raven's blog.
Here is what you have to do.

Army Brats

Well, I’m pretty much an army brat n I thought I’d acquaint you with our species.

A typical conversation when two army brats meet for the first time in an unstructured environment (i.e. anyplace outside the cantonment. Schools, colleges, workplaces n their likes are obviously not structured enough to compare) goes loosely along these lines:
First dude/dame: So...what did you say your dad’s (or mom's, of course, though in rarer cases) name was..?
To this the other shall reply stating the rank and name of their parent with carefully cultivated enunciation as if reciting it for a school ceremony. In. that. order. Even the tiniest fledgling shall speak of their dad using first their ranks n then the name (this of course leads to much confusion when the parent gets a new rank which in turn leads to hush-hush parenting sessions to hammer the new ‘name’ in). And they do it in the most reflex, unconscious manner. As a kid I have filled my fair share of forms with ‘Major’ in the blank for my dad's first name.
This exchange is, almost invariably, followed by the query: so... where've you been?
To the unacquainted this would most certainly sound like piffle. A question hardly worthy of a second thought. To be answered with a perfunctory "oh, here and there...”; or at times with a "at the corner chemists. I just HAD to have some valium before I could hit the pub again, or hit the floor with my feet for that matter" if you are the more gregarious kinds.
But, for the quintessential army brat this is the vital part of the conversation. The revelation, if you will. Sine qua non.
To be answered reverently with a list of all the places they've ever been posted to (running backwards from the present, obviously. n when I say "they've been posted” I mean their dads/moms, which is just as obvious, but anyhow.), ending with the Command Hospital they were born at. After which they're thick as thieves.

Another thing, if you ever sass (sass: know, be aware of, have sex with, meet) a typical specimen you'll know what I mean when I say that they're snobs. Just stare at one long enough n you'll see it. That slightest upward angle to the chin, that scrunching up of the nose as if somebody had held a mildly smelly pair of yesterday's socks under it, n of course the utterly condescending way in which they refer to waiters, traffic policemen, bus conductors, roadside scroungers, tramps and the odd guy who is quizzed for directions as 'bahiya' in the same breath. Point this out to a less aware brat n he'll deny it flat out: "Me! Snooty?! You must've confused me with someone else... Why, I even referred to that proletarian serf over there as 'bhaiya', as though he were in some way related to the magnificence that is me ! ". An educated guess would be that this comes from a lifetime of being raised in an atmosphere the roots of which can be traced to the owld british times. Can’t say I condone the attitude but it is so ingrained that it has become second nature. Royalty aside, the only people who can possibly be as militantly elitist as your otherwise unpretentious, self effacing pal who happens to have a parent in the army would be their airforce counterparts. Wait a sec, did I say 'as elitist as'.. I obviously wasn't thinking straight. One airforce brat can put on more airs than half a dozen army ones put together... okie.. make that three. But that, as they say, is another tale altogether.


N.B.: Reading the above might have led you to form the opinion that we consider the word 'so' a conversational gambit of sorts. this inference of course is absurd and totally unsound. So.

To other army brats, if any, reading this: when I say brat I use it as a term of endearment of course. And you really are a brat you know. If you think otherwise, just tell me, what was the last time you picked up your own socks when you came home and put em in the washer, for that matter, have you EVER picked your own socks up?