Life in Technicolor

If Anna Hazare wins, I'll never vote again

2011-08-22T06:26:00.001+05:30

The UPA government is, without doubt, one of the most corrupt administrations in recent memory. Maybe it is because they actually stole a lot more than their predecessors or maybe they just suck at hiding the loot. But one thing we can all agree upon is that something is definitely wrong somewhere when certain ministers have stolen what is nearly the operating budget of Uruguay.

Enter Anna Hazare with the Jan Lokpal bill. India’s knight in his shining white Khadi armour. Him of that iconic pose where he has his hands on his chin and his eyes fixed on an imaginary plane in the sky, with a sly smile spreading across his lips as if he got reminded of the mile high club just as the photographer was about to click. To the Anna army, this is what we call a harmless joke so keep you pants on.

Indeed Anna Hazare does have an impeccable record of well meaning social service. Even the UPA government’s attempt to tarnish him fizzled out. But does that mean he can march in there and demand that the government rewrite the laws and spell it the way he wants? Let me tell you why I have a problem with him doing that.

I am not going to debate on the Lokpal bill as that itself is a can of worms right there. I would rather focus on the present ‘Anna revolution’ ably supported by sections of the media (understandably going wet in their pants at the thought of all the ratings their coverage is going to garner).

They tell us he has the support of the entire country. Well, he sure as hell does not have mine so that is the entire country minus one. And if there is me, then surely there is bound to be more. So the only logical way forward is to take a headcount of the number of people who are actually involved in the 'revolution'. You know, the ones whose fasts don’t end with an Ifthar.

You have one lakh at Ramlila Maidan. Heck, let us assume that 9 lakh more are aware of/actively support the Lokpal and his fast for it. That brings us to a sum total of a million people. Quite a sizable number but sadly, around one in twentieth of India’s population. My calculator tells me that is 5%.

So we have 5% of the population trying to force the government to accept their views on something that the other 95% either does not agree with, or can’t be arsed about because they have more important stuff like feeding the kids to worry about.

The preamble to the constitution guarantees me equality. It tells me that I do not have to have somebody else’s views forced down upon me unless there is a democratic election and I am on the losing side. Now if the Govt were to agree to their demands, then these 5% will have forced through their demands through an undemocratic process and hence will have proved themselves to be supercitizens, demoting the likes of me to being a secondary citizen of India. Are they going to issue a separate passport to me? Can I sue my Social Studies teacher who told me I was as equal as the other kid whose dad had a Benz though mine had a scooter?

If Anna Hazare were to take the decent path, contest the elections, manage a majority and pass the Lokpal in the parliament, then I cannot complain. It would, in the process, have brought Lokpal to the attention of the general public and would have initiated a debate on its good and bad aspects. But if he passes it through like this, he would have made a mockery of all the people who elected their representatives and tasked them with framing laws. And I would not let that happen to me more than once. If Anna Hazare wins, I’ll never vote again.

The Nrityagram Dance Ensemble

2010-10-06T12:06:00.004+05:30

So the fun starts when I get a late night call from my editor telling me to wake up early in the morning coz I'd have to interview a troupe of Odissi dancers. I groaned for two reasons. Waking up in the morning was alien to me. One of the best things about my job was I could wander in at 11am and still be one of the earliest ones. And the second reason was coz they were dancers. I knew nothing about Indian classical dance and I hadn't even seen Odissi before.
I reached the given address in the morning and found myself in a nice tharavadu style house hidden away in the middle of the city. I rang the bell and this old dude opened the door and asked what I wanted. I said I was from City Journal and he promptly replied, 'No, we don't want to buy it and shut the door'. I wept inside for the circulation people.
Upon further clarification, we were invited to sit inside and wait for the dancers who were having their breakfast. And when the came, they weren't exactly what I expected. There were just three of them (I had expected a whole horde) and they were as lively and as interesting as they came. After introductions, I promptly confessed I did not have a clue neither about dancing nor about Odissi.One of them asked me if we could start talking about who they were and what they did and that was the start of a very interesting conversation that lasted for an hour and half almost. We talked about all things ranging from how 'normal' people perceived us 'artists' to the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. A very interesting conversation for me carried out in the most informal way possible. I had my repertoire of bad jokes and even left with a 'dint take down anything so will need one of your phone numbers for the actual interview'. Oh the horror!!. And they made me promise that I'd show up for their performance later in the evening.

I got back to my office and figured I'd try find something online about Odissi and their troupe and imagine my horror when Google decides to autocomplete when I start typing out their names! Surupa Sen was the present artistic director of the Nrityagram, Protima Bedi's disciple and her successor. Bijayini Satpathy was twice judged the best performer in any arts in the country and Pavithra Reddy was the rising star of the Odissi world. Articles about them had appeared in the New York Times and Pittsburgh Post. I was stumped. Me and my stupid big mouth!

That evening, I went and attended their performance and it is hard to describe it. I'll just say that most of us snore at classical dance coz we're regularly fed shit in our schools and colleges. The real deal is as interesting as they come. Anyway as I walked off, I started thinking about what would have been if I had known they were such a big deal when I went to interview them. Would I have been more careful? Probably, but would would it have been that interesting? Naah.

On a side note, one of them told me that to lose weight, all I had to do was stand on my hands. I have to find out whether they were kidding or not.

Kutty Srank vs Anti Gravity dude

2010-10-03T14:15:00.001+05:30

My last post was met with a furious backlash on Facebook (I'm looking at you, Renjith), both against the apparent snore fest Kutty Srank and what is, apparently, the best film of all time, the anti-gravity dude starrer, Endhiran. I meant to explain with a few comments, but as I started writing, felt that it merited more of a blogpost than a comment So is poor Kutty Srank even comparable to Endhiran?

Starting with Kutty Srank, my friends argue that the movie is dragging. They couldn't have been more right. I nearly fell asleep during a couple of stretches of time (I saw it after having a cocktail they called 'Deathwish', so could have been that). I'll also add a couple of negatives of my own. It doesn't have one linear story, instead the movie takes the viewers attention and plays volley with it. And perhaps what disappointed me the most was that with the type of narrative used, I went is expecting the three stories to uncover different facets of the title character, but instead got the same character in three stories. A massive potential gone untapped.

So you must be wondering why I, in my quest to brand it an awesome movie, first made it look like birdcrap. I wish I could tell you, but I'm not sure.

But moving on to the positives, the settings (all three of them) and the characters are as good as any you'll ever find on a movie screen. The three backgrounds of the three stories are mesmerizing in their contrast. The lack of an effective linear story does affect it, but when you get out of the theatre, you feel as if you've woken up from a series of dreams. It will all come back to you in a series of incherent scenes for a fleeting instant, but you'll find yourself wishing you could hold on to it. It's like watching a girl turn around and flash one last mesmerizing smile before she goes off forever.

Now moving on to the anit gravity dude, the biggest positive they have to tell of it is the special effects. They tell me it is the best anyone's ever seen in an Indian film. But that is not saying much, is it? A few years ago, that diahorreic cow of a director, Vinayan, was saying the same about some of his movies, and he wasn't exaclty light years away from the truth. I mean, I saw a lot of the trailer and none of the animation in it struck me as being as impressive as the video they play every week before a Premier league match starts.

So, please, don't compare that masterpiece, albiet flawed, but still a masterpiece, to a movie where they spent 165 crores on wigs and photshopping the wrinkles off Aishwarya Rai's face. Many a master will turn in his grave.

Madness (Ft. Anti Gravity Dude)

2010-10-02T00:11:00.000+05:30

As I woke up today morning, I received a call from my editor asking me to check out the reception to the latest offering from that God of anti-gravity Rajinikant. Even though I'm not a big fan of anti-gravity scenes where the hero throws around the villain's goons like ragdolls (tell me, why did they get hired as goons in the first place, if they were that bad?), I was relishing the opportunity to do some field reporting as I had been at the editing desk for the last few days. Don't take me wrong, editing is as fun as it gets, but occasionally you do need to get out and get some fresh air.

So I find out that the movie is playing in three theatres in Thrissur. Three? You have a national award nominated Mallu film, trying to find a place to get released and the anti gravity dude gets three theatres? And to make things worse, it also has 197 more screens in Kerala. I mean, I know we're the land of madmen, but do we need to advertise it like this?

With all due repect to the film, I'vent seen it and I don't think I will (which is what I said when the anti-gravity dude released his last film, but I ended up seeing it twice which is what happens when you go to a college who, apart from worshipping anti-gravity, also feel the need to try and induce more intellectually abled people to join the cult), and I know it is wrong of me to judge a film, but the people I interviewed told me a lot of things that I found ridiculous.

So while Kutty Srank languishes viewerless, this one packs 200 theaters in Kerala. Another milestone in the development of the 'intelectual' mallu society. Way to go!

Randomness #1

2010-09-28T17:47:00.002+05:30

Sitting in the office, a headline flashes on the TV...

Butt made me fix matches - Aamir.

What can I say? He should have listened to his head.

Life in Technicolor

2010-09-28T17:19:00.005+05:30

I had forgotten completely about this blog for the past half an year or so. It is amazing how even the most familiar of things fade into obscurity after they've spent a long time hiding from your immediate memory. And so into the deep dark underworld, did this blog too, until Jomy shook it up.

To make a long story short, Jomy is a friend from college, who went back to Delhi after that. Yesterday, I got a call from him when he mentioned that he started a blog (Check out his awesome blog here) and it brought to mind the one that I had maintained for years. I promised myself I'd check it out again.

And when I got to 'the neigbour's dog...', I found it to be a relic from an age gone by. My life had changed beyond recognition since the last post and it represented what I was, once upon a time. So I resolved to begin again just as my life had from the ashes of college life.

Life in Technicolor is one of my favorite Coldplay songs. And hearing it always brings to my mind, a vivid imaginary, to copy the like of which on canvas, they'll have to invent a whole new type of paint. And it is only fitting that I paint my life in that color.

This is the first of many changes. I plan to make this place virtually unrecognizable in a week. But the old posts will remain. It's always nice to have something to remind you where you came from.

And unlike, the last time I made a promise to blog regularly, I'm more equipped to keep it this time. I now work for a newspaper (check it out here), and when you're in that line of work, it gives you a lot of food for thought and a computer with access to the net 24x7. What more does a writer want?

So here goes this post, the first of many to come....

Stupid Story

2009-10-10T20:36:00.004+05:30

"You're so sour, I probably wouldn't want you" said the fox as he walked away from the grapes. Grapes didn't care. The fox was just bitter that she was out of reach. As the fox walked away, she slipped back in to her own little world, woven together of a delicate yarn and covered with patterns of callousness that scared away potential predators from her deepest insecurities. She had dodged stones for so long, knowing that the fox was bound to realize the undeniable truth, sooner rather than later. The grapes were out of reach.

"Bray", a rather revolting noise brought her back from her thoughts. Down below, stood an ass.

"What are you doing here?" the grapes asked propelled by a sudden infusion of contempt brought about by a realization of the fact that she was indeed unassailable.

"Can't you see that I am out of reach?"

"No" the ass blinked.

The grapes was confused. She never had to encounter that situation before. The fox was smart enough to realize that she was out of reach within a few stones but the ass was different. The ass was stupid. In fact, probably so stupid that there was a huge possibility that the ass was never going to realize the aforementioned truth.

"Whatever" thought the grapes, "He's never going to hit me."

She looked the other way, but curiosity prevailed as she looked down to see the ass, slowly and wearily, trudge all around to collect the stones that were meant for her. She smiled inside. He wasn't gonna last long. After what seemed like an eternity, and it probably was an eternity too, the ass finally had a pile of stones in front of him. And with a playing speed that would give slow motion replays a run for their money, he threw the first stone. The grapes couldn't even see where it went. His aim sucked.

As the ass repeated the above action for a second time, the grapes thought she was going to die of boredom. But throw it, he did and again, it did not even come close.

"Great marksmen never manage to hit me" the grapes announced, "Why do you even bother to try?"

The ass looked up and blinked. "I don't know", he said "I just try."

The grapes looked up in exasperation. This was going to be a long day.

And so it proved, and it did not stop there. It was followed by another long day and then another and so on till they added up to make a long week, which in turn added up to make a long month, which later formed many long months. The ass, stupid as he was, never realized that the grapes was out of reach for most creatures, let alone one with the pathetic aim and limited reach that he possessed. So he threw and threw and when the small pile in front of him had been extinguished, he again trudged around wearily till he made another one. And then he started throwing again.

The grapes by the beginning of the second week had forgotten all about the ass. He was now a part of her surroundings, just like the beehive on the next tree, which incidentally got hit by a stray stone, which incidentally caused all the bees to launch a well orchestrated offensive on the ass. He was now as constant as the hot sun that blistered on his back, day in day out, as unrelenting as the freezing nights that so cruelly numbed his every muscle, when the sun finished its shift of torture. But the ass was stupid. He never knew these things were supposed to hold you back. He never knew the laws of nature. He just wanted the grapes.

Then one fine day, when the birds were out in force singing their hearts out, every single vine in the forest swayed with a sense of tranquility and joy that characterized the whole world, the grapes at last remembered the ass. It looked down to find the ass lying there, covered with blisters, his skin pale, his bones sticking out of his skin, lying there next to a solitary stone. It was the last stone of the last pile that he was going to make. The ass then called on its last reserves of life, picked up the stone and threw it. It did not hit the grapes. In fact, it landed right next to the ass. Then unnoticed by an entire world, busy celebrating a beautiful day, it fell down and died. Unnoticed by everyone except for the grapes.

The grapes stared down at the ass for sometime pausing to find the right words to express what she now felt for the ass. And then she found the right words.

"What an idiot!"

Five Seconds..

2009-10-04T17:01:00.004+05:30

00:00:01 : WOW!...this feels good!...no, wait...this feels absolutely amazing!...I've literally never felt so buoyant before in my life...yet this feels so vaguely familiar...that feeling that makes you think you're flying...Wait a sec!...am I actually flying?...HOLY SHIT!!...I'm actually flying!...Look beneath ya, you idiot!...No ground, lots of air!...Ok, don't panic...take a deep breath...relax..recap...we were on a bike...Jomy was driving it...Oh!..so that's what happened...we must have crashed...and I must have gotten thrown off...

00:00:02 : I hope I don't die...we'll probably die though...most people who get thrown off their bikes land on their head and die...God! thatz awful...I mean, not the dying part, but the landing on my head and dying part...I've always hoped for something a bit more heroic...I'd rather land on my chest and get impaled by a piece of stray metal...now therz a death that has everything...blood, gore, painful injuries and maybe that final image of me standing on the road and heroically pulling the metal out of that large gaping hole in my chest and...but this, one could almost imagine the jokes that are gonna circulate around campus..."He spent an entire life trying to avoid using his head and the one time, he should have avoided it, he lands on it"...Crap!...but, ah well!...no use thinking about all that now...when we're done for, we're done for....

00:00:03 : Hmmm...I wonder how they're gonna go about my funeral...lots of relatives probably, just like it is at every single one of those family functions...Yuck! I'd rather be left alone than be pseudo-mourned by people who barely even knew me...lots of friends too...thatz one thing we can look back with pride...when we were growing up, the biggest problem seemed to be making friends but now it looks like we've become a natural at it...girls?...not many, probably...which seems justified considering you've spent a lifetime being awful to them...I hope my sister brings along a few of her friends and lets my soul rest in piece...yet what is this feeling that seems so familiar?...I don't recall ever getting thrown off anything!...never flown before either!...maybe I was Superman in my last life!...wait!...does this mean that Superman is dead?

00:00:04 : Ok...it looks like we're losing speed...and altitude...we could hit ground any moment now, so you better wrap things up...last wishes?...inconsequential, since it's doubtful if anybody's gonna be around to carry them out...any regrets?...dude, we spent an entire life living like we did, so that we wouldn't have any regrets when we go...So I don't wanna spent the last few moments of my life realizing that I failed the one solitary goal, I set for myself...change of subject...Ah, herz a nice one...close your eyes and remember the one moment of your life that you wanna remember again...ok, here goes...concentrate..."Beckham...into Sheringham....and Solskjaer has won it!!"...wait an effing minute!...thatz that?...all that craziness and the last minute of a football match is the best you can come up with?...Granted it was a great match, but still!....try again!...relax and recap!...relax and recap!...I'm walking....and walking...Oh my God! She has like the hugest pair of eyes I've ever seen!...Oh!...So thatz where I know this flying feeling from!...I should ave guessed!....

00:00:05 : THUD!...did we die?...doesn't look like it...head still on my neck, everything still attached...ok!, deep breaths!...relax!...routine checkup!...arm covered in blood!...routine...wounds in my inside palm?...thatz gonna hurt!...bloody knee!...routine...wait!...DID I JUST LAND ON MY DODGY KNEE!?!...CRAZY IDIOT, I TOLD YOU TO GO FOR THE HEAD!!...wait!...which one was the dodgy knee again?...Oh, crap!...relax and recap!..."Louie coming in...me going in with my right foot"...AHA!....it's the left knee that got fecked!...and I've landed on my right one!...woohoo!...thank you, God for that!...wait, does this mean we're gonna have two dodgy knees from now on?...crap!...I take that back, God, you're one slippery little bugger!...JOMY!!...wherz Jomy!!...and the bike!...did they go over the edge?...no, wait, there he is...Wow, did I just fly across all that distance?...that must be like a new Olympic long jump record...pity, no onez around to verify...Ah, here he comes...he looks okay...and hopefully, I'm too...except that it feels like I'm missing something...where the feck is my mobile!!!...

PS: The author survived with four stitches on his hand and few other wounds. His friend did not need stitches (HA!). They're still locked in an argument so as to who lost more blood that day. The author feels that since he had the deeper wound, it should really be a no-contest. The bike was scraped in a few places, but thankfully still works. The owner of the bike exacted his revenge by taking a snap of the author getting injected in the butt. At the time of writing, the author and his friend still look forward to their next ride together..

What is it with me and naming articles?

2009-09-22T00:13:00.004+05:30

My futile attempt at writing a short story rots below and its stench blocks out my nose every time I log on to this page. A lot has happened since then. Technofest came and left, proving that my earlier fears about my volatile hormones were completely unfounded. Not a single girl caught my imagination, partly thanks to the fact that I managed to keep myself busy during the entire thing, and partly thanks to the fact, that while keeping busy, I somehow managed to miss all the dance events. That's where you normally see nice looking girls doing nice looking things, and even though missing it was far from intentional, there is no denying the fact that it yielded more positives than negatives. So I guess somebody up there was accidentally tuning in when I said my prayers regarding the whole thing.

But as the ones amongst you, who haven't realized this yet, will soon realize, the only way to escape the bricks that life throws at you is to drive up to the nearest cliff, take a moment to enjoy the scenery and then jump off it. Either that or whatever imaginative, brilliant masterplan that you come up with on how to take your own life. Now even though, it has nothing to do with where I intend to take the rest of this article, I must pause for a moment to reflect on the importance of meeting a good, interesting end. Imagine one of those GD sessions in heaven or hell or wherever it is that you end up after you die, and you're faced with the ignominy of saying 'I chocked to death on a cookie', while sitting next to you is the guy who died in a space shuttle explosion. And if ancient texts are to believe, the mistakes you make in life will haunt you only till you die (or lose your mind, whichever happens first) but the ones that you make in death will haunt you for an eternity. Afterlife rarely affords you second chances. And you can forget about reincarnation, 'cause right now you're sitting there, looking like the kid who did a reasonable job through high school, only to flunk his final exams. So die well, in a really really creative manner that will make people remember you with awe. Leave the heart attacks and automobile accidents to the creatively bereft. Jump off a plane, wrestle with a tiger, get the Pope to shoot you and all these are off the top of my head. I'm sure a less sleepier, more creative someone can come with better things.

I was really depressed when I started writing this, as bouts of forcing myself to prepare for incoming exams were once again accusing me of wasting 3 years of my life and were forecasting how I was going to waste one more in a meaningless halfhearted pursuit of a B.Tech degree which will probably end up with me saying enough is enough and running off to some place, hidden deep inside some surreal dream that the hounds of the realism will never be able to see. I was going to ramble on and on about how I got myself into this mess, but I guess we'll leave that for another day now that I feel light as a feather inside. It's amazing how writing something so utterly ridiculous can make you feel absolutely fantastic. God sure has a twisted sense of humor. Thank you if you're tuning in.

Too sleepy to name this.

2009-09-11T02:03:00.005+05:30

Back in High School..

2009-09-06T10:36:00.004+05:30

Feck! I'm back in High School again.

There were a load of things I hated about high school. I hated the way they replaced all my friends with a handful of bookworms, whose only purpose in life was to get in to the IITs. I hated the way they filled my brains with formulas for magic potions that never quite worked and solutions to problems I'll never encounter, while I was busy figuring out how to fly among the birds, perch on one of those clifftops, while looking down upon the world, wondering how silly all those humans looked as they scurried around to live, what they mistook for life. I hated the way I never had lunch for 2 years, as my mother dint care to insist that I take it to school. As long as there were books in my bag. I hated that idiot who performed the entrance coaching farce for wasting my time and I hated myself for not having the backbone to stand up, look up at those surveillance cameras that never quite worked, and shout the obscenest of expletives. But above all else, I hated the crushes.

Ah, the crushes! Oh, If I could just get my hands on the irresponsible idiot who made my hormones go berserk the way they did, I would just wrench His divine neck until He lets out a squeal that would reverberate around the three worlds. It was strangest period of my life. I was prone to falling in love anywhere, at any time, with anyone and I never knew how or why. I shudder at the mere recollection of the horrors that love inflicted on me during those days - the recurring nightmare of having to wake up one fine day and finding out that I was in love with someone who, until yesterday was the last person I'd fall in love with, the patheticity of having to act weird around someone who was in your comfort zone the moment before. But above everything else, I dreaded having to stand in front of someone with the painful realization that I no longer was in love with her and that everything I told her was valid only in a distant dream.

And then there was roleplay. Fecking stupid roleplay, thanks to which I couldn't read a book or watch a movie. In case, you're wondering what I'm talking about, I meant the phenomenon thanks to which, whenever you're reading a book or watching a movie, you subconsciously pretend that it's actually happening to you. And when you think you're in love, it's even worse. I went hopelessly from book to book, begging Gwendelon not to leave me just because my name wasn't Earnest, sobbing uncontrollably as Katherine Clifton lay on her deathbed talking about how she's always been in love with me. Shakespeare must have turned in his grave, as I mourned the loss of Mercutio, directed my uncontrollable rage against Tybalt and celebrated my love of Juliet and tasted her lips from that vial of poison that fooled everybody. And I'm not even going to get started on movies. I think I know why Heath Ledger killed himself.

But then I got in to college, and it stopped. I stopped falling in love and 3 years of peaceful tranquility followed. I marvelled at how easily I had gone from all the chaos to the sexual maturity that now defined me. In my newfound status as one of the more advanced male specimens in my world, I looked down upon everyone ranging from hardcore romantics, to the casual adolescent drooling at someone on the street. It was boring, it was dull, it was colourless, but it was all I ever asked for.

And so went three years, but just as I'm about to wrap up things in college, it's back again. It's almost like all the dormant hormones, that were hibernating till they stumbled on to situations where they had the potential for a whole lot more chaos, had woken up with a vengeance. I was falling for just about anything creative and I feel an onrushing wave of consequences setting off in my direction, telling me that one big stupid mistake isn't far away.

Next week we have an Arts fest in our college, where there will be people who'll be doing lots of creative things. And some of them are bound to be girls. And some of them are bound to be good. Maybe I should start writing my own obituary but I plan on fighting until there is not an ounce of resistance left in me. I hope God overlooks the fact that I talked about wringing his neck earlier in this article and helps keep my house in order. Amen!

Getting high, without actually smoking anything...

2009-02-21T10:53:00.003+05:30

I was depressed and bored. I could not think of anything that had the potential to lift my spirits and worse still, I could not even think of a reason so as to why I was depressed. So then I turned to my roommate and he told me that I was either disappointed with something or I had to be in love.
Now, being in love was a particularly enticing prospect,no doubt, but the chances of that being the case were sadly limited, as I'm yet to meet someone who's that interesting (no offense to all the girls I know, but we're like round pegs and square holes or vice versa depending on your imagination and the limit to which it is governed by your rationale). So disappointed, it had to be.
I was intrigued, as I had a lot of reasons to be disappointed, so I went for a long walk. Depending upon your level of optimism, it could be equally be construed that my world was either chugging along nicely, or crashing down around me. My academics were going from bad to worse, which was one of the consequences of studying things you hardly feel about, while having lots on the other hand that you do care about. Confidence was slowly becoming an issue as the 'he'll get back before you know it' were being replaced by 'yeah..he ought to make it through..probably..yeah..'. I was back to walking without a limp and running with a slight one, but my knee was still a long way off from being normal. And my handwriting was still horrible. Looks out of place, I know, the last one, but back in school, my friends used to theorize that the best way I was gonna get a girl was by writing her something nice, but then they concluded that she probably won't be able to decipher my coded handwriting, should that ever happen.
But was I disappointed? Disappointment is something that happens to you, once you fail to attain an acceptable level of perfection in whatever it is that you are doing. I din't remember pursuing perfection in anything but then it struck me that it was involuntary. It was built into the human psyche as thickly as was anything else. The need to attain perfection was something that started every journey and the failure to attain it was almost certainly marked the end. Yet, some journeys have happy endings, some people end up contented despite the fact that they had just failed miserably to achieve what they set out for. That wasn't human.
Then, as if in a flood that were to wash way all my doubts, came the answers. I did not know what triggered it. Maybe it was the sheer beauty of the path that I was taking, the kind that inspires an artist. Maybe it was the intensity with which I doubted everything that I stood for, that provoked someone inside me to spill the answers. Maybe it happened that for a slippery moment, nature accepted me as one of her own, allowing the world and everything it was based on, to flow through me, before hastily realizing her mistake and correcting it swiftly, but not before I extracted a valuable ounce of realization. Or maybe it was because the group of young men, I had just passed was smoking something strong.
Perfection is neither a goal, nor a journey. It is probably one of those things, you see on your way when you look around, things that normally wouldn’t induce a second glance out of you, but things that sometimes make you wonder if they are allowed to be this perfect. Like watching fireflies light up a bush when it is getting dark. Like watching a baby flash that trademark toothless grin out at you for no apparent reason. Like watching a bird create an amazing piece of architecture from things as worthless as dry twigs. It will last only for a moment. You’ll soon be swatting mosquitoes near that bush, the baby will soon be wailing in the most irritating manner and the bird will probably shit on you if you stare at it long enough. But it is these moments that makes you understand why life is so worth living, and gives you a reason for sitting through all the other moments. Because no matter how hard it rains, the spring is always next. And when it comes, it is going to be beautiful.
One of things I like about this world, is that it is hard to remain mad. Sooner or later, someone or something is going to come and make you feel warm inside. You're not going to find those things in your average newspaper headline. You have to keep your eyes open and look for them. That, I believe, is their cue to find you.
So, If I wasn't disappointed with anything, why was I still depressed? I hope my roommate's wrong!

My Home, Why I left it and why I'll miss it..

2009-02-14T02:15:00.007+05:30

I moved to a hostel about a month ago, which incidently, is why I've written almost nothing for a month, partly because I was too lazy to keep undertaking the 20 minute journey from home to college, and partly because staying home was beginning to get unbearable. Unbearable, not because anybody there intended it to be that way, but because some things in life are just meant to make you tear your hair. Try as you might, you'll never find a reason so as to why that happened and try as you might, that will never wipe out the fact that it happened. I feel like someone sitting in a divorce court, looking at his wife, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.
I'd been living with my grandparents (lovely people, a bit old though) for more that two years, in a house old enough to give some of the museums around a run for their money. I went snooping around for an exact age (my grandparents couldn't say for sure how old the house was, seems they never bothered to find out during the seventy odd years they spent within its walls, and while I do not normally leave a bracket open for this long, I have to mention that this does serve as an excellent metaphor for how some people live their lives, without ever bothering to find out more about their world, or the people that inhabit it) and that culminated in me finding a portion of the roof covered with dated tiles, on which were inscribed 'Oct 25, 1896'. With a bit of help from a few simple mathematical operations, one can safely conclude that my house is in fact, pretty old.

It was the place where I spent the earliest part of my life, with the sole difference that back then, I shared it with roughly ten other people, with more to come during the weekends, instead of the two that I share it with now. The room that I currently use, once housed my parents and my sister, and the room that I use when I'm bored of sleeping in my room used to house four more. It'll be a pity if you construed a sense of arrogance or boastfulness from that, for all I wished to highlight was the lonliness that fogs the rooms these days, in sharp yet sad contrast to the rush of life it once was subject to.

It was exciting at first (it still is sometimes) as this was a place that could tell you a million stories. Every crack in the wall had a story, maybe more behind it. Lives had been lived and lost within these walls, tears shed, some of them fake, some genuine. Every single time, I toasted my own sucess or lamented my own loss, the house reminded me that it was nothing but yet another page in the voluminous journal that it had been keeping. It made you feel insignificant, but in a reassuring kind of way. This was a place that sometimes, literally trapped time.

But the problem with places that trap time, is that they do not realize that sometimes, you do not need time to be trapped, that you need it to flow. Countless were times when I went down for lunch only to find that I was four hours late, or when I missed a class or an appointment, just because I was stuck in a different time zone. Professors, friends or whoever the disappointed party was, they never bought the excuse that I just did not realize the clock was ticking outside and I wasn't stupid enough to try sell it to them. And there were times, when you felt a bit too insignificant, a bit too dwarfed by all the colour in the stories that preceded yours as opposed to the mundane dullness that plagues your own one. I was a cranky 21 year old and I wasn't ready to be the philosopher the house was making me out to be. So one fine day, I made the decision to leave it for someplace a bit more earthly.

Hostel is a sharp contrast, buzzing with life as you'd expect a place housing 600 odd college students, surviving on bad food and testosterone, to be. There was always something to do, always someone to talk to. I settled in nicely, with the fact that class was just a five minute walk proving to be the icing on the cake. Yet for some reason, when you're trying to listen to five people at the same time, as so often happens, your mind goes back to those times when you were listening without ever trying, to a wall on whose person, hidden by numerous coats of paint, lay the first pictures that your great grandmother made when she was a kid. I still look forward to the weekends when I get to listen to them.

As I finish writing, I look at the clock and realize that the room's been trapping time again. I've written deep into Valentine's day without realizing it and I again grow reflective. I still believe, rather childishly that I'm fated to meet my someone special in college, as I cannot comprehend any other reason, so as to why I would end up doing what I'm doing at where I'm doing it. But whoever she is, she's three years late now. Happy Valentines day!

Getting back to words.

2008-12-30T19:03:00.002+05:30

I still can't think of anything interesting to write about, although I'd deny it if you'd question me in person. The only positive development is that I think I have gotten to the root of why all this happened. It goes back to the beginning of December.
There was this thing that my department organised called the 'Motor Show', and my apparent disinterest in automobiles combined with my reluctance to move a finger unless I really really need to move it, led to me being drafted on to the media commitee. It all sounded like a nice quiet vacation to me, when I found out that all I had to do was write. What I did not anticipate was the amount of writing I had to do. If four non stop days of writing about ever silly little thing going on inside the tent was strenous, watching it being taken apart by professors (read one silly wanker) was heartbreaking. At one point, I had to sit through him deleting 3 paragraphs of some my best material about the air show that took place, and watch him replace it with one single stupid little sentance - 'all the children were shouting and jumping in joy'.
We did have the last laugh as my original report eventually went to the newspapers, and his edited version went to this rather dirty stream flowing along the way to the newspaper office, but the damage had been done. Twas a terrible massacre and the shock of sitting through it was something the bloke inside me, who takes over when I sit down to write, would take a bit of time to recover from. Everytime I sat down to write, all I saw were imaginary kids jumping up and down, and all I heard was the relentless tapping of the backspace key. Allright, that is a bit exaggerated, but jokes aside, it did really hurt. You'd know if something you spent quite a bit of time and imagination on, got mauled just when you were preparing to sit back and admire your craft. And that happened more than once over four days.
Anyway I'm getting closer to writing readable things again. Earlier today I wrote a rather goodlooking fictional piece on something called 'Tomlinson's surface meter' for my mid semester sessionals exams. Sadly I couldn't muster the artistic imagination needed to conjure up a suitable diagram to accompany the piece. Hopefully, the guy correcting all those papers will put in a good word or two about the whole thing. Maybe even mark it.

Tagged.

2008-12-18T00:47:00.003+05:30

My writer's block continues as I just can't write anything that I find good enough to post here. But when this tag from Nivil came along, I decided to take it up and write something. When you write, you pass judgement on things and people around you and when you're drained, you find it hard to do that. I'm guessing that answering a simple set of questions about myself is bound to be a lot more easier.
This whole tagging thing means that you've got to reply to the same set of questions on your blog when you are tagged. It sounds silly, I know but I'm that jobless. God! these questions are crap!

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
She can't betray me. She'll know, by then that she doesn't need to. The moment she decides she's had enough, all she has to do is leave and I'll understand. Atleast I'll try to.

2. If you can have a dream come true, what would it be?
Realize, the moment before death, that I don't want to trade even a second of my life for something else.

3. Whose butt would you like to kick?
Somebody who'd remain grateful for that kick, his entire life.

4. Why do you blog?
To satisfy that uneasiness you feel when you are holding something inside you, that you so need to let out.

5. Will you fall in love with your best friend?
Doesn't matter. We'll end up best friends anyway.

6. Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
Loving someone. It's harder.

7. How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?
Till she shows up.

8. If the person you secretly like is attached, what will you do?
I will go on secretly liking her.

9. If you could root for one social cause, what would it be?
Enlightenment. Free thought. The latter is the road to the former.

10. What takes you down the fastest?
Emotional drainage.

11. What resurrects you the fastest?
Beauty.

12. What’s your fear?
That I'd wake up one day and find out that I've fallen out of love with everything I'm in love with.

13. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
He knows his way around his world.

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
Happily married and poor.

15. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
Stop the stupid alarm and go back to sleep.

16. If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?
I'm in love with ONE person. I've just got to find out who she is.

17. Would you give all in a relationship?
More than that.

18. Would you forgive and forget someone no matter how horrible a thing he has done?
I don't think so. I'm not God.

19. Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
It doesn't matter what I prefer. Journeys end in lovers meeting. The journey will always be there. Without it, your destination will be nothing but meaningless.

20. Tag 6 people.
The last six comments on my blog.

A.W.O.L

2008-12-12T18:54:00.002+05:30

I feel empty. I can't write when I'm empty. I'm trying to figure out how to escape this wretched state, but until then I'll be keeping off this blog. I'm hoping I'll be back before long and maybe that happens, I'll be able to write about all the things I did to get over this. I'm hoping a long journey might do me some good, or doing something different might usher in some freshness. Maybe what I need now, is some new people in my life. Whatever it is, I hope to get back to posting here sooner rather than later.

The minute they call life.

2008-12-01T19:22:00.006+05:30

I was lying down doing nothing and suddenly this weird thought occurred to me. In ten days would I remember lying down and doing nothing? In one year would I remember what I had for breakfast that day? In twenty years, would I remember anything that happened that year? That was when I realized that the only way to approximate an answer to any of those questions would be to find out what I remember of my life so far. Possessed by a morbid sense of curiosity complemented well by the fact that I had nothing else to do, I closed my eyes and pushed the rewind button. I just wanted to see what I spent the past twenty years doing.
After a minute or so, I was back and I was surprised. My immediate recollections, which I defined as the summary of my life that I would see if my heart were to suddenly stop beating, was nothing like I had imagined it to be. I had thought it would consist of moments with friends, family or something like that, but they were never there. What I saw were things , people and places that felt like they belonged in a different age and time. I was a bit stunned to say the least.
The first thing I remembered was my first letter. It was a crooked 'A' that I had written with someone guiding my hand. That was probably the first sign that my handwriting was going to be one of the ugliest things, humanity has ever been cursed with, but that particular letter somehow stuck in my memory. I can only speculate on the feeling that must have possessed me when I cleared that particular milestone. Whatever it was, it must soon have been drowned in the rebuke that inevitably followed, for not writing it properly.
Then there was a cow. This account will seem particularly eccentric, but I'll stand by what I saw for I'm sure I saw it. I must have been about eight. I was walking back from school and I saw a cow. Nothing out of ordinary so far, but that will all go to hell once I tell you that this particular cow had a something that looked like a small timepiece embedded on its back. I know I sound crazier than most crazy people, but it is true and on second thought, I do remember standing there and considering risking my life to go near it and find out for sure. It was a little bigger than a coin, had numbers on it and back then, a watch was all I could think of that fulfilled those conditions. And no, I do not have a history of mental illness.
The next thing I remembered was a bloody drill. I was lying there with my mouth forced open and the drill had just finished drilling a hole that went as far as my nasal cavity. It was a dental operation, I had to undergo when I was about 12, and they did not bother to put me to sleep. So there I was, not feeling a single thing going on in my mouth thanks to all the injections. It wasn't much of a problem when the only thing you saw was your dentist's eyes from behind his mask, gazing wondrously in to your mouth, as if it was a doorway to a distant dream. But then the bloody drill comes out and I'm sure my dentist would remember the look of horror in my eyes as much as I remember the drill.
The last thing I remember before I opened my eyes was a girl. I do not know who she is, I saw her in a bus, and she isn't the hottest girl I've seen. But then she smiled and for some reason it stuck to my mind. And that is all I have to say about that.
So there you go. Twenty years spent meeting people, fighting with family, chilling out with friends and traveling, not to mention the countless films and all the girls, and the things that first spring to mind is a letter, a cow, a drill and a not so hot girl. Life sure is a weird thing.

Yet another trip.

2008-11-24T00:33:00.002+05:30

The past couple of days had turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for me. After more than two months of non-stops exams, which left its toll on me, not because it meant I had to study my ass off but because it meant that the others had to do that which left me all alone trying to figure out what to do with my time, we suddenly had that huge raincloud zapped from above our heads. I was finally expecting to do something worthwhile with my time after two months of swatting mosquitoes, during which the only useful information that I picked up was the knowledge that no matter how many mosquitoes you swat each day, it never is enough. Obviously not with my college mates as most of them had gone scurrying off to their respective homes, but with my older friends, the ones that I made during school. But due to a plethora of reasons, most of them weren't even going to be in town during that time. I could expect a few back during the weekend but I had to survive till then on mosquitoes and movies.
'Friends I made during school' is a bit of a misnomer as we all met each other during preschool. That meant that we've known each other for a little over 17 years, which thanks to the idiot who invented percentages (and the one who invented the calculator) can be expressed a bit more emphatically as 85% of our lives. We also happened to end up in the same class during our ninth and tenth years at school, two years which we all remember as the two most fun years of our lives, a fact made even more special by the two spectacularly boring years that followed, a waste of a school and a few dozen lives. So all that meant we all stayed in touch even after school and met up every (read most) weekends and made a few trips together whenever we could. We also built upon something that we did during our time at school - exploring the city where we had all grown up and stumbling upon some beautiful places which not many knew about. It not only meant spending more time with the people you know you are comfortable with but also all the fresh air I needed to survive.
I managed to survive till the weekends with a bit of help from those of my college mates who hadn't gone home. The few of them who were going to make it back were only going to make it back by Saturday evening, so that meant all we had was the whole of Sunday. That did not stop us (or atleast me) from sleeping through half of Sunday, but we did manage to meet up by the evening. We had two bikes and four people so that was a perfect fit. Then came the little matter of deciding where to go. One of us had heard of a huge rock in the middle of the woods that had a great view of the city. We did not know how exactly to get there, but nevertheless we went for it.
After a bike journey that lasted half an hour, we reached this place that had the forest that included our destination. It wasn't much of a forest in terms of area but it certainly was a handful in terms of density. We had to drift off the road and take a really path, halfway through which we decided to abandon our bikes, and cover the rest on foot. After bothering a few locals for directions, we finally reached the woods, which we needed to go deep into to get where we were supposed to get. And all we had to do from there on was to follow the directions we had and look for the clearing.
Regardless of the delights that you may encounter the journey, the moment when you see the first glimpses of your destination remains the most fulfilling part of a journey. This was no different. Awaiting us was a huge rock, not the most difficult to get on top of, but one that still offered a breathtaking view of all that it presided upon. The view from the top was direct rebuke to all the people who argue that my city was boring. The counltess hills that dotted the skyline alone could have accounted for several days spent exploring them and it was no surprise that for us there was always one more place to go to, more hill to climb, much more beauty to discover.
We spent time taking pictures and then just lay down enjoying the view and talking. We always had a lot to talk about ranging from the latest movies to the oldest memories. We decided to start back at around to six. But we soon found out that we had made a grave error in doing that. December meant shorter days which meant the no light by around six. It was dark enough outside and it was approaching pitch black inside the woods. Fifteen minutes and a few knocked over branches later, we were beginning to realize that we were well and truly lost. The phones as always were out of range and talk soon began sarcastically, then a bit nervously of spending the night inside the woods. We soon tracked our way back to the rock decided to make one last attempt to get out, based on our recollections of the view that we first encountered when we came in. That had stuck in our minds and we finally got back on track after spending the better part of an hour trying to do it.
Time once again posed problems as the rocky path in the dark made it impossible for the bikes to go without skidding here and there, and our luck once again came to rescue as each time we fell to the right, which meant that I could land on my one good leg and avoid the crevice on the left. After we got back on the road, we finally were able to relax and enjoy the trip back, stopping at friend's house before arriving at the nearest burger king which was the climax of most of the things we undertook together. It was proof of God's twisted sense of humor that the most boring of weeks had culminated in a really interesting weekend. And that a most interesting trip had culminated in the stalest of fries.

I can't think of a title for this

2008-11-20T01:28:00.007+05:30

I sat down in front of my hundred year old house and I gazed at the flowers that my grandmother had so carefully nurtured. I've done that on hot days, on wet days, but none of them will ever live up to what the view from my door looks like on a windy day. The world had come alive, just to laugh off a silent complaint that I had registered earlier regarding my world being lifeless. I could not help but laugh with them.
I could hear my 25 year old TV (Yes, I'm the only non-antique in my house) crackling on about how they were predicting a cyclone somewhere and I caught myself wondering what it would be like in the face of one. I ensured that the thought remained within, as my family were already worried about what they perceived as signs of mental instability, when it was just me absentmindedly thinking aloud. A week earlier, I had let slip the first hint that I intended to go on a weeklong trek in the Silent Valley forest reserve, a place that I had fallen in love with during a short visit a couple of months before. We were supposed to trek through the forest armed with just a guide and walk a couple of dozen kilometers a day for almost 4 days, before reaching this river valley that was supposed to be enchantingly beautiful. The response was almost what I had predicted, with stories about people being eaten up by tigers and trampled upon by elephants dominating proceedings with the odd sensible question about whether my knee would hold up. That was one of the problems with having a joint family. They never thought, just arrived at conclusions faster than the person sitting next to them. In the middle of all that they caught me wondering loudly, what it would be like to be face to face with a tiger. It was an honest question. Would I scream and cry for my life? I somehow thought that improbable, not because I rated myself as one of the more courageous ones, but because I just did not rate life that much. Would I just stand there thinking about the last movie I saw? Or would it be the last girl I fancied? Or would I look in to its eyes, trying to find out why it was going to maul me, hoping for an answer a bit more complicated than plain blind hunger? As I snapped out of it, they had already reached their conclusion.
The weekends were a bit hard to fit in, but once the week began and I was left alone again with my grandparents, I could go back in to my world without being questioned, at least not with the same frequency. Most of it was spend on cursing my knee and then laughing at the irony that after years of kicking and barging people, it was a simple twist that had taken me out. There was the occasional visit to College and the rest of the time, I was making up plans like the yet as unfulfilled one where I'm supposed to make wine. I still maintain I'll do it someday.
As I eased back into reality, the wind was still blowing as hard as ever but the sun was losing the race and was showing signs of dying down. I went inside and switched on my PC. Something inside me was making it clear that it would not let me be without writing something, but I had a problem. I couldn't think of a title.

On a train to Bangalore..

2008-10-27T00:16:00.004+05:30

I never plan most of my trips unless it is one that really requires planning. The best ones are usually instantaneous, results of listening to myself, however senseless I sound. I love traveling as I keep on discovering more things about the world and myself, everywhere I go. That, I believe is the reason why I'm alive. The day I die, if someone were to ask me to describe myself or the world, I would rather be struggling for an answer, not because I don't have it, but because I know too much to fit it all in to one answer.
I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, but had been too busy (read lazy) to write about all that here. There were this trek I undertook with my friends to this forest reserve, a series of journeys to really discover the place where I've been living for the past 20 years (which are my favorite, because we go to all these beautiful places that nobody is aware of, except for the immediate locals) and some really pointless journeys where you just get on a bike and keep following the road, not expecting to get anywhere, but ending up someplace wonderful. I want to write about all that here but I'd advise you not to count on it. I however, plan on writing about the trek to the forest reserve sooner rather than later. But first up is this really interesting journey that was conceived and embarked upon in three minutes.
It all started when I received a call from my friend (and ex roommate) Jomy saying he was bored at about 7 pm. That was perfectly natural considering the exams were less than two weeks away, so I asked him to come over and watch a few movies if he wanted to. About 15 minutes later, I had the brilliant (as usual) idea to hit Ernakulam during the night and spend the next day there. I had a lot of friends there and it was just two hours away, so Jomy din't mind either. In fact, I think he was bored enough to not mind just about anything. I got out telling my grandparents whom I live with, that I was going to spend the night in my hostel, which I did a lot, so they din't seem to mind. I had put them through worse. We met up in the city and walked to the railway station, planning to catch the next train to Ekm. Both of us had forgotten our mobile phone chargers, but I was fairly confident I could borrow one from someone, once we got there.
We walked in to the station, to hear a train leave. Jomy casually told me that the train probably left for Bangalore, and I responded with 'I'd love to go there one day'. I've never been to Bangalore but Jomy had been, and had a couple of friends there. But that conversation ended as I walked up to enquire when the next train to Ernakulam was. There was one in an hour and a half, they told me, an answer which was greeted with frustration. But frustration, it is said, brings out the best in you and someone inside me asked them the question which changed the whole trip. There was a train to Bangalore in 4 minutes as it turned out and we'd still get a general class ticket if we wanted to. Jomy in a moment of madness suggested we flip a coin for it. It took half a minute to find a coin, twenty seconds to decide if we really wanted to flip it and a further 5 seconds for it to fall on its head and tell us to go to Bangalore. We were making a run for our platform as the train swept, rather gracefully in to the station.
Finding a seat was impossible, but we had no plans to do so. We settled in by the door with our feet out, Jomy because he enjoyed it and me because I could not fold my legs for long without hurting my knee, courtesy a really bad knee injury I had sustained while playing football. We reflected upon the craziness that possessed us when he had decided to catch that train. Ernakulam was one thing, but Bangalore was quite another. We would be passing through 3 states, traveling for at least 11 hours, before making the same journey back 24 hours later. Both of us had just gotten few of our long term savings in to our respective bank accounts, so money, should we need it, was just a matter of a visit to the nearby ATM. As the train slowly rumbled out, the journey began to make a lot more sense than it initially did.
I've always loved the wind in my face and the sense of freedom it induces in me, but I was little prepared for the next 11 hours. We stayed up for a few hours talking, had a really crappy dinner from the train, that neither of us were able to finish because of its crappiness, before Jomy slowly crumpled up on the floor besides me, with specific instructions to stop him, should he ever threaten to roll out through the door. He was understandably tired beacuse of all the football he'd played that day and we both needed him wide and awake the next day, because he was the one who had been there before. I, on the other hand, had slept till my hunger woke me up in time for lunch and was in no mood to relent to the drowsiness. And so I sat there with my legs out, my friend sleeping behind me, through the longest and the most enjoyable lecture I've been through. The wind, the full moon and nature untouched by the filthy hands of man, were just the professors I needed.
I watched as a live action Geography lesson slowly unfolded before my eyes. I've always hated Geography at school and had always neglected it in favor of its more intriguing cousin, History. But all of a sudden, a new found interest in the subject was aroused in me, as I observed things that I had been forced to read about in my textbooks. The mountains started springing up as we traveled out of my home town, the Western Ghats the called it. Initially, they were just harmlessly doting the skyline, but as we moved towards the Kerala border, they presented themselves enticingly close. If the train had stopped, or had I been made of less sensible stuff, I could have just jumped out and ran up their slopes. The forests adorned them well, and I was enjoying my short exile from humanity. As we entered Tamil Nadu, the Western Ghats declined, as if someone huge had just walked all over them, as they gave way to the Deccan plateau. When I had dealt with those at school, I had imagined them to be a boring lifeless landform full of red soil and sparse vegetation, but they turned out to be surprisingly delightful. There were no longer the thick forests, but the Savannah-is grass and the branchy trees more than made up for them. Interspersed between short spells of human occupation, this part of the journey were punctuated by the high velocity winds that nearly got me high.
As we rumbled in to Karnataka, the mountains and the forests started reappearing and I realised that the cold was making my knee feel like it had just gotten kicked in the crotch. The sun was nearly up and the fact that I was facing the west meant that I did not have to hold on to watch the sunrise. I closed the door and rested with my legs up the wall, in a peculiar position that almost resembled a head stand, but ensured that my knee was relieved. Jomy soon woke up and we opened the door to find that we had reached the outskirts of Bangalore. Going in to Bangalore was not the most pleasant experience. Before we reached the city, we had to sit through the cost at which it was created. Countless slums flashed in and out as we arrived at what they call the technological capital of India.
The first thing we saw in B'lore was a group of stray dogs, but the next thing was a group of hot girls, so that more than made up for it. As we entered the city, I realized that I was responsible for a horrible oversight. I had just strolled in to a city filled with the hottest and the most fashionable people I've seen, looking like I had been off to invade Poland. 11 hours of a hard trains journey and the relentless cold wind had left us looking like we did not belong. Nevertheless we got over that and went round the city and to a couple of malls. We even had time to get in for a movie and meet one of Jomy's friends who had set up camp there. And then there was all the food.
I've never been a fan of the urban culture, though I had proved hopelessly incompetent in surviving without it. When my parents moved to this place, that had all the mountains and nature that I had craved for, I ran off within weeks to live with my grandparents, and back to the familiar city where I'd lived all my life. But Bangalore had me in complete awe. Jomy told me that he got bored of it within two days of his last visit and I could certainly see me going down the same path, but a day there left me wishing for more. But somewhere inside, something was telling me that I could never fit in with the extremely materialistic lifestyle that they pursue there. I'd been known to go on the occasional spending spree, but most of my money was wasted on fulfilling my longing for all things new. But I resolved to go back there sometime, as we made our way back to the railway station for the return part.
I was tired to the point of collapsing, as I had just followed up a sleepless night with a day on foot. Luckily, we managed to find a place to sit. A brief conversation I had with a fellow passenger who spoke my language kept me awake for a while, but I soon dozed off, as the fatigue of a long journey and a day spent exploring caught up with me. I woke up to find that the sun was already up and we were a little over an hour from getting back home. We had nearly completed a journey that appeared senseless, at first but had turned out to one of the most sensible things I've ever done. I closed my mind, safely locking in everything that it had just learned, as we walked to where we would have been found flipping a coin a day before.

Exam preparations Update - Itz over.

2008-10-25T00:51:00.003+05:30

In my last post, I told you about my exams and how I planned to study this time around. Turns out I changed my mind. Recent studies by some eminent scientists have shown that I have, as a matter of fact, no time to study for my exams. Here is this intriguing report I found on this website.

The world will end in 2012, say experts Several experts from across the globe are predicting that the earth is likely to end by the year 2012. The reason could be a human effect or natural disaster. From Chinese theories to scientific predictions the most likely date is the year 2012.

SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS from around the world are predicting that five years from now, all life on Earth could well come to an end. Some are saying it’ll be humans that would set it off. Others believe that a natural phenomenon will be the cause. And the religious folks are saying it’ll be God himself who would press the stop button. The following are some likely arguments as to why the world would end by the year 2012.

Reason one: Mayan calendar The first to predict 2012 as the end of the world were the Mayans, a bloodthirsty race that were good at two things -- building highly accurate astrological equipment out of stone and sacrificing virgins. Thousands of years ago they managed to calculate the length of the lunar moon as 329.53020 days, only 34 seconds out. The Mayan calendar predicts that the earth will end on December 21, 2012. Given that they were pretty close to the mark with the lunar cycle, it’s likely they’ve got the end of the world right as well.

Reason two: Sun storms Solar experts from around the world monitoring the sun have made a startling discovery. Our sun is in a bit of strife. The energy output of the sun is, like most things in nature, cyclic and it’s supposed to be in the middle of a period of relative stability. However, recent solar storms have been bombarding the earth with lot of radiation energy. It’s been knocking out power grids and destroying satellites. This activity is predicted to get worse and calculations suggest it’ll reach its deadly peak sometime in 2012.

Reason three: The atom smasher Scientists in Europe have been building the world’s largest particle accelerator. Basically, its a 27 km tunnel designed to smash atoms together to find out what makes the universe tick. However, the mega-gadget has caused serious concern, with some scientists suggesting that it’s properly even a bad idea to turn it on in the first place. They’re predicting all manner of deadly results, including mini black holes. So when this machine is fired up for its first serious experiment in 2012, the world could be crushed into a super-dense blob the size of a basketball.

Reason four: The Bible says it If having scientists warning us about the end of the world isn’t bad enough, religious folks are getting in on the act as well. Interpretations of the Christian Bible reveal that the date for Armageddon, the final battle between good an evil, has been set for 2012. The I Ching, also known as the Chinese Book of Changes, says the same thing, as do various sections of the Hindu teachings.

Reason five: Super volcano Yellowstone National Park in United States is famous for its thermal springs and old faithful geyser. The reason for this is simple -- it’s sitting on top of the world’s biggest volcano and geological experts are beginning to get nervous sweats. The Yellowstone volcano has a pattern of erupting every 650,000 years or so, and we’re many years overdue for an explosion that will fill the atmosphere with ash, blocking the sun and plunging the earth into a frozen winter that could last up to 15,000 years. The pressure under the Yellowstone is building steadily, and geologists have set 2012 as a likely date for the big bang.

Reason six: The physicists This one’s case of bog -- simple maths mathematics. Physicists at Berkely University have been crunching the numbers. They’ve determined that the earth is well overdue for a major catastrophic event. Even worse, they’re claiming that their calculations prove that we’re all going to die, very soon. They are also saying that their prediction comes with a certainty of 99 per cent; and 2012 just happens to be the best guess as to when it occurs.

Reason seven: Earth’s magnetic field We all know the Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that shields us from most of the sun’s radiation. What you might not know is that the magnetic poles we call North and South have a nasty habit of swapping places every 750,000 years or so -- and right now we’re about 30,000 years overdue. Scientists have noted that the poles are drifting apart roughly 20-30 kms each year, much faster than ever before, which points to a pole-shift being right around the corner. While the pole shift is under way, the magnetic field is disrupted and will eventually disappear, sometimes for up to 100 years. The result is enough UV outdoors to crisp your skin in seconds, killing everything it touches.

So all you people out there blissfully wasting your time, trying to understand things that you do not have a chance of understanding by 2012, writing exams whose results won't be published before 2012, or attending courses that won't finish by 2012, better do something a bit more worthwhile. I know the world may not end then, but why take a risk? Personally I'm off to do some research on mythology and on this more than a 1000 year old temple I have in my hometown and make plans for this long trek that I've been putting off for about an year now. I'll try fit turning up for my exams between all that, but I can't say that for sure. In the meantime, I suggest you lot all start making plans on salvaging what is left of your life. Do come by this blog more often now than I can assure you a lot more than boring dragging fluid mechanics. FYI, I opened my syllabus book yesterday and found out that I had a whole module on Centrifugal pumps and another whole module on Reciprocating pumps. I'm actually glad that the world is going to end!

Exams and me.

2008-10-23T11:29:00.004+05:30

Next week I've my fourth semester exams and for the first time, I'm actually planning to do something about it. It's been three years since I joined my college and I haven't opened a book since, at least not one that had anything to do with engineering. So far I've been doing fine with that but my spectacular success in the previous three semesters are forcing me to rethink my strategy. And general consensus is that, it is time I actually did a bit more than just turning up at the exam hall.
Engineering has been of least interest to me, before and after I joined my college. I simply fail to understand why people are so obsessed with trying to understand how things work, rather than enjoying their perfection. I fear that while formulating all those theorems and formulas about flowing water and the hardness of materials, they forget to enjoy the beauty they'll find in all that. Imagine how you'd feel, if you wrote something beautiful that you wanted others to read and marvel, but they instead used it to analyze how the ink sticks to the paper. It's no wonder that God hates engineers in general for grossly misusing his creations and blatantly ignoring his artistic sense. That's probably why He introduced the 40+ sessionals system just for us.

But the fact remains that to do what I want to do, I have to get through four years in college, and to limit my stay in an engineering college to four years, I have to start passing a few exams here and there. So that is how I decided, for the first time, to consciously make an effort in understanding things that I have no interest whatsoever in understanding and passing exams that I have no business, appearing for in the first place. And since my first and rather belated foray in to the Mechanical Engineering promises to be tragically funny and interesting in a sadistic sort of way, it is only logical that I post every single detail of what happens, here. The exams are six days away, they'll last a further two weeks and hopefully I'll post with some regularity throughout. Having said that I don't mean to convert this blog in to a diary entry sort of thing that details every moment of my day. It simply deals with each new thing that I find out, that my textbooks have to offer me. Speaking of which, I have to go get a few of them as soon as I'm done with this.

So what am I hoping to have achieved by the end of all this? Top of my class? yeah right! Pass every exam? Honestly I couldn't care less. The most I could hope for is that, by the end of all this, I'd have gotten a few more people to read my blog. Which brings us to the inevitable question. If I'm this disinterested, why did I start it in the first place? That's a long story. I have no time to explain all that, got an exam to prepare for!

Tradition and culture, Me arse!..

2008-09-28T22:57:00.006+05:30

If you're living in India, you probably will have to hear the words 'tradition' and 'culture', more times a day than you scratch your own backside. They are the most fashionable of words these days with every politician worth his sparkling clean shirt and fake smile having something to say about them. According to these cultural activists, the influx of western habits, whatever that means, is destroying our precious culture which our country accumulated over thousands of years. But if there was some way to beam a signal into the brains, or whatever organ these culture freaks use to channel and interpret thoughts, then I'd beam a breaking news feed that says 'Culture is dead, So stop screwing about!'.

In the fictional scenario, that such an act was indeed possible, then the next step taken by the typical Indian would be to call a Hartal to protest and demand a central probe to find out who killed culture. That would be my cue to beam the next signal into the collective consciousness of these morally uptight morons. Take off your costumes and wipe off that smile. Shut down your primitive brains, stop thinking before it causes more carnage, go stand in front of the mirror and look straight into it. That is the stupid misgiuded idiot who killed off our culture, not by disregarding it, but by misunderstanding and misinterpreting it.

There is probably no country, more stuck in the past, than ours. Every person who deems himself sufficiently old has something to say about the total disregard the youngsters of today have for the past. We are destroying culture, tradition and heritage. And how do they define all these big words? Culture, according to them is everything that they did, every single one of the stupid practices that they carried out, and every single one of the superstitious beliefs that they held. They accuse us of destroying culture, without even properly understanding what it means, what it stands for and what it is. To them culture is all about things like women dressing properly, a boy and a girl walking like total strangers in public even though they are obviously in love with each other. To them culture is all about shutting your mind and prescribing blindly to the ideas of our forefathers. It's all about giving respect without asking your mind wether the person in question deserves it. It is all about allowing yourself to live go back a thousand years in terms of mental evolution.

The great lessons that the soils of this country has learnt over the course of time, lies unrecognised, trampled by fanatics in their rush to save the country. The strength of our ancestors had always been the ability to acknowledge that there was a possibility that they could be wrong, an ability which enabled them to consider, evaluate and accept new ideas. Their greatest strength was their ability to reason. When Aryabhatta first reasoned that the Earth was round and that the universe was infinite, his fellow countrymen accepted it with a remarkable maturity of thinking, that the western world was unable to afford Copernicus when he proposed the same thousands of years later. Kautilya wrote a treatise on how to effectively govern a state that is still being reffered to today. Wave after wave of invaders came across the borders to plunder and loot but ended up being looted by the country, of their ideas, thoughts and many other things. It is this ability to reason, instead of blindly following the acts of their forefathers, that is our true culture, the one legacy of the past that we should protect above anything else. So next time, somebody treats you to the usual mix of culture and crap, stand up to them , or better smack them in the face and tell them that was for destroying our cultre. Hopefully someday they'll understand.

Planning and a million reasons to not do it...

2008-09-14T23:21:00.004+05:30

There are probably very few days that has run its course without me getting shot by the question' what's your plan? '. And every time, I have to answer them with the same ' do I look like a guy with a plan? ' look. So I decided to make my case before you people and try tell you, why you should not plan anything in the first place.
I read a story somewhere that when God created man, He was so threatened by what He created that He did something that was going to undermine every other ability that He had given him. He gave him the ability to think.
Now maybe I din't read that story anywhere and I just made it up, but then, most stories are made up by people in the first place and this is one of the more believable ones. Anyway, that's not the point, the point being that when we have something as accurate and reliable as our instincts, the fact that we almost always choose to go with our very own detailed complicated plans which almost always goes wrong, reflects a sense of mischief in the essence of our creation. Even the best of us secretly knows that most victories are achieved by things not going according to the plan, but our overinflated ego makes us uphold the general opinion that we were in control the whole time.
Planning is a farce that clouds our sense of reasonable judgement and presents us with a lot of unnecessary psychological demons to overcome. Pretty soon, while implementing it, our plan will bring us to a crossroad, present us with two choices and a decision to make - either try and acheive the aim or stick to the plan. Normally that is a very easy decison to make, but since our sense of reasonable judgement is already clouded, we always end up trying to bend circumstances to suit our plan, rather than bending our plan to suit the circumstances. It's almost like that story where this broke idiot sells his bike to buy his equally idiotic girlfriend a comb, but finds that his girlfriend had sold her hair (don't ask me how!) to get him a new helmet. So in the end, they walk off into sunset, looking really stupid with him wearing a helmet without a bike, while she's holding a comb while being completely bald. She might as well have taken the helmet to hide her baldness, while giving him her comb, considering he'll need it more than her, but the story is much more romantic the other way round. We can only speculate on how stupid their kids are going to be.
So what is the alternative to planning? The answer lies in something, we humans have been advised to fight against, since the beginning of time, by almost every person who has been mistaken for a philosopher - desire, temptation, lust, you get the picture. The most logical way to get something is to want something that bad, and let that desire control our every cell, let it govern our instinct. Then all you have to do is go by your instinct. You see, there is a reason why an unemployed dog finds enough whenever it feels like eating, while an unemployed man starves for a couple of weeks before stumbling upon a crumb. The dog simply goes by its instinct while the man spends a week planning on how to eat and spends the next week watching his brilliant plan come to nothing, before finally nature starts seeing a bit of a tragedy amidst all the comic buffoonery and places a morsel in his path, that he accidently stumbles upon.
So next time you read about someone advocating control over your desires or lateral planning, think about me, or at least think about sex (provided you are not already thinking about it, which sure as hell, you will be) because even that is much less harmful than listening to some guy harping on about fighting off temptations when we both know that he's just mad he'll never get laid because he's that ugly. And as the overpaid sportsperson in the Nike ad tells you, Just do it.

Romeo, the night before he met Juliet

2008-09-13T00:59:00.004+05:30

He tried to sleep but he just couldn't. It was almost as if something had been left unsaid that day and those words were making it impossible for him to sleep. He tried to remember those words but he couldn't. He began to wonder if they were even words in the first place.
Her face haunted him just by the sheer absence of it. For years now, he had been trying to figure out what she looked like, but he hadn't even come close. Countless were the times, he had walked past her, only to turn around and find her gone. Her scent gave him a blocked nose, for it was all that his nose desired. And yet, he did not even know what she smelt like.
Every day in his dreams, she came to him yet he could never see her. Her kiss gently carried him from nightmares to nightmares. The sound of her, breathing, reminded him to keep on breathing in and out and the warmth of her beating heart burnt blisters to his own pounding one. The sense of her hair falling across his face woke him up to yet another day of perpetual deja vu. She was torturing him callously, but somehow he was in love with her.

He was born in love, had been in love ever since, and from the look of things, was going to be in love forever. He wished he knew who he was in love with, but apparently, she wasn't done torturing him yet. He knew his life was hers and something inside him told him that she would settle for nothing less. The fates would settle for nothing less.

Somehow he sensed an oncoming wave of consequences setting off in a far off place. But he did not care. His heart had run out of blood and his pen had run out of ink. He was going to wait.

New Kids on the Block : Manchester United Youth

2008-08-21T04:43:00.009+05:30

A writer's mood can be judged from what he writes and no matter how hard he tries to hide his feelings, they almost always somehow seep through. This is one of the worst things, if you are a writer but also one of the best things. You don't have to talk much in situations where a few special words can make all the difference, all you need is someone who knows you enough to understand what you meant, when you wrote down what you have written.

Anyway, my point was that my mood kept shifting from 'bored to death' to 'desperate for life' over the past few days, as is evident from my rather philosophical choice of topics and my rather strange views on those, most of which are utter tosh. So I thought I'd shift to the one topic that I'll always find interesting and one that I could confidently report upon, without having to make up things. Manchester United, the greatest club ever to pay the greatest game ever played (unlike that self-depreciating farce, they call cricket)

Manchester United has always been a football club that has given due importance to developing youth, the proof which are two of the greatest football teams in Britain's history - The Busby Babes and Fergie's Fledgings. While the former had its promise cut short in a tragic aircrash, but not before enthralling the world for a couple of years, the latter completed the full cycle, bringing home the Champions League and acheiving the impossible treble in '99. But sadly since that famous youth FA cup winning team of 91, which include the likes of Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers, Gary and Phil, very few youth players have broken into the first team, with the rare ones that do ending up on the fringes, like Darren Fletcher and John O'Shea. But the present set of youngsters looks set to change all that with many of them possessing immense potential, and some of them already tipped to be superstars of the future. The only blemish is that unlike the other two great youth teams, this one was more or less assembled, rather than ground in United's Academy. But as long as they go on to fulfil their potential and serve the club as well as their illustrious predecessors, they will ensure that they end up part of an already rich United folklore. The rest of this article will introduce to you some of United's future stars.

Rodrigo Possebon was one of former assistant manager Carlos Quieroz's finds, having been brought over to United during the January transfer window of 2008 from Sporting Club Internacional in Brazil. The mangement team at United thought highly enough of him to hand him a squad number as soon as he came over. An elegant box to box midfielder, reminding us of a younger Roy Keane, but with the scruffiness replaced by that typical Brazilian grace, Possebon made his Reserves debut with a highly polished perfomance against Blackburn. Such was the confidence of this youngster that, when he was rushed on for his competetive senior debut, as an emergency substitute against Newcastle, he still managed to retain the ball better than Darren Fletcher. At 19, he is the oldest of our promising set of youngsters.

Fabi and Rafael Da Silva are brazilian twin brothers who have excelled for Brazil, in the u15 and u17 levels. Wingbacks, who play on opposite flanks, they bring back memories of the Neville brothers, with club captain Gary Neville ably positioned to guide them forward. Originally signed from Fluminense a couple of years back, they had to wait till they turned 18 to get their work permits, which they got just a couple of days before United's pre-season friendly against Peterborough. Even though Leftback Fabio was the more hyped between the two, having captained and top scored for Brazil in the u17 World cup, it was Rightback Rafael who caught the eye when he was handed out a surprise start against Peterborough, dishing out a perfomance which Sir Alex described as "sensational". Even more encouraging was the displays of the twins against a world class Juventus line-up a few days later. And Rafael in his competetive debut against Newcastle even earned a last minute freekick on the edge of the box, which sadly Wayne Rooney was unable to convert.

Federico Macheda, just 16 years of age, has already broken in to the Reserve squad and is a key member of both the Reserve and the Academy squads. Brought over from Lazio, Macheda has been described as a young Berbatov by the academy boss Wilf Mcguiness, and his displays for the reserves and the Youth team that won the prestigious Milk Cup earlier this year, has not suggested otherwise. And the with great Ole Gunnar Solskjear taking charge of the reserves this year, Macheda has the master of finishing at his disposal, to learn from.

The Youngest and perhaps the brightest of all these young talents is Davide Pettrucci. The 16yr old midfielder, hyped back in Italy as the next Francesco Totti, is a fixture in the Azzuri u18 team, along with Macheda. He was training with Roma, when United offered hima contract during the summer. Such was his talent that Roman newspapers lamented the loss of what they described as the "brightest talent to come out of the AS Roma football academy since Totti". He was widely expected to break into the Roma first team, had he stayed and going by his recent displays in the Milk Cup, it won't be long before he breaks into the United first team.

Nothing..

2008-08-18T00:08:00.000+05:30

I know that is a weird topic to write about, but a part of me proposed that I had a superhuman ability to go on and on about anything and nothing, and the part of me, true to my unreasonable and argumentative nature challenged the former to prove it. And since 'nothing' is a bit more difficult to write about than 'anything', as it quite clearly has lesser content associated with it than 'anything', I decided to do what I normally do in life - take two tasks, try deal with the more difficult one, mess it up, and then use it as an excuse to not deal with the easier one. So far it has proved to be one of the more successful principles, that I employ when it comes to dealing with that bagful of crap, that we've come to know as life.

Reverting back to the subject, 'nothing' is quite clearly an oxymoron, as anything that is worth reserving a word exclusively for itself, in the rather limited realm of the English language, is indeed something. In case, you're wondering, no, I'm not high. It is also one of the most misused words ever, used by almost all human beings in most cases of chronic understatements. In almost all cases, when you tell a person that he is 'nothing', it is because you are secretly threatened by him in one way or the other. If you think that he is indeed nothing, then why will you ever bother to waste your time telling him precisely that? So the next time, somebody tells you that you are nothing, sense his weakness, sharpen your knife and move in for the kill.
Again, the paradox of the word 'nothing' is apparent in the statement "I feel nothing". You can never feel nothing because it is a rule of nature that you will always feel something unless you are dead. Now if you were dead, then there does not arise the possibility of you uttering the aforementioned phrase. You will always feel something yet when you say that you feel nothing, somehow you mean exactly that.

The only conclusion that we can reach from a detailed study of the idea behind 'nothing' was that Albert Einstein was a stupid prick. Just don't ask me how I got there, but it has something to nothing being exactly what it is supposed to be. As it turns out, God did play dice with the world, and he bet big. Everything is only what we take it to be and the continuity of normal life in this world is subject to the condition that nobody ever takes anything for anything other than what it's meant to be. But once you break that law, everything ceases to be normal, you cease to be normal. Because once you break that law, you can do anything you want, anyway you want, anytime you want. You will simultaneously be, everything and nothing.

2008-08-09T20:26:00.002+05:30

Manchester United and the legendary treble.

2007-05-30T16:39:00.001+05:30

The world , today, is a horrendous place, yet a writer's paradise. The writer today has a whole range of topics to chose from, from kids with missing limbs in Iraq to kids with guns and bombs in Darfur. So in today's world, where one tyrant merely appears to gatecrash another's party, it is hard for some people concentrate on things, as seemingly meaningless as a game of football. There are people who find it difficult to imagine how a game, that involves a ball and twenty two grownups in shorts, could possibly influence people, let alone change them . But then, there are also people who believe the earth to be flat.

It's difficult to explain what, a match involving a team that they madly support, means to a football fan . So it's going to be virtually impossible to explain how one team's incredible season managed to change the lives of countless. Still, somebody has to do it.

The year 1999 is remembered by many for being the last year of the twentieth century . Still, there are a handful who remember it as the year that changed their lives , taught them to believe and convinced some that God wasn't imaginary. The Chinese called '99 the year of the rabbit. For the Old Trafford faithful, it was the year of the treble .

The treble had been marked down in the book of non realistic ambitions, ever since the inception of English football. To win the most demanding league in the world, the oldest cup competition in the world and still have enough left in the tank to be the champions of Europe was almost impossible. The word 'almost' got added to that sentence in 1999.

It was with the 1999 FA Cup semifinal , that even the most optimistic United fans began to smell that the impossible was about to happen. United had drawn Arsenal in the first leg and were on even terms with them in the second leg, until the 73rd minute when Roy Keane was sent off , giving Arsenal the extra man advantage. With the ejection of its most influential player United's chances of winning the cup were looking increasingly bleak. And then in the final minute, it was all but snuffed out when Arsenal was awarded a penalty.That was the moment, which triggered a series of miracles. Peter Schmeichel stopped the Bergkamp penalty and looked to have delayed the inevietable. And then came what Manchester United folklore refers to as 'the goal', the greatest one in United history and perhaps one of the greatest individual effort in footballing history.

In extra time, a loose ball found its way to Ryan Giggs deep inside his own half, who ran 70 yards with it, taking it past 5 Arsenal players before unleashing a mighty drive that took it past a hapless David Seaman. It was a moment that seemed surreal , with most believing it couldn't get any more miraculous. They had no idea what was to come.

Next up was the premier league title, which United won coming back from a goal down to beat Tottenham on the last day of the league. Again it was hapless Arsenal, who finished a point behind. And when they beat Newcastle to claim the FA cup, the whole of England got behind United as they prepared for a shot at the impossible treble.

The European Champions league final featured United against Bayern Munich on the 90th birth anniversary of Sir Matt Busby. The names 'Munich' and 'Busby' became forever linked in United's history, when an entire promising generation of United players, coached by Sir Matt Busby, known as the 'Busby babes' for their youthful exuberance, perished in an aircrash in Munich. Coincidently, Busby was the last man to take United to European glory in 1968.

The semifinal had already featured United in one of the greatest games in champions league history when they came from being two behind , to beat Juventus 3-2. But that match had taken its toll on United as its first choice central midfield - Scholes and Keane found themselves suspended due to yellow cards. Against a strong Bayern Munich team , the fans were praying for a miracle. But nobody was ready for what was to come.

United found themselves behind ,after just 6 minutes, after a freekick from Basler propelled Bayern into the lead. And with Oliver Kahn in form behind a rock solid Bayern defence, United looked increasingly out of the game as the clock ticked on.

In the 81st minute a desperate Sir Alex Ferguson, then just Alex Ferguson, threw on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the baby faced Norwegian in place of Andy Cole. But that looked to have no effect on the game as a grim United bench watched Bayern Munich ribbons being tied on to the trophy. After the referee had given just 3 minutes of added time, the UEFA officials went in to make the final arrangements for the presentation. When they came out, they were surprised to see the Bayern fans in tears.

In an incredible 3 minutes , United had won the championship. In the 90th minute, a Ryan Giggs mishit off a Beckham corner found its way to Teddy Sheringam, who steered the ball past Kahn for the equalizer, sending the Red half of the stadium into ruptures. Two minutes later, Solskjaer poked another Beckham corner past Kahn who still hadn't recovered from the earlier goal to complete one of the most incredible comebacks in sporting history . A comeback that taught the United fans that miracles are possible, but more importantly, taught them that when it's time, miracles are inevietable.

Teardrops on a blood-red jersey...

2007-05-12T23:52:00.000+05:30

On a rainy november day in 2005 , more than 10.000 people waited in the drizzle . The celebrities were there in their black sunglasses and their mourning suites designed by the most exclusive designers .Behind them however , were a sea of people from all walks of life , most of them dressed as they had been , at that moment , when their minds told them that they had to say goodbye . They knew that the least they could do for him was to remember him , as he had asked of them , not for all the front page news that he made , but for all those time they saw him on the back page.
They knew that the only way they could repay him , for giving them a lifetime of joy , was to remember him as only George Best could be remembered.
When Manchester United scout Bob Bishop spotted a skinny teenager playing the beautiful game in Belfast , he knew what he had found . Great words are regarded as much for their spontaneity as they are for their beauty , and when Bishop told the then United manager Sir Matt Busby, " Boss, I think I found you a genius " , it was ensured that those words were imprinted firmly in the sands of time , never to be washed away by the tide of forgetfulness , as has been countless memories involving Best and a ball .George Best turned proffessional at the age of 17 scoring for Manchester United , the first of more than a hundred more to come. The legend of George Best was growing everytime that he was on the field , and the enigma that was George Best was becoming more enigmatic everytime he was off it . Blessed with good looks , and a sense of humour that made him hugely attractive to women , he was heralded as the fifth beatle by the Britsh tabloids .
By 1968 , the legend of George Best had reached dizzy heights .Be it , scoring six times in a single match , or be it single handedly destroying a star studded Benefica team in a champions league quarterfinal , Best had given the Old Trafford faithful , a lifetime of memories and countless occasions ,which they could reflect back with tears in their eyes and proudly tell their grandchildren ,"I was there!". In 1968 , after spending 90 quiet minutes in a champions league final, George Best hit Benefica from nowhere , scoring twice in extra time to gift United their first ever Champions league crown .The same year , he won the European footballer of the year award. Then started the slide downwards .
Alcohol and countless affairs , made him a headache to his manager and a PR disaster . Drunken brawls landed him in jail , numerous times .Also with the retirement of the patronising Sir Matt Busby , came new managers who did not share Sir Busby's patience.Eventually he played his last United game in 1974.
In the meantime , along with alcoholism and womanising , a new evil had crept into Best's life - gambling . It did not take him long to lose , whatever he had left and the quest for money took him along on a journey across that took him through Los Angeles and South Africa . His career ended with a third division club , the only blemish being his inability to lead his country to the World Cup finals. Maybe it is this seemingly small stain , that prevented him from being rated above Pele and Diego Maradona as the best player ever to have touched a football.
His later life was destroyed by alcoholism .His contempt towards death was visible , when he openly drank in public , after he had a liver transplant with strict orders not to touch alcohol again . People accused him of having no respect for their feelings , but deep inside they knew that he , not them , was living the fullest life possible.
On October 3 , 2005 , George Best was admitted to the intensive care , with kidney problems . As it had been with most of his goals ,he fooled the world with one last dummy , as his conditions slightly improved , before closing a glorious , yet tragic chapter in the history of the beautiful game . We will never know what made George Best , what he was and what he became , but then , some things are better left unknown . And as they say in Ireland - "Pele good , Maradona better ,George Best" . May God impart to his soul , the joy that he gave us!!.

2007-05-11T22:01:00.001+05:30