Delusions of Grandeur

.. and boredom breeds bad parodies

2008-09-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

my contributions to future generations:

Cayney Dumptey sat on a Vol
Cayney Dumptey had a great fall;
All the Bernankey's donkeys and all the Hank's men
Couldn't put Bear Stearns together again.

Ding Dong Bell
Lehman's in the well
Who put her in?
Little Dick Fuld Thin
Who pulled her out?
The KDB rich and stout.
What a naughty boy is Dicky this time,
To try to drown poor Lehman 'coz of subprime !

and a hope that the nano fails..

Tata and Buddha went up a hill
To fetch the Nanos faster;
Didi pulled Buddha down and broke his thorny crown
And Tata came tumbling after

2008-09-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus, I have rediscover'd that distinctintly male art of Coccooning a k a Crawling-Into-Your-Cave a k a Being-The-Incorrigible-Couch-Potato. The smarter ones call it Introspecting ("Honey, I can't take out the trash. I need to reflect on my day").

Not like I lead a very active life on normal days. But as I lay in my rather overspacious bed at home, curled up with limbs stretched at impossible angles (vaguely resembling a very ungainly flamingo on dope), reading material on one side, a pillow on the other and music all around, I was happy. At peace more like. The kind of silent happiness that makes one feel all's right with the world. The kind of happiness that you usually get when you are spending a nice long vacation at home. It was raining heavily outside. The steady drumbeat of the rain on my window only broken by the occasional bark from a Very-Irritated-Because-I'm-Wet Labrador. A warm and fuzzy trickle of thoughts and memories in my head.

It struck me that familiarly breeds comfort. Life always seems better around the past. The old sofa that I slept, studied, ate - and oh yes, sat - in, complete with ancient ketchup stains. The 20 year old dining table that I hid under as a bachcha. Songs that I grew up hearing. Memories of our home and ancient Honda Accord back in Ras Al Khaimah. Snapshots of a time gone by.

Things come full circle I guess. Wherever I go, whatever I end up doing, nothing 'gets' me like the things that you grew up with. For me, that would be reading endlessly. Long walks. Doodling. Mallu songs. Amma's chai. Going to the supermarket (I love the smell of supermarkets. And department stores. So much that I seriously consider retail a career choice. Even now). I swear by Honda.

It's funny - the things that define you forever. And the people that - for good or bad - change you. Friends from school who have grown up and are raising families of their own, but still game for a snigger or two. The pretty girl in the front row you perpetually had a crush on. Cranky teachers. The bullies you had to pick fights with.

Sigh. Freud was right.

Patriotic? Me?

2008-08-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

taking off from this interesting post , and based on a very vocal argument i had with a friend a couple o' days back:

Am I patriotic?
The short version answer: I dunno..
The much much longer version answer:

Am I not patriotic? I remember that the Father of Our Nation was born on October 2nd and killed on January 30th. I diligently mark out the dates for festivals and make sure I send out greetings to all & sundry. And attend the 'festival special' lunches and dinners at the various restaurants in town smart enough to cash in on this. I attend flag hoisting at the Indian embassy in Leonie Hill on August 15th and belt out the national anthem (err. some facts are slightly altered for effect). Doesn't that make me a true-blooded son of the Indian soil? (really expensive soil now though)

Ain't I patriotic? Sure, I support the Indian cricket team. Sure, I was delighted when Abhinav 'Businessclass Shooter' Bindra won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. And hurt when Sania 'Aint she a babe' Mirza lost to Sanchez and crashed out of Wimbledon.

Patriotic? Me? Yes saar! my top five favourite dishes are all Indian as they come, right from dosa and chutney to rice and dal. No pizza for me, thank you ma'am! Mcdonalds nahi! Pasta? Perish the thought! Just lassi, no coke. Books? Indian authors,I like a lot of 'em (despite their highly overdone metaphors and tortuous sentence constructions). Inspired by a good friend, I am in a cycle of reading up on Indian political history. Doesn't all that make me an Indophile?

Yes I line up on Friday nights at Jade to catch the latest Bollywood flick. Given that, on an average 11 out of 10 Hindi movies are abysmal and vacuous (even by the standards for B-grade movies), this is not an easy task. But this regular desire for a taste of what is the most popular form of Indian culture, should mark me out as a true lover of my hipshakin', bhangra dancing country, no?

All of this sounds incredibly trivial. But this is what most of us bestow as our tokens of love acknowledging our motherland. The casual gesture to remind ourselves that we are Indian, although we live comfortably outside India, earning in a currency that exchanges in the 30s -40s into Indian rupees, and where the roads are less chaotic.

Is India-love so popular among my generation because the country is suddenly on the must-see / must-invest / must-watch list of the rest of the world ? Because, for once, by being Indian we are betting on a winning horse? Because we are no longer considered another Third World Nation? As I cynically told someone, patriotism is at an all time high now that the Sensex is close to 20000 (yes yes i know, the 20k Sensex days are long gone..sigh).

When does a country need its patriots? Obviously during its darkest hours. Would I actually step up and decide to go back if India went into war? Heck, even in it's shining years I'm thinking twice about living in Mumbai - forget crisis situations. Would I give up my comfortable stay to return and help make things a little bit better? Ain't calling myself patriotic just talk till I actually put my chips in?

Is what most people call patriotism, just a need for reflected glory? ('hey the world's richest man is Indian! guess what, I'm Indian too. See, that means LNM and me, we're similar - see?'). Every time an Indian wins a beauty contest, or features on some list of the Who's Who, we jump in glee.

Is there real patriotism among a nation's people who are quick to label their compatriots as upper caste, lower caste, Madrasi, Bengali, South Indian and a zillion other categories, and then treat them with the appropriate amount of contempt and disdain? The bigotry is very much there.

Sure, I love India for it's sheer freedom. A country that gives people a chance, even to the unluckiest of us . A country that has embraced capitalism so ecstatically that consumers are spoilt for choice on everything from tv channels to low cost airlines to mobile services to formal shirts. An India with so many educated, ambitious people and a demographic weighted so heavily towards the young. A country where every individual can (and given the frenzied media industry, this is not too much of an exaggeration) actually stand up and be heard. I love the 'India shining' story to bits. And wholeheartedly believe in it. Yes I want to change the world and India in my own specific way, hopefully doing something I get a lot of kicks out of. But is that patriotism?

Things to do in boring (is there any other kind?) meetings

2008-04-14T01:16:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to a Certain-Someone-Who-Spends-All-Her-Time-In-Meetings :)

* Adopt a bizarre twitch (e.g. flicking your head irregularly, twitching your eye or bursting out with sporadic coughing noises)

* Go dressed as a sumo wrestler. Everytime someone says something, get up slap ur arms and thighs, stare menacingly and tell them you 'respectfully disagree'

* Mentally rephrase sentences heard so they rhyme

* Draw cartoons of your colleagues

* Answer all questions with "That would not fit in with our strategy and vision", and promptly start crying if anyone disagrees

* Blow spit bubbles

* Translate your favourite poetry into your mother tongue, in your head

* Count how many times they use the word 'strategy' or 'vision'.

* Picture all your colleagues as extraterrestrials, and you are the subject of an alien experiment (this should be easy)

* Everytime you speak up, make a clicking sound with your tongue (or maybe a 'ding')

* Keep digging into your handbag like you're frantically searching for something and walk out of the meeting every 15 minutes

* Blink wildly and then close your eyes really tight to see a variety of blobs, stars and flashes. Try to make out shapes and see if your subconscious is trying to send you a message

* Pretend you're a Labrador. Anytime someone looks at you, stare at them with your head tilted, grinning and your tongue lolling out

* Clean and polish your belly button

* Calmly have a nervous breakdown

* Count the number of double chins in the room

* Practice trying to make the speaker's head explode. Using just your force of will, try to make the speaker's head blow up.If the meeting is bad enough, you may want to change strategy and try to make your own head explode

* Keep making interruptions every 10 mintues with "What's the next item on the agenda?" or "Can you two go over the details later?"

* The Robot -- This one is from one of the Dilbert-series: During a meeting, you are a big robot. The bridge is in your head and you are the captain of the robot. You can give the robot orders like 'head 5 degrees starboard' and just move your head a bit to the right

* Act like you are taking notes, but actually compose the Mills & Boons novel you are secretly working on

* Every time someone proposes something, ask them "so what would be the effect of inflation on this" (this is actually guaranteed to flummox anyone)

(Source: mostly cogged from the Net )

Today's definitions..

2008-03-24T19:07:00.000-07:00

From Investopedia.
TERM OF THE DAY - MARCH 24, 2008

Young And Wealthy But Normal (YAWN)
What Does it Mean?
A class of self-made millionaires that live relatively modest lives. Instead of spending wealth on gaining luxurious items and living expensive lifestyles, these individuals prefer to make contributions to charitable causes and spend time with their families.

Investopedia Says...
The concept of social responsibility may have contributed to the emergence of this new class of wealthy individuals. All in all, these individuals can be a great benefit for society because they redistribute a vast amount of wealth for social good. However, it may be difficult to become a YAWN because it can be very tempting for wealthy young people to be drawn to more extravagant lifestyles

Neat :))

watchables...

2008-03-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

very nice History channel documentary on the Angkor Wat...Courtesy NJ.

1 week and 3 days to Cambodia! Can't wait to get away.

This weekend's dose of escapism...

2007-12-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

Movies are my way of getting over those things that refuse to be simply gotten over. (somewhere along the way, books have stopped serving that purpose. I just don't want to touch a book when I'm in the pits.)

And I found 2 absolute gems this week. God bless the NLB. And McDs for delivering all night. And my folks for not bugging me when i didnt want to be bugged.

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Not the greatest of movies made. But it hit my personal top-o-the-charts for sheer entertainment value. Paul Newman's very cool portrayal of the wild wild west's most affable outlaw. Redford's icy laidback Sundance Kid. The final shootout scene with the Sundance Kid covering for Butch Cassidy as he runs into an open area. The faceless menace of the lawmakers persistently on their tracks. And most of all, the snap-crackle banter between the two. right to the very end.

(After trying to shake off their pursuers)
Butch: I think we lost 'em. Do you think we lost 'em?
Sundance: No.
Butch: Neither do I.

(When Sundance finds Butch kissing and hugging Etta, Sundance's girlfriend):
Sundance: Hey, (pause) what are you doing?
Butch: Stealing your woman.
Sundance: (scratching his butt) Take her...take her
Butch: Well, you're a romantic bastard, I'll give you that

unmissable.

Double Indemnity. For over 4 years my favourite movie featuring 'a-meticulously-planned-murder-gone-wrong' was Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (Rope being a close second). Until I saw Double Indemnity that is. Dark. Gripping from the moment Neff starts narrating the story into the dictaphone. And the dialogues that under any other writer or director would have been just cheesy, but here (with Raymond Chandler's take on the orignal novel, and Billy Wilder's direction) are incredibly stylish. Like this classic exchange:

(When Neff tries to flirt with Phyllis Dietrichson, the femme fatale in the story)
Phyllis: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I'd say about ninety.
Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Neff: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Sppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Neff: That tears it.

With it's brooding feel, and flawed characters, this movie is a must-watch. Wiki tells me it's considered the best example of film noir ever.

Damn, they actually don't make 'em talkies like this anymore. Somehow now everything has to have a psychopathic slant to it. Like we have to explain the reasons for why someone can actually kill another person. Like it's not just for greed. Like one has to show a hundred blood splatters to depict violence. I think the only recent movie in this genre that passed muster would be Fracture.

what's the word to describe..

2007-12-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

..the feeling you get when you stare out your 50th floor office window over the expanse of Singapore's CBD, see an amazingly beautiful day, the whole world waiting to be explored, friends to make, conversations to have, music to hear....

...and then a shrieky female voice explodes in your ear "where's that memo I asked you to make?!?!!"

a few cribs on..,

2007-12-26T05:43:00.000-08:00

I enjoy cribbing.. it s a catharsis.. nothing soothes my sidey soul like a few hours of complaining to all and sundry. The only reason I hang out with the boys on Friday nights at a pub over a round of beers is because it guarantees me a captive audience for my rants. I can spend hours complaining. no toilet breaks even. no pit stops to catch my breath. Bellyache about the entire universe. and then some. I can crib about cribbing.The happiness is all in the journey, honey.

And being a perpetual cribber is like being the eternal pessimist.. it's a win-win scenario (to quote -blech! - stephen covey). If things turn out better than you expected, you can jump in joy (hey, i may be a basketcase, but i'm no masochist). If they turn out as bleakly as you predicted, you have the pleasure of tellin 'em all "hahah suckers! I told you so".. it's foolproof. not a hitch.

and of course, one never runs out of things to complain about.. work. family. friends. the u.s presidential elections. the indian stock markets. the neighbour in the next cubicle who snorts everytime he laughs. bosses who insist that if something cannot be put on powerpoint, it ain't worth discussing. colleagues who think that Convertible Bonds are a british secret agent's sports car. a maid who does better disappearing acts than david copperfield. ad infinitum.

It's my way of maintaining equality of happiness in society ..bwaahahah

movies i caught up on..

2007-12-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

The Golden Compass...film version of Pullman's novels, something I've been wanting to read for some time. The philosophical undertones in the movie are easy to see.. the questions of free will, and of the very unique idea of treating one's souls as existing outside the body. But all this was lost in the juvenile dialogues. a movie for kids based on a book for grownups. Neither here nor there.

Gattaca...Being a fan of Uma Thurman's oomph and Ethan Hawke's very laid back acting style (Reality Bites, Before sunrise), this movie was a definite watch for me. What I thought was a sci-fi flick turned out to be an absolutely excellent movie on genetic discrimination in a totalitarian society, and how one individual survives this (Tagline: there's no gene for the human spirit! Tacky. But likeable all the same). A wishy-washy ending prevents this from being a classic though. Very watchable.

Gaslight... A husband's deliciously devilish manipulation of his wife's psyche.. to convince her that she's losing her sanity. Brilliant script. And a wonderfully vulnerable Ingrid Bergman. Charles Boyer was awful though - you know from the moment he steps on the screen that the guy is pure evil. No subtlety. I wish someone would do a remake of this. Damn good!

The Bad Sleep Well... The fact that this 60s movie grips you despite having what anyone today would think is a very cliched storyline, says a lot. Japanese drama on white collar crime and revenge. Worth checking out..

the good, the bad and the highly confused

2007-12-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

It's very hard not to be cynical (Warning: grumbling and self pity coming up)

Try explaining 'human goodness' to a person in a floodswept country ignored by their fellow countrymen and pretty much the rest of the world. Or to a person in a nation perpetually torn by civil strife and bombing by self-declared superpowers. Or to an
economist.

Interestingly the original cynics believed in virtue being the be-all of existence. Ironically, the very essence of being a cynic now is in believing that there is no virtue whatsoever. In seeing the world as driven by naked interest and a desire for self-preservation. Adam Smith's invisible hand. A free market.

If one were to look at life as a set of bets (which is what it ultimately is, aint it? a birth at one end, a coffin at the other and a series of choices in between?), any poker player or trader worth his salt will tell you that you should always play the odds. Never bet your house on winning with a pair of twos. Or hold out expecting to get a royal flush. And when 99 out of 100 times one can clearly see that looking out for oneself is 'smarter' than being the idealistic-guy-left-holding-the-ball, it's a no-brainer what the odds are in favour of. Why on earth are people so obliviously stupid to actually choose to be good and kind?

Coming from a country where 'jugaad' is a skill to respect, where a man's worth is the acres of land he owns, where religion is the refuge of every scoundrel, and where something as blatantly superficial as arranged marriage is actually preferred, keeping one's moral compass tuned can be a a daily chore. Any idiot who tells me crime doesn't pay clearly has their blinkers on. As Shaw said 'the power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.' Or like the Kurosawa movie, the Bad Sleep Well.

Cynicism is one step away from discarding any affection one has for your fellow human being. I am slowly being convinced about what I read once of religion, virtue and ethics being the greatest inventions of a very smart minority. Time to cancel my monthly donation to the cancer society me thinks.

Is there any hope for a pygmalion effect? Will people actually live up to a higher standard because one expects them to?

Sigh...Everytime someone I look up to turns out to be just another selfcentred crook, I go through this screw-the-world ranting. And then after a couple of days, I keep doing the bouncing back to being stupidly idealistic and blindly optimistic. Only to feel like an idiot everytime the real world hits me square on the kisser. Which is probably why I was never any good at poker..

having my cake and eating it too..

2007-11-13T03:09:00.000-08:00

ruminating on Harika's interesting viewpoint and Sawg's quite perceptive comments to it..

Some random thoughts:

what is compromise anyway?

clearly it cannot be defined by something as simplistic as 'making a tradeoff'. Any decision involves making a tradeoff - which is why it's called a 'decision' in the first place. So what kind of decisions are categorised as compromise,versus one that's just a good or a bad decision?

A good decision would be one resulting in the optimal solution, given the problem, the resources and the constraints (strat consultant!).

But a compromise? ah, that would be where you make inferior (suboptimal) decisions because of the X factor. X here would be: what you think your friends should think of you, or what you want your better half to think of you, or what you want society in general to think of you.
(right about now is when you should yawwn, and click the red x at the corner of the window.. coz it's going to get way worse).

One basically compromises something not because, deep inside they want to or think it's a good idea, but because it's 'expected' of them, or because it's part of the process of granting and receiving favours.

Point being, I repeat (since I love hearing myself talk, and it saves having to think of new ideas), a good decision would involve tradeoffs too. But in a good decision, you know you are doing the best given the constraints, the right solution so to speak.

So, if A and B have a difference of opinion, a compromise would be where they finally do something that is:
(a) not what A thinks is right, but B insists on, or vice versa or
(b) something that neither A nor B thinks is right, but is somewhere halfway.

The idealistic scenario would be where they work out, rationally, as mature individuals, what is the optimal (i love that word, makes me sound learned) solution, irrespective of what A or B 'want'. For normally, any person would 'want' everything. But there's no free lunch.

Problem being that rarely are things so cut and dried that you can find the 'right' solution, and rarely are people rational.

Why then would A defer to something that A does not like but B does? Maybe because A thinks that's easier than having a bad argument with B ? Maybe because A wants B to like him/her ? Maybe because society expects A to defer to B? Or as in a Nash equilibrium, it's not the best payoff, but sometimes just the most stable one.

(It cannot just be because A wants B to be happy, because then clearly, in A's utility curve, B's happiness is the most important criteria. In which case, A would be satisfied with the decision, and by definition it would not be a compromise)

So is compromise inevitable then? A game of give-and-take where i let you win once, and you let me go the next time..

but won't this subject the people you keep close, to the kind of score-keeping ("you 2 me 0"), history-quoting("remember in june 1986 i agreed to your idea"), transaction-scrutinying oneupmanship, that are a norm in business negotiations?

I can understand doing so in a business deal or even in society in general, but shouldn't we keep our closest relationships, unconditional? A chicken game is worth worrying about in a competitive environment, me thinks!

More importantly, don't all the small compromises we make deviate us - a little more each time - from what we wanted. Finally, after some 10 years, we realise we've made so many small compromises, we are miles away from where we should have been. The wannabe sportsman who ends up an insurance clerk at 35 because he didn't give it his all? or the once-budding musical genius who didn't want to take the risk of not having a secure 'corporate career' and decided to work at both in parallel, and at 40 realises he's done well in neither? very familiar stereotypes, both.

Like I heard in an interview with whitecollar conman Jordan Belfort, most criminals don't start off committing big crimes. They start with one small act, one minor breach of good faith ("hey, it's only 100 dollars from the till, who'll notice?"). Then its another small act, and another, and a few more (each one just a marginally small wrong as compared to the immediately previous one). Pretty soon, they are so far away from where they started off, they're full blown antisocial elements without even realising it. Isn't that first small act also the first small compromise?

I'm sure few bureaucrats in India start their careers thinking "Ok, I'm going to be the most corrupt guy here after that Karunakaran chap". It's usually a small favour for one somebody (because he's the Minister's son's best friend's neighbour's maid's relative's cousin's wife's friend), and then another small favour and so on.. and before you know it you have collapsing bridges and pilfered animal fodder.

While it is nice to think that one can fight for the 'right' solution to any problem, life clearly doesn't work that way. Compromise saves time, money, effort and unwanted headaches in most cases. Live today, fight tomorrow, i guess.

Maybe that's why, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them" (Thoreau).

Ahh, to be like Sinatra sang:

"For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!"

the tragedy of the colon and the right parantheses

2007-11-13T02:37:00.000-08:00

Thoughts straying from Varsha's post on the history of someone now more famous & loved than mickey mouse, the mona lisa and audrey hepburn combined: the ":)"

However, me thinks the ubiquitous smiley is a highly abused and much overexploited symbol. For example,

Bush46: "PM, Condy & I think it's time we invaded your country :)"

GeneralPM_43: "screw you George! u americans with ur nuclear missiles, ur Wall street and ur Jessica Alba (who I luvv btw), u think u can dictate terms to us Pakistanis? :)"

Bush46: "But Pervvy dude, ur country's going to the dogs. In fact, even the dogs are trading u up for Rwanda :) :)"

GeneralPM_43: "u wouldn't dare George! one whimper out of DC and we'll unleash fireworks that make sept 11 look like a highschool prom :) :)"

Bush46: "point taken,Perv, but am giving you time till the elections only :) :) :)"

GeneralPM_43: "hey where are all the hot women who're supposed to be in this chatroom?"

(please note the ':)' sprinkled like confetti)

My point being, people have resorted to abusing the smiley as a tone sweetener i.e. as something that is supposed to somehow magically make a harsh diktat sound softer or a rude comment more polite. Like the people in senior management who send me emails like:

big.bad.boss @ lootthecustomer.com wrote:
J, u have to be in office from 9 am to 10 pm this saturday :)

jayesh @ lootthecustomer.com wrote:
But..but..i promised my fiancee i would attend our wedding

big.bad.boss @ lootthecustomer.com wrote:
be here on saturday or expect no bonus this year :) :)

see the point! people are using the " :) " as a protective shield to hide behind while firing verbal salvos. And worse, sometimes its hard to gauge how serious someone is, because they insist on using an insinuating smiley to sound 'cheerful'.

Someone should invent an Insincere-O-Meter, that measures how genuine a smiley really is.

So, email exchanges among politicians, bankers, diplomats and the like, while peppered with them happy symbols, will set off alarm bells ringing. In fact we should insist them politicos use the :) in all their statements, just so we can measure their insincerity levels.

For eg. something like Sonia Gandhi saying: "We have made a promise to the people of the state that we will provide them good governance and we will try and keep to our promise. :)"

should set off sirens blaring. It would make for interesting conversations.

From what i've seen, the :)'s been used to mean a lot of things including:
:) "i'm happy" / "am cheerful" / "that's a joke - laugh damnit" / "i find that funny"
:) "sarcasm intended"
:) "that's ironical"
:) "that's nice!"
:) "charming"
:) "i think ur cute"
:) "see, i told u it was lee harvey oswald"
:) "the matrix has u"
:) "i know ur sleeping with that hussy u call ur secretary, i m divorcing u"
:) "i'm just practising my smileys"

Not to mention, the various mutations of emoticons that we see. Someday, someone's gonna create an entire language out of these. Here's a Marge Simpson: |- |@@@@@8-) and a skateboarder O-\-<].

Make no mistake: i love them emoticons! They add the colour and the inflections and all the eccentricities that make interacting with people (and some netsavvy labradors) enjoyable. But just because one has a first finger and ring finger (the last for the shift key), does not mean one has to go haywire with the emoting.

Damn you chatters with your insincere smileys :)

Listening to...

2007-11-08T04:22:00.000-08:00

Lightning Crashes by Live here
dark, brooding, incredibly sad, and then a touch of hope...
first heard this song at the annual music show held by our excellent student band at iima..

lightning crashes..
a new mother cries
her placenta falls,
to the floor..
the angel opens her eyes..
the confusion sets in,
before the doctor can even close the door
lightning crashes..
an old mother dies
her intentions fall,
to the floor..
the angel closes her eyes..
the confusion that was hers belongs now,
to the baby down the hall
oh now feel it comin' back again
like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
i can feel it..
lightning crashes,
a new mother cries..
this moment she's been waiting for,
the angel opens her eyes..
pale blue colored eyes,
presents the circle
and puts the glory out to hide, hide
oh now feel it comin' back again
like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
i can feel it..

i didn't realise the history of the song until i read it in Songfacts:

The band dedicated this to Barbara Lewis, one of their high school friends who was killed by a drunk driver around the time this song was written.

Her brother in-law explains:"The song's lyrics are mostly an analogy. Barb donated several organs, including her heart. She was close with Ed and the guys and died in a car collision with a fleeing armed robber. These lyrics are constantly misunderstood! Yes, Ed is speaking to the circle of life, but specifically to how Barb's life gave new life to many. The angel, the baby down the hall, the pale blue eyes (of Barb), the pain ("confusion")... the lyrics are wholly Ed's interpretation of his experience and perception of Barb's impact.

Our family has become close with the most genuine and caring man who is still alive today (over 10 years later), who has Barb's heart beating in his chest! "Lightning Crashes" literally lives on.

At their concerts in the late 1990s, Live dedicated this to the victims of the tragedy at Columbine High School.This was the biggest hit off the album and of Live's entire career.

Am realising I have a rather macabre (?)inclination towards the grief and sense of loss that follows any death.. Among my all-time favourite songs are Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven (dedicated to his son Connor who died in an accident), Pearl Jam's Last Kiss (about a couple who died when their car hit a tractor trailer in rural Georgia), and Bee Gees' New York Mining Disaster (about a mining disaster in 1939, not 1941 like the song says,and the last thoughs of a miner waiting in vain to be rescued)

Or maybe it's just that grief is such a primal emotion, it's easy to identify with any good song that captures it..

Ran...

2007-11-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

from orchid park till Yio chu kang.. 45 minutes.. only 15 minutes single stretches though, with 5 minute breaks :(
around 4 km i guess. not much, but it's a start!
as always, lovin it..
just me, my thoughts, the 1-m wide asphalt pavement and the gazillion cars on the highway.

Anatomy of a drunken revelry

2007-11-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

something i 've been wondering for a long time (since december 25, 2006 to be precise): what makes a good party? (if at the word party, white clad politicians, or the lotus symbol, or anything of the same ilk came to your mind, would suggest 'click logout, press shutdown button, wait for laptop to shutdown, open nearest window, jump')..

of course we are not talking about parties of the likes of something in the forbes list.

was at a lively party recently (pnr's farewell bash).. what started low n slow at 7 pm with a couple of people milling around the pool, culminated in a a couple of pool dunkings, a missing derivatives trader, and a late night blast at the rupee room. We had senti speeches, we had drunken emotional hugs, we had people thrown into the pool, we had barbeque briquettes that refused to reach combustion point, we had dancing, the whole works basically.. and a real good time.. by the time it was 1 am i don't think anyone wanted to go back home.

which brings me to.. hypothesis of the day: Ingredients in replicating a good party (also known as J's 10 Forces Model.. err it's actually only 5, but when you're high one tends to see double)

(1) the people (duh)... i've been to parties with total strangers getting together having a great time, and to parties where supposed friends meet up and bore the hell out of each other. The way I figure it, one needs a lot of people willing to have a good time. This is tougher than one thinks.

A lot of people i know come to check out the rest of the crowd (to do a series of 'vertical scans' as hb puts it), decide there ain't no 'potentials' (it will be a traumatic experience even thinking of psychoanalysing what that word means to different people), and either plop themselves at some corner to sip the free cocktails, or just politely disappear. You basically need folk who get that everyone's got to dole out their bag of tricks..the jokes, the leg-pulling, the trivia exchange, the gossip..

the last thing you want are a bunch of people sitting in corners in clusters eyeing the rest of the revellers warily, much like the Left government at a nuclear deal discussion.. you need hombres and chicas willing to put in their 2 cents worth of humour and enthusiasm on the table..

(2) the common thread.. usually this is the reason for the party itself.. in our case, being to make sure that pnr actually does leave singapore like he kept promising to do :D

but basically something to talk about and keep the conversation moving.. but finding an excuse to party is never hard for the really committed and the really drunk.

all those already taking out the party hats, please note : unfortunately the common thread cannot be 'single, desperate and need a girlfriend'

(3) the music and the filllers... nothing kills a lively atmosphere like the awkward silences in between a conversation. hence the need for the fillers (the people who voluntarily jump in the pool for eg.), and the need for ambient music .. by ambient i mean the sort of ambience that gives senior citizens a coronary. On a scale of 1 to 10 of 'things that drive your mom crazy', this is the sort of tempo that counts as a 15.6

(4) the venue.. when was the last time a rocking good party happened around a dinner table for 10 with place settings , i ask you all!

The usual conversation at parties (if the party is not in an oscar wilde play) like this go:

'So Mrs. Mangolassiwalla what do you do?'
'Oh, I make designer clothes for 6 month-olds and poodles. My husband meanwhile advises companies on mergers & acquisitions and just made a bonus of 756,684.56 sgd'
'Oh, how verrry interresting (snore)'
'shhh..shh.. (whisper) Did you know that the Singhs' son has come out of the closet.. it seems he likes a girl!'
'how scandalous, can you imagine a wealthy new delhi socialite guy not being gay!'

(brief nods to the Friends' / Seinfeld episodes I have cogged from)

of course, the observant shall comment that this does not qualify as a party in the first place and is just dinner... but that's just arguing over semantics..

point being, people should mingle, not be pigeonholed into seats and forced to hold conversation with the spaced out person sitting to their left. You need lots of area to move about, preferably a few benches or chairs people can stand on and scream once they've ingested sufficiently high amounts of alcohol. also a couple of fire hydrants.

(5) the F&B.. i hesitate to list alcohol among the prerequisites, for the simple reason that I have been to parties with very minimal amounts of it, and still had a great time (of course, many of these were parties where the usual conversation ran into something like 'hey pass the joint duude' or 'man, i'm flying i 'm a-flying').

Alcohol - like non-WASP middle class votes in the US presidential elections, while not essential, is still quite useful... Face it, most people need the fluids to loosen up.. so unless you know enough people lively & entertaining enough when not drunk, the vodka better keep a-flowing.

But jokes apart, alcohol's not compulsory i insist. But food & music & conversation, ah yes.. nothing soothes the savage beast like that holy triad. BBQs are good fun.. imagine, 14 people sitting around a couple of coals that refuse to light (in fact, we have concluded that the best way to put out fires, even raging forest fires, would be to throw barbeque charcol at it), and passing comments and random ideas.. with one hapless guy poking away with tongs in one hand and lighter fluid in the other. Every once in a while the entertainment level goes up when someone enthusiastically pours lighter fluid into the grill and it blows up in his/her face.

so that's it in a nutshell..my 26 years of experience compressed into a few words.. i ask for no remuneration, no applauses, no standing ovations.. invites to future parties would be acceptable though..

ah i love restating the obvious.. strat consultants do you hear me? are ye hiring?

overheard..

2007-10-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

from a senior at iimA:

Just got back from Campus today. Was there over the weekend.Was promptly scalped by the dorm for dinner and ice cream.But this story they told me warmed the cockles of my wicked heart.

They have a new event called Sangharsh - which is a sports meetbetween IIM-A and B. The venue is to alternate between A and B,and it was A this year.
When the IIMB teams arrived on campus, they were all wearing T-Shirts that read"Let's teach the GEEKS to play BALL".

Next morning after the Directors address in the RJMCEI Auditorium, when the teamswere marching to the field, our folks held up a banner that read...

WELCOME TO IIM-A
We are glad you finally made it.

<\quote>

I'm sorry, you've mistaken me for someone else..

2007-10-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

apparently i have a very common face..
yes . i actually said that.. i have a very common face.

i meet this chap who we shall call by the very creative nickname "A". He's a friend of a friend with an equally creative nickname "B".
we're perfect strangers.. 2 seconds into our introduction A turns to B and says: "hey doesnt he just look like Lucky Lou.."
B: "hmm i think you're right.. jayesh jayesh just push ur nose a little to the left..
hey ya ya..holy cow! he looks just like Lucky Lou before Frankie boy punched Lou's nose in"

(names have been changed to protect the innocent)

This ever happen to you? it would if you looked like me, which in high probability you do. I've had millions of people - ok, i'm exaggerating, hundreds of people tell me that i look just like, act just like or remind them of some John Doe or the other..

darn it, so much for being unique.

It's not like someone ever told me 'hey! you look just like tom cruise' ..i'd settle for a shahrukh khan even..but nooooo..
It's always: you look like whatsisname or that-chap-with-the-buck-teeth-and-the-cockeyes or hey-it's-the-guy-who-sells-samosas-near-our-house. Somehow i don't see them pretty women beating a path to my door.

I've actually had people coming up to me and ask me when did i shift to kerala from Srinagar or Baghdad or Tristan D'Cunha or some equally obscure place.

When I respond (like I usually do when faced with questions involving answers with more than 3 words) with a few couple of blinks and a "what the?!", they are always clearly hurt that I haven't recognised them. Just about at the point where they start pulling out photographs ("look this is Sheela chechi and your brother-in-law Sunny Mangolassiwala"), I realise it's time to take a deep breath, smile at this Situation Of Mistaken Identity, and run away screaming.

This is not as rare an event as one may think.. happens to me quite often :( what are the chances?? I mean, what is the probability that someone looking just like you exists? I'm reminded of a North By Northwest kind of situation..or more chillingly something out of the brilliant mallu movie Aparan.

Thankfully all my doppelgangers seem to be as happily obscure and mild-mannered as me (yes i said mild-mannered.. what, u disagree with that? well #!$#@ you!).

in the land of smiles and crazy cabbies

2007-09-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

Travelling can be great fun..

not the part where you try to stuff in enough luggage to clothe a couple of villages into a 4"X6" cabin bag and then innocuously try to smuggle it through customs ('oh this, this is just a handkerchief and a few somethings')..

not the part where you wait in a 5000-people-deep line at a passport control counter where a bored immigration officer looks you up and down like you're something he usually sprays PifPaf on ('Really, India? Sure? Where's your elephant? Don't all of you have one? Not even a snake??')..

not the part where you try to hail a taxi and get accosted by a crowd of taxidrivers, equivalent to roughly the population of Luxembourg, and with the same cheery disposition as a crowd of mallus waiting for the first show of a new mohanlal movie (we can get very aggressive)..

not the part where you check into your 5-star 'Supreme Deluxe' suite, and realise that the pictures on the website were all on 1000X zoom, and what you thought was a avantgarde low-slung washbasin is actually ur bathtub..

not the part where you realise the free maps at the airport ('Welcome to the Land of the So-Bloody-Hot-You-Will-Dehydrate Sun') were actually made in 1962 when the last cartographer decided to resign and become a cab driver (and now drags unsuspecting tourists into taxis - refer above)..

no none of these..

I am talking about the oh-wow moments that make it all worthwhile..

Bangkok Moment #1: walking into the Wat Suthat at dusk and seeing the 25-foot tall Buddha, with the chanting of the faithful devotees all around.. an amazingly haunting few hours..
the place has to be experienced to be believed.. for a sense of scale, the closest I come to religion are in moments where a few choice four-letter words immediately follow ('Ohhh God!!', 'God damn it!!', 'What in God's name?!'..ah well u get the idea). The only other place that's made me gape in such wonderment has to be the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Maybe its the sheer massiveness of both these, that somehow remind one of how trivial and insignificant we are in the scheme of things?

Bangkok Moment #2: haggling with the always smiling shopgirls at the Suan Lum night bazaar and at the Chatuchak Weekend market ('only 100 baht? no sir, I have to feed my children, 200 baht final!'.. 'see madam this silk scarf makes you look so beautiful, only 2000 baht, for you i give at 1000 baht, only for you'.. ).
Thailand is a wonderfully cheerful place.. never seen so many people so full of smiles.. the folded hands maybe a very Indian gesture, but I have never seen it used with so much grace.

Bangkok Moment #3: the Royal guards at the Grand Palace, painstakingly modeled after the Beefeaters of London (so famed for their ability to stand stoically, come rain or shine). But them Thai versions clearly aint used to the standing still part. While the lone soldier we clicked a pic with tried gamely, the dispatch riders group (who do a small parade round the palace grounds) were trying vainly to hold their grins back, and doing a hilariously bad job at it.

Bangkok Moment #4: the crazy cabdriver who drove us to MBK from Ko Ratnakosan. Crazy with a capital K. The trip goes something like this:
Me: Go to MBK centre (makes vague pointing gestures)? Meter?
Driver: Ya! Ya! MBK! MBK! (nods vigorously)
(We climb in)
(5 minutes into the ride)
Driver (in Thai): kob khun mark..blah..blah.. (smiles at me)
Me: Yes..err. (smiles back politely)
Driver (in Thai): yada yada yada
Me: Of course.. umm.. i agree.. George Bush should be strung from a flagpole.
Driver (in Thai): blah blah blah (shakes head vigorously and grins)
Me: yes..err.. she was very good in Pretty Woman..ummm..

Driver grins at me..
Stops at traffic light.. Driver takes out a flashlight, rolls down the window and points at the car behind him..
Parents distinctly worried now..
I figure he's using it instead of a brakelight.. i hope..
Then the man stops in the middle of the highway,grins at me, takes out the flashlight and starts pointing it in all directions, including at the faces of passing motorists, who respond equally enthusiastically with a stream of invectives.. Driver bursts out laughing at them, looks at me, grins some more and nods vigrously.
Parents are now worried. The guy's clearly a few cards short of a full deck.
Driver revs up the car to 150 and races down the main road, screeching and dodging away to glory, shrieks to a halt in front of a Wat and bows his head in prayer, for 10 minutes. We are hardly breathing by now. My dad's mentally swearing not to drive in a taxicab in Bangkok ever again.
Prayer over, Driver takes off again at his usual Mach 2 speed, stopping for a few seconds to unceremoniously drop us at MBK

Bangkok Moment #5: we are searching for the entrance to Sukhomvit mrt.. and lost. after a few blind alleys, I turn to the first decently Thai-looking chap i encounter and ask "Sukhomvit M-R-T..where?". Man nods vigorously "Yes yes Sukhomvit Mrt yes yes", takes out map scribbled in Chinese, and points to one spot, then changes his mind and points to another spot.. quickly deciding the first spot looked better, he moves back to that.. stops midway and then looks at the map suspiciously. We stand like that for a full 5 minutes: this man (who for want of a better name we shall call ELT for Equally Lost Tourist), my folks who are by now distinctly unimpressed by my navigational skills, and me trying to figure what to do while gamely trying to make eye contact with an Aussie girl who walks by.

The ELT comes to a decision and grabbing me by the shoulder, points straight ahead.. "There! straight, go straight, mrt, mrt". For want of a better idea, I nod and we move along. We have walked for 500m when we realise this is definitely not going the right way, find out from a (more clued in) person that the mrt was right where we were standing, and retrace our steps. We had hardly turned to do so when the ELT jumps in front of us, panting, wheezing and drenched in sweat: "There, there", stabs finger in the direction we had come from, "mrt is there.. I am sorry. really sorry..forgive me".. we smile and move along.. ELT wheezing jogs behind, all the while pointing "There, there".. and leaves us only at the gate of the station..

Ahhh... travelling is fun..

The Adventure of the Solitary Jogger

2007-09-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

I love jogging. It's not like I'm a good athlete - as a sportsman, my life's aspiration is to reach "extremely mediocre", like the entire Indian cricket team.. But I love jogging.. and cycling too - though that's a second best

maybe it's the freedom of it all.. just me, myself and my ranging-from-silly-to-near-pyschotic thoughts. maybe it's the sense of having done something. maybe it's the admiring looks from the pretty girls as I whizz by. As soon as I get one of the latter, I shall be able to answer this question for sure.

for places to jog, indiranagar's defence colony in bangalore beats 'em all.. and this is from a man who has jogged in (cough cough) 5 countries [insert applause track here].

My life 3 years ago:

6 am at indirangar: the place is like Times Square on new year's eve (ie. if Times square were a comfy suburb in karnataka, and the revellers were disgruntled husbands thrown out of their beds to take a morning walk). There's a steady buzz of activity. The weather is perfect, pregnant with all the anticipation of a new day.. the sort of feeling you get on the rare occasion that one wakes up before noon.

As I gamely don my nikes, roommate subru (aka the snore-a-thon alias hari potter) briefly opens his eyes, shakes head sagely (full of sympathy for the lesser mortals who are still to understand that life's biggest joy is sleeping till 15 minutes before one has to reach office), covers himself with the blanket and resumes snoring.

As i trudge down the stairs, I run into Suma our landlady. We have a very awkward relationship. She thinks of me as a wayward youngster, whose heavy steps on the floor above drives her crazy, and returns home late. I think of her as a painful money-grubber. With this mutual understanding, we pass each other. (Despite Suma's occasional diktats, my friends are still residing at the house - a total of over 4.5 years).

I step onto the street of 7th cross, bend to tie my laces, look around to see if any of the cute girls living next door are watching, and start my version of a homage to Pheidippides. I don't actually jog as much as move all my limbs about.. usually all at the same time in four different direction, and 30 different angles. Arms and legs a flailin' I move on to 100 ft road.

Sometimes it's like playing a live version of Pacman.. the first baddies you encounter are the MAFMREs (Middle Aged Fat Men Reluctantly Exercising). These huffin and puffin beerbellies on two legs have to be tackled with quick swideswipes. Like slow moving schoolbuses on the fast lane of the highway, they absolutely refuse to speed up or let you pass by.. so I have to resort to quickly squeezing through any leeway I get, an "excuse me", and a quick sprint before the chap recognises me. A variant of these are the Middle Aged Fat Women, energetically walking away, elbows and arms moving up and down vigorously, like the pistons they show in engine oil ads. They are way worse. Any attempts at sideswiping are sure to be viewed as an attempted molestation, or a robbery. So here I have to gamely take another route. So much for men ruling the world.

Then we encounter Baddies #2: the highspeed cyclists. These could be the few milk delivery men or newspaper boys who still own cycles (the m80s are more ubiquitous nowadays). Or more likely, people racing to get to work early. Occasionally, a cycling nut. Either way, in India, cyclists try to compensate for their lack of presence on the road, by arrogantly driving at full speed down the middle of the road, on the footpaths, inside narrow alleys, basically anywhere they're not supposed to be.. Everytime a cycle comes rushing at me I yelp like a labrador and jump away, and jog off before they can turn around to take another shot at me. Cyclists hate pedestrians. It's a very mutual feeling.

Every once in while I encounter the stray dogs, but they are quickly distracted by the myriad other characters populating Defence Colony. It's an amazing way to start the day..Indiranagar's leafy lanes, the posh mansions, people out walking their pets, random screaming kids as they're made to get ready for school, the casual nods of acquaintance as one passes the regular fellow joggers, the amazing feel of a morning in Bangalore.. and to top it a perfect 2 rupee cuppa chai at the nearest mallu bakery..

Somehow running along the seletar reservoir, beatiful as it is, lacks that charm :(

hypothesis of the day

2007-09-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

to continue along the lines of the previous post..

is everything driven by our search for identity?

Is racism an offshoot of this? To quote a line from a book I'm reading, are people afraid that if they get rid of their prejudices they will lose their identity? Did a Southerner in the 1800s feel that accepting his Negro slaves as his equals would dilute his own need to be seen as 'someone' ? Did this need have something to do with Europeans attitude towards the Jews? Or India's upper castes? Or now the Islamic fundamentalists?

Do we have children to propagate & preserve our sense of self?

Are people driven to scale peaks, construct monuments, build corporate giants, sculpt masterpieces because of this? To answer that scary thought "who am i" ?

On a tangent: startups should build incentives around this

On Me & I

2007-09-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

“Your self...is other people, all the people you're tied to, and it's only a thread”

A devastated Sherman McCoy's words towards the end of The Bonfire of the Vanities..

it's a line that summarises the entire book.. and most of our lives i'm sure..

and the thought that's been scaring me to the depths of my very shallow soul for the past few days: what if I can still identify with these same words 20 years from now? damn !:(

Imagini & the visual dna

2007-09-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

quite a neat (albeit simplistic) way to base a social networking site..
my profile (or what I think I am :p).. it s fun doing the quiz anyways..maybe facebook should acquire them :)

..and the vultures are circling

2007-08-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought the frenzy of private-equity driven buyouts would come to a halt with the credit crisis, the funds are finding ways to keep the party alive…

It seems private equity funds are busy buying back the debt they raised from the banks – at deep discounts of course… Private equity funds and distressed debt funds are negatively correlated in their growth: a wave of leveraged buyouts would be followed by a wave of bankruptcies of the LBO’d companies (due to cashflows not being able to keep up with the crushing burden of interest payments), and when the bankruptcies begin, the gravedancers (a la Sam Zell and the vulture capitalists) come to the fore.. Clearly distressed debt is most prevalent during economic slowdowns following a period with ‘large volumes of low-quality debt issuance’.

But here, the private equity teams themselves are trying to pre-empt that by getting in on the debt at this early stage..clearly they would never get the discounts that one gets on actual distress debt, but it still seems like a damn good strategy.. Particularly because they own significant equity stake anyway – so in case the company does go into the whole bankruptcy process, they’ll get their say with the rest of the senior debtholders….unlike typically chapter 11s where I guess the equity holders would be sidelined, because the debtors decide the restructuring.. Not to mention, with the banks pretty much out of the picture, any restructuring negotiations should happen far quicker than the usual 12-36 months.

Great that trivial things like a shortage of funds and all the bloodspill on wall st. don’t seem to affect the cowboys of the p-e :)

the straw , the camel...

2007-08-20T00:43:00.003-07:00

True genius is knowing when to stop.

Time and again, I would be at the verge of doing something perfectly well – and then, kaboom, that one extra move, that one dash of colour, that one overeager word: the painstakingly built house of cards come down..

That masterpiece of a watercolor scene (‘your sunsets never looked so perfect! Ooo and look at those waves!’).. you're at full flow.. van gogh would have patted you on the back (watch out for your ear though).. and then you think it’s so good, why not make it a tad better.. y’know, add some signature colour, or a signature effect.. something that elevates it from good to great! And so you dab in that cool-looking surfer dude in the fluorescent trunks .. Voila! The masterpiece is relegated to the bottom of a dusty cupboard.. even your mom refuses to display it on the fridge..

The date’s going perfect.. your jokes are absolutely zinging.. .she’s looking in your eyes like you’re the greatest person in the whole world… your standing under a moonlit sky.. it’s all dewdrops and honey..and you decide: it’s so perfect, you think it’s time you made your move.. and so you pop the million dollar line: ‘Sonia, I love you’…
silence…
‘Sonia?!! My name’s Mona you cheap b!@#!!$ (slap! Kick!)’. maybe it’s a bad time to mention your wife and two kids..

how do you know when to stop? I’ve never figured that out.. and the corollary, how do you pick your battles? Hitler & Stalingrad.. Steve Jobs & the Macintosh (appleophiles will lynch me for this one).. Xerxes & Thermopylae.. .... that one deadly reach that exceeded their grasp.. if only we always had the insight to figure that an idea’s a lame duck, and your just throwing good money after bad… to sense that a relationship is dead, and it’s time you moved on.. to know that your pair of aces will be trumped by a triplet of 2s..

Being indiscriminately interested in everything is as bad as being interested in nothing.. the apathetic chap atleast has a lot more time on his hands to lounge around and drink beer…

I Do.. maybe

2007-08-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

3 months between two blog posts! I should get an award for being the biggest procrastinator in the world. We should call it The X Award (X coz the committee members were supposed to meet to decide a name, but never got around to doing so). And we should announce the winners on my birthday (coz its my idea), but in the spirit of true procrastination, we should put off announcing the winners till ‘tomorrow’.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday (isn’t this how all blogposts are supposed to start?), about that oh-so-Indian phenomenon called the arranged marriage.

Disclaimers: I know zilch about successfully courting women, falling in love, or having a relationship – and therefore, like most strategy consultants, and art critics (in their respective fields), I am admirably qualified to pass judgement.

Why do I find arranged marriages so downright silly? Why would individuals leave such an important decision to others? I wouldn’t trust my folks with picking me a pair of jeans (yes amma, I ll buy my own levi’s !), forget picking someone I have to live with for the rest of my life. Like I was telling a friend, arranged marriages might be less risky, but for stories to tell grandchildren, nothing like the adventurism of falling in love and getting married. And what about all the memories of being young, making an absolute fool of yourself, doing the craziest things and livin' life through the endless anxiety and unbeatable highs that are part of the whole drama that courting is?

Besides as the wannabe alpha- male hunter-of- the- pack, shouldn’t I be you know, out hunting for a mate?

Clearly, arranged marriages work. There is no other explanation for why such an institution has prospered. And for good reason too given the way Indian society is structured. As a friend so rightly pointed out, in India, when one gets married, it’s not just a spouse that one gets – the whole extended family comes along: siblings, parents, the family dog, and in some cases, all the village folk are part of the package ('no hon, we can’t put the buffalos in the condo parking lot..'). Marriages in India are between families as much as it is between individuals – the need for consensus building is a given. But what freaks me about it the most – how do you take that life changing call based on a few phone conversations, maybe one date (or as one paper calls it “the temporal inflexibility in decision making”)! More importantly, why would you want to do so?

There’s quite some amount of nice readables on this, including one which argues that arranged marriages are a form of social insurance , and (very interestingly) a necessity in a relatively cloistered society where search frictions (sic) exist.

Given the existence of specialist intermediaries viz. the marriage brokers, the extensive due diligence that happens, the formal negotiations, and the high level decision making involved, arranged weddings sure are more scientifically done than hormone-driven, sweet-nothings drenched “love marriages”.

To each his own I guess..

(Aah.. finally one genuinely pretentious blogpost from me :) )

2007-05-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

Why has my motley blog no jokes? Because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone. (Paraphrasing Emerson)

May this serve as a warning to the poor soul who wanders in, and is unwittingly exposed to the banal commentary, narcissistic self indulgence, and trivial insights that I shall dole out in my search for social acceptance and the need to be heard.

Some of the things going through my mind:

In my characteristic desire to turn every pursuit into a source of greenbacks, I shall offer this blog to any one who is willing to sponsor (product placements included). Yes, I can be bought. :)

Another of my indulgences..a cry back to the time when cable tv had just come and every channel worth its license was selling countdown charts by the dozen..so I shall create top 10 lists for whatever I fancy, including top 10 things to write about in blogs (thus indulging my fetish for recursion and circular references)

And again in my characteristic desire to ensure that everything I do has some purpose, I write this blog in the deep desire that someday my individually incoherent mumblings shall coalesce into something of some substance, maybe a viewpoint that actually gives a fresh perspective on things? A bit like those magic eye stereograms (www.magiceye.com) in the 90s

A bit too much to hope for given my history of “insightful” thing, but it gives me something to work towards (and satisfies my other personality quirk that everything should have a purpose, all actions should converge!)

And I step forth..

Item #23

2007-05-03T03:29:00.000-07:00

This is Item #23 on my list of 100 things to do .. ha ha! start a blog and run it for a couple of years.. hope this whole exercise is worth it :p