Raving Rambling

Heads have begun rolling following the Congress Working Committee meeting over the weekend. Shivraj Patil has quit – the first political fallout of the Mumbai terror attacks. And here in Maharashtra R.R. Patil has followed suit – following the dictates of his conscience it seems! I can’t figure out how a dumb idiot like him ever managed to make it to the post of State Home Minister. Would anyone with even an iota of sense make a comment like the one he made last week? Must have been inspired by Shahrukh Khan’s “Bade Bade Deshonmei aisi chotti chotti battein hothi rahathi hai” dialogue in some masala movie some years back. Dumb! Or maybe he is a palpable reflection of the mental faculties of our cabinet ministers. God Forbid! Well to come back to the point, is quitting or asking the person in charge of a ministry portfolio to move out the way to right wrongs? What struck me as funny was the fact that when a leader mentioned the words "the Navy's responsibility" defence min...

Last Sunday morning, at church the pastor made an observation that took me back in time to my college days. Ah the good old days! Well, not to digress, each August, our college hosts Malhar, an intercollegiate youth fest that is supposed to be a platform for highly talented college students to display their painting or sculpting or eating or other such sundry skills. But the major chunk of the jantha come for the rock shows and music concerts and other such stuff that Malhar is commonly associated with. Malhar hosts (or at least used to host) two personality contests. The main one is the Mr. and Miss Malhar contest which grills the poor sods who participate on various aspects of their (underdeveloped) personality. The other one, which is less complicated and usually more fun (for the audience that is) is basically about quick repartees and cheek. Try as I might, I can’t remember the name of this contest. Old age catching up maybe! Anyways, that particular year, a visually impaired cand...

I just saw an ad promoting Royal Enfield’s new Thunderbird Twinspark. The tagline – Leave Home — took me back to the time I first left home. Ironically, I bought my own Tbird within a few months of this transition. This reminded me of an entry I had made in RE’s networking section called ParkingSpace. Since it’s not going to get any eyeballs there I decided to ferret it out of the RE archives and post it here as a first step towards becoming an active blogger again. Hopefully! After almost four years of planning and dreaming and reaching levels of absolute madness and frustration I finally became the proud owner of my TBird on Dec 31, 2004. I had been obsessed with the Bullet since my college days. But then I saw the American classic Easy Rider and realized I actually wanted a thumper cum Cruiser that could handle the highways and off-road locations of India. The Western world had its Harley’s and Triumphs and BSAs. But the combination I was looking for was still a dream in India. Some...

When you are traversing other worlds, when all the worlds are within your grasp, when traveling at the speed of thought you go back into the future. And now you wonder whether that makes sense to anyone who hasn't touched the planes you have. Only he to whom it makes sense is worthy. You have to fly to see all. To know all. And I have soared to worlds far above. I have touched the zenith of orgasmic meaninglessness. I have seen what i saw and what you see. Why do we do it? That is the question. Well the question exists because we did it. If the act was not performed, how could it warrant the question. The past that we saw is the reason the future is. And it's good cos the spirit of celebration is here. Fly High. Only remember the Ground Beneath.

Why are most of us obsessed with the need to prove that women are better than men or vice versa? This morning, I was reading the newspaper where the State SSC topper was quoted saying she’s happy to have proved girls are more intelligent or something to that effect. Now I don’t know why she needed to make a statement like that. What has she proved? Ok great you have topped and stuff. We are all happy for you and you have the right to bask in the glory. Or maybe she was influenced by the media or probably she was tactically coerced into making that statement. Or maybe she never said that but some journalist decided to attribute the expected quote to her! Doesn’t matter! What I am trying to say is that this is just an instance. There are so many polls and articles and studies, which try to prove this stupid point. The joke is that a point proved to be so by some bledy study is sooner or later proved otherwise by another one. A particular sex is favored depending on who conducts the study...

Last afternoon I ran into Govinda. Nothing much had changed. The same 100 watt smile, the same jovial self. Running into him took me back in time to those days of carefree indulgence. It's been five years since we passed out of journalism school. I can't even recollect the names of many of my batch mates. At that time Govinda was in charge of facility upkeep at XIC. But what a transformation. He is today an associate at Sampark PR. A perfect example of where sheer dedication and determination can take a man. I wish I had his spirit -- fighting seemingly insurmountable odds to rise above his situation and attain his dreams. Our course coordinator Ms Jane Swamy rechristened him Govinda after the bollywood film star for their similar colorful dressing sense. That's one thing that seems to have changed. Govinda has now adopted more corporate colors--still bright but not as flashy. And he now speaks fluent English. There are hardly any traces of the vernac. He has been in the co...

Another late night. Once again ended up hitting the sack late. I am worried about survival. And it’s only Monday. How am I gonna stay active the remainder of the week? One option was sleep late into the morning and reach office late. But then the same rigmarole would be repeated this night and the next. And you can’t reach office late everyday of the week. Ok, you had a good time with friends. But the ‘feel good’ factor seems to disappear the moment you are on your own. Bad, really bad. Since I enjoy my own company most. The time I spent reading or relaxing and just enjoying the boredom of having nothing to do or worry about has now been replaced by turning shrink cum counselor for people who just can’t seem to understand your need to be on your own. And all you do is talk about trivial rubbish—love, hate, women, work and oh such banalities. Reiterating the same old arguments over and over again. Never arriving at any conclusions. Not that that would have made any impact on the way thi...