Plants versus Zombies

Not really. Its books versus TV, but who writes trite titles like that? If i had to choose between a world that could have one or the other, books would win that war, hands down. But its the daily battles that they fight over my time that are more interesting and well, real. Broadband means unlimited TV (of course TV also means unlimited TV, but not as unlimited as Broadband does. What, there are different sizes of infinity, you know.) Landmark means unlimited books* And the winner is determined by a complicated algorithm that factors in, apart from what is to be watched or read, the following:
- how much of the weekend remains
- who is around to judge what i'm watching
- how much i need to feel better by watching miserably complicated lives of others
- how loudly was the little voice in my head telling me i wouldnt finish the book when i shushed it and bought the book anyway
- how much is it a book i would like to like. I'm shallow like that
- what time in the morning did the first cock crow

With the arrival of a library, books were clearly winning over the past month or so. But yesterday, all that changed. Yesterday, we started getting BBC entertainment. Yesterday, we switched on the TV randomly and there was Fawlty Towers going on. Bhai and i thought it had something to with the Pythons and John Cleese came on screen. We squeaked and my mom wondered why she had to have kids who got excited about a middle aged balding man with that moustache**. And i spotted the Vicar of Dibley while channel surfing. TV has hit back and how!

* Landmark unfortunately has gone to meaning squat. I went there when their sale was on, and bought nothing. Nothing. I spent more time and enthusiasm looking at stuffed toys for a "3 year old". I did go over to the science fiction section, but there was no spark. Sigh. The Library. It works swiftly and surely.

** See? There are some moustaches i remember.

To,

To some September born: I am more sorry than i can ever tell you.

To other September born: Happy Birthday! I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives me, seeing you get old!

To one i hope will be September born: I'm waiting!

To the government: Gimme my money. Dont make me fill forms for it. Please?

To the sutradhaar: Wake up!

To my bhai: Let me tell you how birthday gifts work. Your birthday, you ask, i get. NOT your birthday, you ask, i ask you to get, you forget, i set deadlines, they expire, i set new deadlines, they expire, we build a graveyard for the expired and the dead.

To my 12 year old nephew: No, i am not adding you to my professional contacts on LinkedIn.

To me: %$#^&@**#

To the man. who cried wolf

The next time you decide to cry wolf because you thought you smelled something that vaguely resembled what your granny's cousin, who had seen a wolf once as a child, had imagined one would smell like, pause. Think. Can you see anything even remotely dog-like? Hear wolf sounds? See small animals running scared? Foot prints? I'm not asking for evidence admissible in a court of law here. Just enough to register an FIR will do.

I'm telling you this because there is no point in telling me to use my discretion. You know and I know that the second the cry escapes you, i will be there by your side, patting your hand and nodding my head and in general agreeing with you that that (immobile) sack of potatoes is indeed a big bad wolf.

Yes, another library

Popped up, this time literally a stones throw away from my place. Its so close, and so inside my galli, i dont even have to dress up to go there! This one is in a little bamboo shed in the garden of a bungalow. Its run by the old-ish lady who presumably lives in the bungalow. We have a history, that bungalow and me. The previous owner had a dog with a split personality. It was the fiercest dog we ever knew, but she laughed at us for keeping our distance, insisting all the time that it was a fraaandly dog. Its been years since they moved out, but i still keep my distance. Which is probably why i didnt notice the little library before.

A bamboo shed in the garden, with plants all around, bean bags and a hammock outside, a bright cheerful light inside, books, books, books. Many of them look owned. Read. Loved. Popular fiction, Indian writing, Science, Science fiction, kids books - all the usual suspects. However, the collection is not usual. I see bestsellers sprinkled here and there. But I also see books that would not have made it to any list, that must have been handpicked by someone who knew what he/she was getting.

A friendly old lady who knows what she has. A man who pauses from talking about books to play the flute. A kid sprawled on a bean bag, nose deep inside an Astrix, oblivious to an Aunty who pretends to get offended because he has forgotten his manners and not greeted her.

I want to talk to her, tell her she has a great collection, ask her if all these books are hers, if she has read them all. I want to tell the man with the flute who said he'd just bought The Graveyard Book that he is going to love it. But i dont. One, because i'm me. And two, i'm not going to join her library. I've already joined a "big bad corporate one". At some level, i think i've cheated her. I slink out when she is busy trying to understand what the man with the flute is saying about bar-code readers.

I walk the ten steps to my home thinking i've finally found one snapshot of old age that doesnt scare the hell out of me. I'd like to be that old lady. I'd like to lie on the hammock while people come and lose themselves in my collection. Only, i dont know many people who can lose themselves in two shelves of chiefly science fiction.

New retirement plan - I need to diversify my assets!

Why growing up sucks

The trouble with trying to be an adult, in getting your backside off your comfort zone and trying something new, is this. Once you are done, you still want to rush to mummy and show her your drawing. You still want her to look at the box and two lines you have drawn and tell you its the best damn horse in the world. You want your efforts appreciated, even though you know, and she knows, and she knows that you know, that by this time you should be drawing horses that look ready to jump off the page.

OMG!

OMG! OMG!
Please bear with me! I think it'll be a while before i can stop talking in exclamation marks!
I just joined a library!
What do you mean, that doesnt deserve such excitement!
Do you have any idea how that changes my life!

You know the truckloads of pressure you are under, when every book you want to read, you have to buy? You cant just pick stuff up on a whim. The depleting bank balance, the filling up shelves, you are answerable for it all! I feel terribly guilty for the 10 percent books that i have bought and am almost certainly not going to read. I fear they will go through life with abandonment issues, all because i didnt know what i wanted.

But now? I can pick up stuff without any consequences whatsoever! Except for loss of time, but who cares about that! I can read crap! My dad can read crap! For 200 a month! Eeeeeeee! The remaining exclamation marks and the accompanying words will come with bullet points.

• They have a pretty good YA section! Percy Jackson! Artemis Fowl! Phillip Pullman! All stuff i want to read but dont want to buy!
• They have the Wizard of Earthsea! This is one of those books i cant not read, even though i am unlikely to like it much. (So what if i bought and read it and didnt much like it about a month ago. I'll never have to do that again!)
• They have the first book in The Wheel of Time series! For some reason, i bought the second one first and there it lay. In the "unlikely to read' pile. Until today!
• They have all P.G. Wodehouse (not that i mind buying those) and all Terry Pratchett! (i've already bought most of those, also i dont know what they were doing in the pre-teen section).
• They have 18 branches or something in Bangalore! Dont ask me why i care!
• I'm hoping the library will help me come out of my comfort zone. Try something other than SFF.

There. I think the exclamations have gone. To all those friends of mine sitting in Europe and showing off their public libraries, Ha! I now have a private one.

Landmark, my love, looks like you might finally have some competition. Also, looks like i might be able to keep my hands off the second season of 24 after all.

24, one season later

When write my own TV series no, i promise not to


1. Make it 45 minutes long. Its an entry barrier for people starting late and wanting to catch up. I also double promise not to take Anil Kapoor in it.

2. Have dialogs like this:

Hero: Do blah.
Any Other Character: I cant, because of these perfectly legitimate reasons.
Hero: DO BLAH.
The Same Other Character: Fine.

3. Kill people off randomly. Hell, i'll probably not kill people at all. There can be so much drama in life, why bring death into it at all?

4. Make the hero dig a deeper and deeper hole for himself and then when i get bored, pop him out clean through the other end of Earth.


5. Make the audience feel manipulated.


Which is probably why no one will watch my series. Which is a good thing, i sometimes think, when i imagine the humongous number of man hours spent watching stuff on Television. I'm going to try and stay off Season 2, but September end is so farfaraway, i dont know how i'll survive.

For the very first time in my life

I made maggi today. Fine. You can pick up your jaw from the ground now. Despite the very many years i have spent on this earth, its not really all that surprising given that i have never, as my mom pointed out, had to cook for myself. Home or hostel. Food has generally been SEP. It wasnt bad, the maggi, although it turned out looking more like something made out of little cylindrical tubes of rava. In my newbie enthusiasm i broke the maggi into tiny little pieces, not one of which were of slurp-able length. Aah, one lives and learns.
One has also stooped down to blogging about what one had for lunch. As long as one has come this far, one might as well register one's grievance against the content on the maggi packet.

What the hell were you thinking, Dear Sir/Madam,* when you printed on the back of the packet, not instructions on how to cook whats inside, but long touching stories on how a 5 year old made maggi on his ownsome lonesome for his Mom's birthday? Did no good, I'm telling you, not to the dish i ended up making, and definitely not to my ego!

* Dont you wish all letters could start like this?

A (short?) story

John Scalzi had this fanfic contest a few months ago. I sent in an entry, just like that. Now that the results are out and i didnt win (sniff, sob, bawl and all), i thought i should put it up here. Apart from the obvious reasons, this is also because stuff i've written that is not on the blog tends to get lost. In defunct mailboxes and sites that have since disappeared and machines that have been formatted. (Okay, so its happened once, but if i dont learn from my mistakes whats the point in making them?)


So, yes. I am telling you this post is more for storage purpose. You are welcome to go through my basement, but you are also welcome to not. So many disclaimers because, umm, it is rather long. Also, it doesnt have a title.

Has the Outside always been so pretty, John wondered as he lay lazily on a chair made for just that. He’d been trapped for weeks in the Inside of some "top secret project he cant tell you about". Today he had finally come out of it and decided to spend the day reacquainting himself with this world he inhabited. It had started well. The Sun and the blue sky he had taken in without much of a shock to his system. He’d then moved on to trees. He didn’t look particularly happy about their existence now. He couldn’t believe how lucky they were, being able to make food simply by standing in the sun. Why evolution had to give up that line of research to take on one that led to his 10 fingers with opposable thumbs he’d never understood. Hunger had been gnawing at his insides for over an hour but there was no way he could get himself out of his chair. And all those trees showing off were not really helping.

Wil looked under the bed for the three hundredth time. Nothing. Does anyone have such a clean under-bed anymore, he wondered sourly. He almost wanted a monster to be under it, with his script in its dirty yet non-salivating jaws. Because then he’d have something to do, an enemy to fight, a script to rescue, and in the end, a rehearsal to go prepared to, happily ever after. Now, all he could do was look at empty under-beds. Sure, yesterday’s gaming had been pretty wild, but he couldn’t believe the script, the script for tomorrow’s rehearsal, the script without which he’d just have to go there and be a pretty face, that script had been involved. He could imagine the producer’s icy tone. What is that you say? A big bird came and took your script? You could have respected us enough to make up something more imaginative. A crawling horse, a flying kitten, something? Yes, he had to find something.

And as it usually happens, when the right thing to do is not the fun thing to do, people run away to the land of excuses. The place where all excuses come from, brought to life by human need. To do something they shouldn’t. To get out of something. To beat common sense and responsibility and convention and accepted wisdom. To be. To not to be. Stock excuses, now those are easy. Most people can get them off the top of their head. Bad traffic, my alarm didn’t go off, the wife says no. It’s the creative excuses, handcrafted to fit your situation and none else that need to be worked on. For those you need to go deep into the land, finding little pieces that fit the big picture in your head, shaving this, sawing that, refining the big picture all the time till you end up with a piece of art. Art, now that is not formed by fitting lego blocks as per instructions. In the land, you will not find pieces that fit together. If that is what you want, the stock excuses department is that way, have a good day. But if you look at a piece hard enough, you can turn it into what you need. It is a dying art, this, one only people with some imagination and whimsy continue to practise.

John roamed the lands, his hunger forgotten in the excitement of all that was possible here. Strange things were all around him and he was having fun trying to see how each might work as an excuse. There were trees here too, but they didn’t look like they were taunting, they looked to be showing him possibilities. Somewhere in the murky recesses of John’s brain, an idea was born. It wasn’t even fully formed yet, and already he could see it had taken control and was changing him. He stood still, scared, not in a bad way but in an oh-my-god-is-this-really-happening-what-does-it-mean-i-haven't-even-thought-it-through-but-how-cool kind of way. He let a few minutes pass before he looked at his hands. Yes. Green. Chlorophyll-ed. He went and stood out in the sun. Food.

Wil closely examined the broken finger. Not his. He was fascinated by everything around him. He took in one thing at a time, sure that the whole picture would overwhelm him. Done with the finger, he looked around and saw the clown sweater. His clown sweater. His INFAMOUS clown sweater. He put it on. And smiled. The world seemed familiar again.

Wil then moved on to larger objects He found a Superman Cape hanging on a tree and put it on. It went really well with his clown sweater. He jumped from trees and ran really fast and in general was the Superman Wil aged ten would have been. Which is when he saw a pair of eyes looking at him from within a clump of bushes. "Here, here, come out," he tried. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if just a pair of eyes came out. The eyes stayed. He took his cape off and waved it around like a Matador. The eyes pounced.

It was on him, whatever it was. Cat? Wings?? Horn??? Start again, his brain said. And this time, no naming body parts. A cat. No, call it kitty, sounds cute and fuzzy and not at all like an evolution defying creature put together by hand. So, a kitty. And at the back... Pegasus. And that from a Unicorn. Recapitulate. Kitty. Pegasus. Unicorn. Kitty. Pegasus. Unicorn. Kitty... PuTTY! "Here PuTTY, here PuTTY". PuTTY, in the meantime, had been mooning over the clown in his sweater, purring and making other happy kitty noises.

It was the kitty John saw first. He was already smiling when he saw the clown on the sweater. He knew there was only one way that sweater could end.

"Hi Wil," he said, without looking up.

Eh?

Well, Wil didn't actually say Eh. But his face did. It rearranged itself into an Eh?

"It’s John." Eh? "Scalzi." Eh? "Velvet Wesley Crusher." Ah!

"John! What are you doing here? Did you see my kitty? Isn't it just the most amazing thing? Look at those magnificent wings. And horn! I'm calling it PuTTY...," Wil prattled on.

‘PuTTY’ was sitting on all fours, looking into the clown's eyes. John reached Wil and raised his hand for a high-five. Next thing he knew, the magnificent wings had come down and scooped Wil up in one graceful motion.

Wil was now sitting on PuTTY, face rearranged to spell EH???

"I come in peace," said John, lifting both his hands up.

"Green Peace!," exclaimed Wil and went back to an Eh?

John tried using his experience with cats to make friends with PuTTY. Granted, PuTTY wasnt exactly a cat, but 60 percent of it was, he knew nothing about horses and he had to start somewhere. John gathered some catnip leaves from nearby and gave them to PuTTY. PuTTY responded, which made Wil calm down a little. His brain finally got around to processing the message his eyes had been sending him for a while now.

"Umm.. John?"

"Yeah?" said John, who couldn’t take his eyes off PuTTY.

"You are green."

"Yeah," said John distractedly.

"Not exactly your colour, you know?," Wil tried again.

"Look," John said getting irritated. "Its about a little more than looking pretty, okay? Here, let me show you," he said and walked towards a patch of sunlight. "Thats all i have to do for food. For the rest of my life. Stand. Chlorophyll-me up, baby! Millions of years ago, two roads diverged in the woods that day," he thundered, "and today they meet in me."

"ZOMG! They will have to create a whole new position for you in the food chain! Wait, will it still be a chain? Cycle! Tree?" Wil wondered, as the implications of what he was seeing hit him. "John?"

"Something’s wrong," growled John. "I don’t feel full." "Ears," squeaked Wil. John felt them and realized they had grown. Pointy. Lumps were sprouting all over his body. "Greenskin," he croaked, before falling over in pain. This tended to happen with improbable excuses. They decayed to the nearest stable state - something that required minimum suspension of disbelief.

Wil’s brain had had enough. Had too much, in fact. So it decided to forget what it knew and start from scratch. Take what it could see as given and work from there. So, John was turning into an Orc. Okay. What do i know about Orcs? Oooh, what do i not know! Here was familiar ground. Here was where the What kind of a Orc are You quiz he’d scribbled on the back of his script would save lives. Orcs came in all shapes and sizes and most importantly, attitudes. Dealing with them depended entirely on which mythology they subscribed to.

"John? Are you in there? Listen! I’m going to get you out of this. Joooohn!" he screamed, as John (or Orc?) got up with a roar that startled PuTTY who jumped and up went Wil. John had made considerable progress towards Orcdom and had acquired an armour, a spear and the above mentioned roar. Orc was marching towards him slowly, fighting with John for each step. Wil shouted out his first question. "Would you like to eat me?"

John knew his share in John/Orc was shrinking. The power of Orc was overwhelming; all he wanted to was to give in. Focus, he told himself. Focus on something that’ll remind you that you are human, that there is good in you. He saw the horn on PuTTY. Thats it! What was better than a Unicorn horn to remind you of being noble and good? Orc meanwhile had reached a very similar conclusion for very different reasons. John and Orc march as one.

Wil noticed the increase in speed. "JOHN," he yelled out. PuTTY meanwhile had prepared itself for battle. And also, apparently, him. Wil found himself with a spear in his hands. Desperate, Wil yelled out his second question. "Whats you favourite colour?"

John/Orc had almost reached PuTTY. Already, John felt clearer, more focused. All i need is that horn, he thought. PuTTY had given up all pretensions of being a soft kitty. It hissed and spat. Its eyes shone with a manic glow. John/Orc charged. Kitty sprang. Wil aimed his spear at the Orc’s arm and yelled out his third question. "Does this hurt?"

Somewhere, a Volcano let go.

Wil opened an eye. Nothing green or dead. Encouraged, he opened another. He saw the ground rushing beneath him. Realized he was still on PuTTY but no longer trapped by its wings. He let go. Fell off PuTTY and rolled harmlessly into a clump of grass. Opened eyes. One. Two. Saw John/Orc standing over him. Screamed and ran. Or tried to.

"Stop," said John. John. Not John/Orc. John.

Wil turned back. John. Not green. Close. Open. Still John. Not green. Breathed.

"What happened?" he asked. "Looks like PuTTY found another toy at just the right second," said John, nodding in the direction of the volcano. And there it was, flying just above the lava, dipping its horn in it, making pretty designs and in general back to being a kitty. "And you?" "I managed to hold on to PuTTY’s horn for a second before it got distracted by the volcano," said John. "Turns out that was enough." The two friends slapped each other on the back, did a little jig and left. They didn’t say good bye to the land. They’d be back. They’d been there before.

John was full. Hell, if he had been an Orc... okay, too early for Orc jokes. Wil had fed him till he was ready to burst. Wil cleared his throat. John knew what was coming.

"Yes, Wil?"

"Will you be my excuse for tomorrow’s rehearsal?"

Virtual reality

It is a cloudy weekday afternoon. The kind you've always wished you could spend sprawled on a bed with a book, a coffee and some conversation.
"I'm feeling sleepy," i tell him.
"Welcome to the club. I am its President," he says.
We fight over that a little, then go on to wonder if there is any way we could sell our sleep to all those insomniacs and old people out there who dont have any. Donate even. It smacks of communism, i think he likes it.

"Have you heard Pee Loon?" i ask him. He lives under a rock as far as Bollywood is concerned, and i am his dealer of new hindi songs. He comes looking for a fix once in a while when he is completely out of stock, and i'm usually able to supply. "Not today," he says. He is on some weird Kumar Shanu and Abhijeet trip and is not in the mood for anything else. Which i might have otherwise let go, but he has just said no to Mohit Chauhan. I'm offended and i let him know.

He is stirred enough to defend his choice. "Romantic songs of the 90's, it doesnt get better than Kumar Shanu". I tell him to sleep it off. I cant really fight because i dont remember a single K.S number. "Let me help you out," he says, realizing this. "Badalon mein chup raha hai chand kyon". Damn. He doesnt kid around, this one, he has started with the big guns. "Der se hua par pyaar to hua re". I shrug, i havent heard. "Ek din aap you humko mil jayenge". He scores. "Tum Mile, dil khile". "Aye kaash ki hum hosh mein ab". I'm down and out.

After some silence filled with his gloating he asks casually, "So, what were you saying about Mocho?"

And then for a while i hear nothing but the sound of several pieces falling into place. At the end of which i'm embarrassed, sure, but i'm also in a happy place in the distant past. We had this senior in college whom everyone called Mocho. A quiet fellow, what little i saw of him, but any time he made an entrance, people stopped what they were doing to greet him with an "Arre Mocho". I never figured out why, but they all seemed really happy to see him. And thats where i was, in college, one of my happy places, probably my happiest. I wonder how i never asked why they called him that. Mocho. Its such an awesome nickname. I want my Mohit Chauhan to have it.

"Let me help you out some more," he says. "Ek meetha marz dene aana tum kabhi". This is ridiculous. Mocho has sung songs i dont know about?? "Its in Welcome to Sajjanpur," he says smugly into my silence. "You must have heard Guncha", he says. I shake my head. "Are you going to keep shaking your head till i come to Masakali," he asks finally. It is then that i realize that that is exactly and entirely my big war plan. I cant think of a single Mocho song other than that. I dig deep and come up with "Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai". And then i submit "Pee Loon" in case he'd forgotten.

By this time he has lost interest in the fight. For all practical purposes, he is fighting from both sides. He decides to get personal. Its good strategy. It'll either make the fight interesting or put an end to it. "What lyrics. Pee Loon. Aisa lagta hai nasha karke aaya hai". Thats it. "Download the song. Listen to it. You can then apologize to me," i say and walk away.

He apologizes later. The song has spoken louder than words. Mocho has won.



A few points:

1. Does the fact that this conversation took place over chat, with me sitting in my office in Pune and Monu in his department in Kharagpur make it any less real? (Other than the communist inclinations i imposed on him. Those are entirely my imagination). Chats are my primary (and for the most part only) medium of social interaction these days, and in spite of all its limitations i'll be damned if i let anyone tell me its anything less than face to face talk. Different, sure. But not real? No way.

2. I hope this post has put an end to all the (very valid) cribs about my being cryptic.

3. I also hope none of my seniors read this. After 5 years of no interaction preceded by a year of strictly necessary interaction, it'd be damn weird if they saw themselves featured in my happy place.

4. Monu's insistence on putting an h in Kumar Sanu's name reminded me of Pronoy Roy. He was once interviewing Amartya Sen and insisted on pronouncing his name as Omartyo. Which irritated me immensely! I wished Amartya Sen would stop answering his questions and tell him - "I dont know whom you are talking to. That sure as hell isnt my name!". Stupid, i know, but there it is.

Expectations

I rejoiced when your ideals tumbled
From the impossibly high ledge you'd placed them on
Your expectations of people would fall with them, i figured
And help me rise in your eyes

But you held on to them, expectations
Like nature, you abhorred vacuum
So every time an ideal fell
I was to rush to take his place instead

Monsters Inc

She'd seen it just once, the monster in the cupboard, but it had been enough. She'd kept away. It hadn't been easy. A cupboard was precious, it was supposed to contain bits of your life, neatly arranged. This one not only ate up the space on its inside, but also a healthy bit of the outside. Bits of her life lay scattered in her room, with nothing to be found when she went looking for it.

Finally, after a lot of time and life and negative space and dreams of courage and victory, she decided it was enough. Yes, monsters were huge scary things that devoured, but if that was how it had to be, at least she wouldn't have to clean up this mess. And if not, well, she had the cupboard for life!

As she stood with trembling fingers on the cupboard handle, she realized that life had once again played one of its little jokes. She'd actually be disappointed if there was no monster.

And with that

Status quo has left the building.

Naan ITR Kadavul

(translates to: Me the Income Tax Returns God)

Did it myself this year too. They make it more and more saral each year, really. Let me give you the highlights of this year's journey, which, if all goes well, will end tomorrow at the IT office.

1. Filled the form for the wrong assessment year. Which, in the 6th year of doing your taxes yourself, one should not make mistakes about.

2. Paid tax on bank interest
- added quarterly interests incorrectly (yes, used a calculator) AND
- filled the wrong challan AND
- for the wrong assessment year
Ended up paying more tax than necessary.

3. Wrote an application requesting the assessing officer to correct the assessment year. Dad dictated. I typed. Saved it in notepad. With the name "stupidity". Printed it. The application now has the word "stupidity" at the place traditionally reserved for the pilliyar shuzi (i.e. in the top center)

4. Dad and I got bhai to fill the ITR form. For the wrong assessment year. He was so exhausted by the end of it, i dont think he is filing returns again. Ever. Today dad brings up the point that he may not exactly be an employee.

5. Assess became the word i have most frequently typed/written over the past couple of days. Even more than semi-colon, which is probably not a word anyway? And every time i write that word, the first 3 letters stand out in bold and do a little dance.


Who says Gods dont make mistakes.


P.S. Next year the plan is to have a home loan. Whether i have a home or not. I have heard ITRs get terribly complicated if home loans are involved. So my ego will shut up and let me dump the whole thing on an agent.

Profundity

A pen found its way to the desk next to mine. No one calls it their home, the desk next to mine, but people often drop in on it, for work more than pleasure. So when i found the pen there, there wasnt one person i could trace it back to. I asked the most probable suspects, none of them owned up to the pen. I've always wanted to stand t my desk, and yell something out to the whole floor. So machchi market like it'd be! I didnt. Instead, i moved the pen to my desk. Where it lay (and still lays, this one has a happy ending. Or maybe, picture abhi baaki hai.) and occasionally was of use to me.

Now, if you've worked in a software company, you'll be wondering how i can recollect a pen. One pen is pretty much same as the other, and while finding an unexpected pen is always a pleasure, it never sticks around long enough for you to get to know it better. There is almost no place at the workplace where it cant get lost. Desk, conf room, coffee machine, drawer, loo... So, why?

This pen was different. Heavy. Metallic gold, with silver engravings. A _personal_ pen.

Pens do not stay secret for long. If you have one, people around you will come to know of it. And so, this pen too started getting borrowed. What was special about it though, was that it also came back. With startling regularity. Even when i gave it to people saying - i dont know whose it is. After 4-5 such excursions, a theory begun to form in my mind.

What if, this pen's looks are responsible for its coming back? It doesnt look like a typical office pen, so a) people remember who they took it from and b) they feel obliged to return it. It helps, i thought, that it looks expensive. (Only much later did i spy the Pierre Cardin written on it). The pen, its been on more than 15 outings now, and each time, its come back.

If i were a person with that bend of mind, i would write about how 3 such "special" pens could serve a whole floor much more efficiently than regular pens for each person and then maybe come up with a deeper economic theory. But i'm not. So i will simply say this. I might as well have found a cure for common cold.

Bang bang bang

If i had a fully loaded gun, all 6 rounds at my disposal, here's what i'd shoot. After, of course, a long winded speech describing the how, the why and dazzle all with the sheer genius-ness of my evil.

1. My leg

For disrespecting the powers of Vitamin D. For being the most high-maintenance part of my life. For the dull pain that makes me want to pull it out and throw it at people with good intentions.

2. Good intentions

Gah. Enough already! No no, i'm not talking about your good intentions, your good intentions are all good. But in general, they are choking me.

3. My head

For accommodating only two types of computational machinery.

Boolean circuits - hard-coded sections of my brain that give an instantaneous answer to a set of inputs, no feedback, no adaptation possible.

Infinite loops - that consume a lot of brain power but generate no answer.

The Universal Turing Machine would be so glad with my head. The halting problem, at least this once, will be no problem. (Ok fine. Just a joke. Laugh. Dont punch holes in my theory)

Not so long winded after all. Guess the movies have taught me something after all. Now, Looks like i've only managed to find 3 things to shoot at. I'm going to use two bullets on each, just to be sure.

And then i shall become fully headless langdi, and haunt the men's bathroom. Or the women's. How would i ever know.

You change my world

So you find yourself on this planet, see, with this life, and no one tells you why or what. There is you and there is this world and there is all this time, and you have to figure out how best to fill it up. Most people find something or someone of interest to them. They read, paint, draw (which, if recent discussions are to be believed, is not the same as painting), listen to music, watch sports, television, hell maybe even like their job. These are people with read-only access to the world.

Then there is that minority with read-write access. People who change the world, and by change i dont necessarily mean they discover laws of physics or be mass murderers. But simply, people who make the world more interesting for everyone else.

For no particular reason, i'd like to thank some of the people with read-write access to my world. Not at a personal level, you understand, more the sort of people you'd play the 20 questions game about.

In no particular order:

• Simon Singh. For opening me up to non-fiction
  
• Richard Dawkins. For making evolution so damn interesting
  
• Joss Whedon - for firefly. And the image of a lone guy losing to evil studio bosses. But living for ever. Maybe because of that defeat.
  
• Aaron Sorkin. For Studio 60, for a few good men, for the characters, for the writing.
  
• Friends. For making them real people.
  
• xkcd - for making me feel 'in" on an insider joke
  
• Bill Waterson. For Calvin. And Hobbes.
  
• Before Sunrise. For inspired execution of a simple idea.
  
• Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, P.G. Wodehouse. For making me laugh.
  
• ARR - For Aditi.
  
• Chuck Lorre - for The Big Bang Theory, but more for his vanity cards.
  
• Tintin
  
• Batman, Superman. For showing that struggles give meaning to victory
  
• Javed Akhtar - for his words. And his kids ;-)
  
• JK Rowling. For the world that lies beyond platform 9 and 3 quarters.
  
• The Irish accent. I dont know who i have to thank for this!
  

Some observations on my list:
- Where are the Indians? And the women??
- And the complete absence of people who have anything to do with CS, now what does that tell you? That CS needs heroes :P
- People who make me laugh are more likely to be up there than people who make me think.
- Fiction writers strangely dont find much representation. Maybe because while collectively they more or less form the basis of my existence, there is no one writer who i can pick.
- It might seem bit strange to see TV series up there. But these are not merely ones i like. I'm glad they exist in the word i exist.
- It is very likely that a few years down the road i'll look at this list and be embarrassed by some of the names i put in there. A few years ago, i might have put in Ayn Rand, Meg Ryan, Robert Ludlum, Cho (but after Enge Brahamanan, no way) but now you wouldnt catch me dead doing that. No Sir. Or Madam.

Anyone interested in taking this up as a tag? I'd love to know!

P.S. I have almost concluded that i am incapable of writing what i set out to write about. No, really. This post started out by being about how much not being able to remember things sucks. It makes the world less interesting that it could be.

I may be telling me to shut up

Pretty sentences get in the way of what i want to say. Sure, they make for great arm candy and impress people sometimes (myself included) but is that what I want a sentence for?

Well, yes.

Maybe until i learn to get pretty things to say what i want, i should say nothing at all.

Retail therapy

I am, as of today evening, an increasingly indifferent owner of a netbook. The whole process of ownership, from inception to execution, took less than 24 hours. Rather like that Solomon Grundy rhyme.

Vinaya's netbook
Conceived on Saturday
Late night. Over a chat conversation. When her official laptop got wet in the rain and drowned. Or should have. The keyboard developed a high sense of whimsy. The wireless wouldnt work.

Discussed on Sunday
Morning. You know how Sunday mornings are. You want it to be different but it rarely is. All the possibilities that could make it different are bought out of the cupboard, discussed and then safely stored for next Sunday. Like radical changes to room arrangements, big purchases of interesting but essentially unessential things, food from outside.

Googled on Sunday
Prefternoon. On the old one with the whimsical keyboard. Which ups the whimsy. Which makes me take the whole plan more seriously.

Checked out on Sunday
Afternoon. In shops across town. None of which have any of the models the Internet recommends. Seriously. Is this an alternate universe we live in, or merely an older version?

Regoogled on Sunday
Prevening. This time for models we do have in our universe. Fortunately, none of them the Internet spits on.

Bought on Sunday
Evening. On the last day in the life of that shop, so we get a discount. The salesman asks me， do you want it initialized. I say no, thanks. He says Are。You。Sure。Which of course raises all sorts of doubts in my head. (i know, i know). What do you mean by initialization, i ask him. He vaguely mutters about stuff their "engineers" do when the laptop is booted for the first time and takes me to one. Who then proceeds to set the time zone and enter the user name. I want to break my head. But wait, there is more "initialization" where he says no to the anti virus. Right. Extremely important, that.

Blogged on Sunday.
Night. So far so good.

Not long ago

in a city not at all far away, there lived a girl. There was this bunch of stuff she was supposed to do. You know how it is with stuff you are supposed to do. If it is in your way, you step around it. If it grows so big that it becomes impossible for you to step around, why, you sit where you are, lean your back against it and enjoy the view.

One day the stuff she was supposed to do was being a very persistent nagger. It wouldnt let her rest, no matter how much she tried to ignore it. Fed up, she decided to go looking for excuses.

She crossed mountains
she swam seas.
She fought dragons
and got stung by bees.

Finally she found one. And what a good looking excuse it was! Strong and sturdy. No loopholes, whichever side it looked at it. She bought the excuse home. The stuff she was supposed to do was waiting for her, having grown stronger from all that neglect.

She walked in
her head held high.
Leaned on the excuse,
and looked the stuff in the eye.

The stuff gave up. For the time being. It knew however, that as long as she was willing to go through all that just to look for an excuse, it was safe. Its only when she really started to look at the stuff that it had to worry.

She and the excuse went on to live. Not too happily. Not at all for ever after.


(P.S. Thats the second time its happened. One sentence inspires a post and at the end, that sentence is nowhere in the post! This one was to be about her finding an excuse and them living happily ever after and making little baby excuses.)