Annual Melancholy

Ah.. Another year just whooshes out of our hands, as we gear up to face the heat of another one, hopefully not as forgettable(purely subjective) as this one. Being the much celebrated fan of desultory lists that I am, I propose to lay down a certain set of events that have shaped my attitude on life, the universe and everything, whipping me up as a more concrete and credible cynic than I was previously. Let's begin, at the beginning.

* The most unmemorable New year's eve honked my nose and poked me in the eye on 31's December 2008. After politely severing myself from the tripe of a new year's party that the clods in my block of flats put together, with as much courtesy as I could feign, I braced myself to face the fateful evening with literally nothing to do. Being the heart and soul of any party that I am (to be read in a scathingly sarcastic tone), this predicament made me take a sharp breath in and snort at the possibility of not being tormented by dunces who prance around with a full bladder, claiming that's their move, and keep asking me why I don't smile often or laugh at their lifeless punchlines at the end of inane drivel they call jokes. Anyway, even though I was away from such high-spirited magical pony-riding clotheads, my spirits did little to lift itself as I morosely gazed out to Chennai's lifeless skyline from my terrace.

* As I convinced myself that the next semester would be better than the previous, my tactics of self-delusion were shattered as a certain gentleman(name not divulged for obvious reasons;actually if you're in my department, you'll know anyway) strutted into our classroom. Apart from staying married to a 70's style projector and pointing fingers at it strategically to impede ideal viewing, he(or she? in tone with said teacher's anonymity, the gender has been marginally obscured, if you're smart, you'll figure it out, if not, you'll figure it out anyway) did nothing to lift our spirits. His classes were ideal for solving crossword puzzles, something I would regret doing a few months later, June, to be precise, and general birdwatching from the vantage point my seat in class offered. The classes were more or less the reason I began to love life as much as I do now (this too, to be read in a scathingly sarcastic tone)

* As that term ended, I promised myself that the ensuing summer would be most idyllic and uneventful. Well, you want one, but you get another. I was coerced into a project at IIT, and shuttling between here and there was a most harrowing experience. Not because, the commute was long, not because we had to work, but because it was like rubbing in the fact that I could have got into this place if only I studied harder. Moreover, I hated to be reminded of the fact that how a campus can be if it's located at the right place. With spotted deer grazing on one side and huge trees dotting the landscape, it was a stark contrast to my campus with dusty heatwaves, prickly semi-arid flora and a unique assortment of blood-thirsty cattle. As much as cows are revered in Hinduism and held in high regard, as far as I'm concerned, cows reek. They are on the top of my list of pests to be exterminated when I take over the world followed by the afore-mentioned professor and a couple more, just for kicks. It wasn't all bad either. Trips to IIT spawned a great deal of ingenious ideas like sniping sitting on an elephant in IIT, and many more. Acquaintance with a professor who wasn't mid-bogglingly dense was an added perk, a rare phenomenon on this side of the world. This made me realise you don't get what you want, hell, you never do. Life stinks.

* A new term, a new hostel, a new room, the same old idiots. This was the running tagline of the new term. My room number being 42 did little to lift my spirits, the hostel building grimly reminded us all of Auschwitz. Barely in the campus, I unscrupulously skived off classes for apparently no reason at all, was at home more than I was in the college. With the swine-flu scares and what-not, it turned out to be quite eventful, as teachers mercilessly appended an endless list of 'a's against my name in the attendance register. As the term drew to a close, I was frequently spotted hitting myself in the head for my past indulgences, dreading the inevitable. Anyway, at the end of the day, the inevitable never happened(irony noted). Moral of the story: My actions have no consequences, I'm that unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

* After pestering my parents for nearly a year, I finally got myself a laptop that wouldn't fry itself trying to add two and two. Noting that my previous laptop was an elaborate contraption involving a glorified calculator and a broken typewriter, it was a giant leap forward. But I still found reason to be unhappy, the reason being, laptop: too little, too late. With hardly a week to spare before my exams, a laptop was the first thing on my list of artifacts designed to wreck my grades. With a great deal of abstinence, I denied myself the temporal pleasures of gaming by stripping my laptop completely of all things worthwhile having. Bereft of entertainment and biting my fingers off for want of a better job to do, I truly appreciated the meaning of the phrase, 'A slip between the cup and the lip'.

Finally, as this year draws to a close, I again find myself with nothing to do, the same old terrace, same old skyline. The same old apes in my block have organised another celebration of mediocrity, cheap street music and second rate events to please no one.

P.S: If I have missed anymore depressing events, feel free to remind me in the comments section as we celebrate another year in the era of utter pointlessness.

A Planet's Plea

I don't know why I'm thinking so much these days, I think it's got to do with all the free time, you know, with this being holidays and all. Anyway, what has been plaguing my mind is the incessant talk about climate change. I know there are many heated emotions involved when it comes to being eco-friendly and all that, but I wanted to say this anyway. What do we know about global-warming? What do we know about weather patterns? How can we decide the cause of climate change when there are close to a million variables involved? We have no way of making sure why our planet is getting warmer. All we do know is that the earth is never stable. It is always changing. The whole universe is a giant cosmic symphony in dynamic equilibrium. There is no reason for the earth to be otherwise. We've had ice ages, four of therm huge, in the past, we've also had intensely warm periods in between. Antarctica was a lush temperate haven once, it was still close to the poles then. Why is it a frozen desert today? We've had mass extinctions, nearly ninety five percent of all species disappeared at the end of the Permian era. It was the worst mass extinction till date, and there is no reason why another one shouldn't happen. Whatever happens, unless the sun dies, or perhaps even then, life will go on. It is resilient. It can adapt, it can evolve. It never stays the same. We've been in this grand scheme of things for a mere wink of a few thousand years. How can we know the sheer magnitude of this ever-mutating planet of ours? We might be in the middle of a mass extinction ourselves, we might survive, we might not. Most probably we will survive, advancing sea levels are the least of our problems. The maximum we lose is a chunk of land creating space shortages throughout. We perhaps might not have vast open spaces, but we'll still survive in a dense closely packed society that's busy and crowded to the point of choking. We already live in such an environment, and we call it the triumph of civilisation, a metropolis. Large cities symbolise everything that will remain under such an event. We already are fascinated by busy roads and glittering skylines, we'd hardly know the difference. It would just seem like a leap in the rate of urbanisation. One might ask, what about agriculture, we'd need vast open spaces for agriculture, I'll tell you, you underestimate human ingenuity. The Japanese are already farming on their roofs, we could do the same. The Japanese economic miracle will be repeated in every country. If you look at it from that angle, it is not all that apocalyptic after all. But then, we have no idea how the earth reacts to the smallest of changes that appear seemingly insignificant. The outcomes have not always been good though. Let me go back to the most favourite example of paleontologists worldwide to show how bad things can go. First, a large meteorite crashed onto Siberian flat lands. This would no doubt kill most life in that region and some around a large radius through pyroplastic fumes and some more in the nuclear winter that follows. This would be one of the day to day mass extinctions like the infamous K-T extinction that killed terrestrial and aquatic dinosaurs. Things would have normalised in a few years or so, with a lacuna of life left behind filled almost immediately with new forms of life. But things didn't end there, Siberia happened to be a weakness in the earth's crust and the meteorite made it a lava trap. One would have seen vast curtains of fire shooting out for nearly as far as the eye can see. Something like Mordor in the LOTR films. Things would have heated up unimaginably at ground zero, obviously, and it would have been a hell in full swing for life in and around Siberia. Besides being instantaneously fried, evaporated, cooked and burnt at the same time, the plumes of dust would have cooled the earth drastically killing off cold-blooded creatures everywhere except near the equator and a radius of tolerant temperatures around Siberia itself. This nuclear winter lasted a tad longer than a normal meteorite crash and because of the volcanic traps, tonnes of carbon-di-oxide were pumped into the atmosphere. By the end of the nuclear winter that followed, which was after a few decades from the impact itself, nearly three percent of the earth's atmosphere was carbon-di-oxide. This would raise global temperatures by five to six degrees celsius. This is almost fatal for every living thing, but not nearly enough to kill almost every form of life. But it was enough to warm up the seas. The oceans then were a minefield of frozen methane, anaerobic life-forms rules the deep seas. The methane was almost instantaneously frozen due to the depth and vast quantities of this toxic gas lay frozen underneath. As the waters warmed up, these glaciers began to thaw, releasing tonnes of methane into the atmosphere. Methane as we know is twice as effective at green housing radiation as carbon-di-oxide is, and this raised temperatures even further, the last nail in life's coffin, temperatures shot up to nearly seventy degrees celsius in some parts of the planet. One now understands the domino effect that brought a huge cataclysm that almost wiped out life from the planet. But there's nothing we can do about it. If the whole planet burns, we can we go? It is indeed an unsettling thought, but we need to accept the fact that things like these happen all the time. There have been dozens of mass extinctions in the past and the one that might be happening now is no exception. It need never be a result of human activity. We know that only 0.035% of the atmosphere is CO2, and of late. it has risen to about 0.04%. This change is hardly enough to change global temperatures gathering from what we know. But there are plenty of other factors involved. The tilt in the axis is proposed to be the reason for the ice ages and the warmer periods. We can never really find out. The Suns orbit also plays a part, but we don't know what part. It is all really hazy as to why our temperatures are rising, if at all they are, and they need to rise uniformly. Many countries like Iceland have actually cooled. Greenland's melting, So is Western Antarctica, but Eastern Antarctican ice shelves are actually thickening. So global warming is not global in it's literal sense. Even the rate at which it rises shows no discernible pattern, some regions heating up faster than others. This is not characteristic of the greenhouse effect. Winds distribute CO2 concentrations more or less equally on a macroscopic scale and yet changes are visible even over broad vast regions. What we take are small scale readings and average them out but what we really need is a temperature gradient. Even if we establish that the earth is, on a broad scale, warming up, we don't know how much of it is human activity. We have previously tried to rectify changes in the environment, things have only ended in disaster. For example, take the Masai Mara in Southern Africa. Elephant and rhino preservation centres were established. Elephants thrived, rhinos did not. Why? Because both the species were kept in such close proximity that they started competing with each other for resources, elephants were successful, rhinos were not. Moreover, indigenous elephant populations were nearly wiped out due to hunting and local clashes before the park was established, and elephants from other parts of Africa were let loose, most of them young ones of more or less the same age. Elephant society is complex, very comparable to ours, and we did not understand this fact. This made these young elephants grow without a firm check from the other big elephants, which were all killed for ivory, and these adolescents grew into aggressive, bullying males that harassed females and other animals. One of these other animals was the rhino. These animals systematically hunted down the rhinos, reducing their populations even further. This problem was resolved later by importing gigantic tuskers, the old experienced ones, that would act as a stopper to these boisterous out of control adolescents. This problem, however, was resolved so late that rhino conservation is an optimist's dream today. What would have been a normal extiction was just accelerated by human intervention. Who knows, the rhinos might have bounced back if we hadn't intervened. We think preservation is maintaining status quo. We feel that cordoning off lands will stop them from dying out. What we fail to realise is that species disappear all the time, only to be replaced by new ones. We need to understand something before we declare it's broken and try to fix it. I'm saying all this because we shouldn't jump to conclusions about our planet. It is complex, dynamic and chaotic. What we do today will have huge consequences tomorrow. I read something about covering glaciers with a mirror-like material to reflect the sun's rays. I'm very earnest when I say, please don't do anything like it, it'll most probably end in disaster. We have no way of knowing what might happen to a planet that reflects most of the heat back into space. The stakes are very high this time, our survival is questioned, and the best thing to do is let the earth do it's job. Only nature can do it's job the best. Let the world run like it always has, let us bother, like every other life form, about changing ourselves to fit into our surroundings. The other way round only brings about catastrophe. If left to itself, we at least have a chance of survival. It's the only planet we've got, please don't mess with it. It'll spell doom if we don't know what we're doing and nine times out of ten, we don't. Leave the planet alone.

Mein Kampf in reading Mein Kampf

No matter how much people reel and gag when you say you haven't read any of the classics, just keep in mind, classics are books everyone appreciates, but no one reads. I realised that when I tried reading what the most celebrated mass murderer of all time called his autobiography. Let me be frank, it was a tad more interesting than trying to see wallpaper dry. He goes on and on about things he hates like the communists, Jews, the Austrians, Jews, the Poles, Jews, the French, Jews, etc. Much as I admire his strong will of character in hating entire communities to the point of saying we'd be better off with millions dead, there must be a rational reason behind such animosity. His chapters about the commies, as they're affectionately called in the West, are slightly short of shockingly abusive. Not that I'm particularly fond of communism, in fact, I'm as hard lined against that system as any next door chap, I have my reasons for hating communism, them being, to the best of my knowledge, pretty rational. But what Hitler does here is that he completely demonises communism, calls it a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, and glorifies them as manipulative megalomaniacs when they're just deluded simpletons who believe what they're doing is good for the society. He provides no concrete reason as to why communism wouldn't work, he never tackled the problem scientifically, pointing out the flaws in that form of society, but merely used the strongest words in the German vocabulary to mention how base communism is, and so elaborately does he punch in negative adjectives, that it pans out at least a dozen chapters in his, well, let's call it a book. His fractiously dogmatic views over anything even remotely non-German is quite tiresome, his irrationality over idealising things into pure good and quintessentially evil is even more trying. He's even more prejudiced when it comes to the Jews. Much as they, as I would understand, would provoke jealousy in the poorer masses owing to their success in finance and banking, it is no reason to kill them off. It sounds ridiculous when he says, kill the Jews, and create employment. By that logic, anyone could shoot all poor people to eliminate poverty. Slum clearances in the third world would be a breeze. All one has to do is set fire to one. It clearly is not a practical solution to handle the great depression. Not that the other countries handled it well either, Russia was immune to everything external due to its closed doors policy, USA was the worst affected, Britain and France, together, had half the world under their direct control to offload their debts onto. The colonies were the worst affected, but who'd know the difference if there's a drought in the Sahara? All I'm saying is that electing a hard-right mentally disturbed radical with an out-rightly professed controversial racial policy was the stupidest thing the Germans ever did, after signing the treaty of Versailles. His policy of employment for men alone is even more laughable. His reason for the Great Depression was that women are given lower salaries than men for equal work, which made large companies prefer women over men for employment thereby reducing the average income of the economy. This, he says, can be avoided by denying the woman's right to work. The concept of equal wages for equal work didn't enter the darkest corners of his scary mind. One couldn't blame his time for his views; the concept of gender equality was very much in vogue in the other western nations in the twenties. His foreign policy was the only acceptable idea of his, something that Germany should have done in 1900. Challenging the then superpower was something that Hitler believed as foolish and he sounds most earnest and sensible when he says one shouldn't overtly oppose the hegemony of a country that rules the world, but ally oneself with it. It was a good idea, Germany would have played the role Japan and near the thirties USA played. Such a Germany would never have irked the British and the French Empire, it would never have united the two most powerful countries in the world in an alliance against a country that is barely a century old. If only Bismarck thought the same way, we'd never have the world wars and well, who knows, we'd be living in a completely different world. His policy of British appeasement, we do know it was mutual, in the early thirties and at the same time driving a wedge between Britain and France was a masterstroke when it comes to stragteic diplomacy. He managed to stall a war, though with a lot of effort and foolish patience from other world leaders, that was unavoidable for nearly ten years. As much as these achievements may be, he was not and will never be regarded in the future as an able and diplomatic ruler and statesman. However efficient he may be at the art of war, peacetime government is played by different rules, and he would be clearly inept at handling a peaceful Germany that is split asunder and defenceless against heavyweights like Britain and France and at the same time battling the biggest economic crisis known to man that originated from the other side of the pond without a single colony to push deficits onto. I firmly believe, to this day, he'd be better off in the German army as a mere General or a Lieutenant than in a podium spreading dangerous ideas onto the impressionable. That way, Germany would have gained a valuable soldier and the world would have done without the horrors of holocaust. People with such extreme views are very dangerous and should never be given power. Throughout history, extremism and chauvinism of any kind has lead to nothing but bloodshed, one could quote numerous examples right from the christian crusades to the modern jihad. The funnier part is, I read the English translation, written by an Englishman, and therefore, you can expect France to take the flak for Germany's errant militaristic expansionism. According to that gentleman, France was the reason Germany felt so insulted and threatened after the First World War; France sought the independence of Catholic Rhineland and Bavaria to form a Catholic block from France to Austria dismembering Germany to counter British influence in Europe, as if European politics of the twentieth century was dictated by religion. As absurd as that notion sounds, it also reflects on the British view of events before the war.
I know I don't have to prove that his methods were flawed, it's just that it really astounds me as to just around half a century ago, people didn't know it was wrong to kill six million Jews just because they were all over the place. Trust me, as an Indian, I know how it is when people are all over the place. Anyway,the book was rather long and the narrative anaesthetic, but it is the most illuminating book from that period. It is one of the most informative books I've read. He provides a glimpse of the inter-war period like no one else; the first person view of a man-made international calamity is the best window one can look into for unadulterated information. It is not a book you read to while away time. Bottom-line, it's as descriptive as a history textbook but quite sadly, only just as interesting.

Three Little Pigs and many, many more

Actually, I've hardly been in Trichy since this term's started. I arrived a few days late, skived of a few more days two weeks later, and the same week, relief was brought about by a rather unexpected source of retribution on humanity. Yes, the pig has struck again, this time, with a vengeance. After starting rumours about suspected cases in college, my friend and I, I wouldn't divulge his name for security reasons, but you can read what he's got to say here, successfully started a wildfire, which successively took a more tangible form after every tree it consumed in its wake. Initially, we gave an anonymous Joe the dreaded swine flu, hoping the details would whip itself into shape, and funnily enough, we received the same rumour back again, only that our little anonymous friend now had a name, a year and his hostel mentioned. This had, sort of, exceeded our expectations, with wicked smiles of glee and lines from Shakespeare (the one about mischief being afoot and taking the course it wilts blah blah) being quoted every time someone mentioned the disease. So, panic spread, and one by one, everyone cleared the asylum, leaving the place to gather dust for the weekend. Classes got cancelled in waves of mass paranoia, with professors advising us to stay put in our rooms, words were hardly heeded to and we started sashaying about the campus celebrating the new found freedom, with frequent toasts to the lovable pig, our little sheep in wolf's clothing. However we later took a more serious stance and took off that evening, welcoming an extended weekend, a gift from the Swine God. Chennai greeted us with more paranoid losers, many wearing green underwear across their faces to protect themselves from God knows what (it'll get you anyway if it wants to, underpants or no underpants, by the way, get a life...); a meagre source of comic relief in these hard times. Anyway, I headed home with high hopes on my weekend, only to be crushed by the sensationalist harpies fluttering about in the halls of mass media, with over the top coverage and expressions of pretend seriousness on the anchors' botox stuffed faces. I know have been exiled indoors, but on the bright side, I'm at least home, away from the Sahara of college life, where clean rooms, cleaner bathrooms and a steaming cup of tea await me.

On Car-jacking, among other things...

There have been sightings of a huge bighead and a peaky stick figure with a weird thingy protruding from behind his right ear bumbling along on the roads of IIT Madras today after a long time. We were finally back to work again on our sorry excuse for a project for the week. After averaging barely two or three days a week schedule, it seemed to us all that the project was well in its way down the drain, especially after being lauded for the enthusiasm we showed (or not) by our either nice and naive or sensible and sarcastic professor. His comments did spark a new fervour in our otherwise sludgy and stagnated efforts. We entered into prolonged debates and discussions telling each other why it could not be done that way and why it was a roundabout waste of time. Moreover, we also did delve into the depths of our minds to tell whether our professor meant his compliments or not, a topic still on the table on grounds of a lack of conclusive evidence towards either possibility. Well, after weeks of ardent procrastination and a firm lack of interest, we had come to the conclusion that we had to do something about our project and that the moment was ripe to take the next step. It was at this juncture that we actually got around to doing something. After futile flounces in the steaming bowels of Richie Street, we finally bought a programmer that simply refused to work. Ever since, my project at IIT has been inching forwards showing vague signs of bleak progress. It was time my ever so close acquaintance and I put our heads together and came up with a list of things to do before we leave for our shantytown in Trichy. We did come up with a most elegant to-do list ranging from very novel and ingenious ideas like sniping from atop the elephant at Gajendra Circle to downright suicidal schemes like beleaguering our professor for a treat at Le Royal Meridian. More ludicrous ideas like finishing the project also came to mind, but was promptly rejected after deep hindsight. We did come up with a heavily orchestrated plan of novel car-jacking. Being more compact physically, my diminutive partner would distract the unsuspecting driver with neat tricks involving the common thumb detachment illusion, whilst I, more physically endowed, would wrest the car from the victim’s control. My partner, then, would feign protest and accidentally on purpose hit the accelerator and we zoom effortlessly to our desired location. Another attempt at tomfoolery involved poking our unpleasant noses into a documentary shot within the campus for a hitherto unknown reason. We would casually walk past the camera doing the cleverest of things like ballet dancing, acting drunk or slightly more subtle acts involving a foolish smile and a pretend maturity level of a two year old. Even digestive distress was on the agenda. Anyway, a thorough thesis on the subject will be put up after more meetings with my colleague and co-non-worker Pramod Emjay (kindly ask him what Emjay means if you’d love to see the imp go ballistic)

Flab, Food and NITT

As most of you who know me are aware, I’m chubby……. Okay really chubby… Fine, I can power New York City for a day if I start working out. So people around me thought something had to be done. After much nagging, wailing and gnashing of teeth, it was decided that our refrigerator is to be emptied of all things edible and replaced with stuff they feed sick antelopes in poorly maintained zoos. So, even I’ve been wondering, trying to rationalise the fact, breaking my head over how I ended up here in the first place. I’ve arrived at two main conclusions, the reasons for such a predicament. First of all, one must understand the laws of thermodynamics. Energy is conserved. And I’ve been conserving mine for the past nineteen years. As my high school teacher so prudently put it, “I think twice before lifting a finger”. Second of all, one must appreciate the importance of quality over quantity. Eat less, eat rich, that’s what I do. Even if it is a diminutive dessert, nothing short of extra sweet, extra creamy chocolate mousse (drool, drool...). Lunch would be just a single butter grilled sandwich but with mayonnaise dip seasoned with oregano and finely chopped mushrooms, for a dash of taste, coupled with some chips. So volume wise, it might not be much, but honestly, quality sits on the summit on this one. We buy so much cheese at home, on my recommendations, of course, that if we stopped right now, parts of Europe would enter a steeper recession. It’s a nice feeling you get when you know you’re propping an entire trade bloc’s economy up. Anyway, a monumental, apocalyptic, calamity has befallen yours truly; an ugly head in the shape of an empty fridge has shown up, infesting my household like a treacherous parasite. This catastrophic monstrosity of extreme proportions, popularly known as a diet, a will imposed upon me, was quite unflattering, frankly. Anyway, life must go on and therefore I still actively pursue my interests, for the most part, masterly indolence, chocolate mousse or not. As a result, I’ve managed to put on a few more pounds, partly because I deposit myself on a chair in front of my computer and more so because I’m at home. It’s kind of a jinx, really. Stay at home, I inflate ever so gradually, but surely, steadily. In fact, I’d genuinely like to find the reason behind such an irrational location dependent metabolism. As I went scouring for answers, the answer dawned upon me. While at home, I eat food, well, at least I’ve been brought up to believe as such, I eat nothing of that kind at college. We’re fed with the cheap quality fodder while the alfalfa goes to the numerous bovine friends that occupy our lands ever so smugly. Seriously, they have more freedom than we do. The onerous cows have become so much a part of our lives that you’ll get used to seeing the wretched beasts ambling along our corridors with trails of proof that they took the road not taken. Anyway, north would be north again, when I step into college for at least another week or two of living off my fat reserves, which ought to whip me back to some degree of respectable shape.


P.S. For effective slimming solutions, visit NITT, Tanjore Main Road,
National Highway 67,Tiruchirappalli - 620015,Tamil Nadu, India.
Lose 15lbs in a week or get your money back. **

**Conditions Applied.

Me, Myself and My Holiday

I got out to visit a sunny afternoon, with the sun setting the place ablaze and with the sweltering heat oppressing the inhabitants, the people walking about were not amused. The humidity didn't help either. With tempers and temperatures running high, the not so cheerful crowd went about their business with the usual enthusiasm of a malnourished cow, a pretty common sight on the country's roads considering the excellent belief that cattle can run amok, with no masters, a jewel in the spirit of India's crown. Apart from the fact that the state we stay in has two governments alternating every four years, with each progressively worse than the other and their valuable contributions when it comes to general deterioration of imaginary infrastructure are for sure not worth mentioning, we also have issues to occupy our minds like general disregard for traffic rules and further indifference for all property public. So, digressing from there with much difficulty, I wanted to say that I finally came home(For those not in the know, I'm from Chennai, previously Madras, which is an urban misfortune in South India), transported from one blast furnace to another, greeting the gush of white hot wind on my face. Every year, academic institutions, at least for now, have the last shred of humanity left that makes them feel that it is too inhuman to torture the students in the peak of summer. So I have two months of pure inactivity ahead of me, something to celebrate, the only oasis in the desert of college life. My itinerary (Thank you, Arun Ram) includes eat, sleep, eat, sleep and a few creature comforts like eating and sleeping all day long. Apart from my packed schedule for the day, I also have tonnes of stuff to catch up on. Parental pressure made yours truly apply for a project, hoping I wouldn't get any, and God's way of answering my prayers was doing the exact opposite of what I wanted him to do. Sure enough, I got a project, something I wouldn't have done even if I approached myself for a project, because my academic records are sure as hell not worth mentioning in the hall of fame. As unlikely as that event was, I now need to potter around at IIT madras, which I'm told is a real college unlike mine, as NITT was actually started off as a parody of government-run schools. Funnily enough, no one got the joke, the place actually got pretty famous and here I am, ranting about the inside story to anyone who cares to listen. Anyway, my schedule of much deserved lolling around has been cut short by a month and I wouldn't say I'm exactly happy about it. Apart from that, these few months will turn out to be as uneventful as possible, much to my taste, or at least I'll make sure it is. You would understand if you were as big a sloth as I am. So, as I was saying, the project might have been a blip in the flawless landscape of my dream holiday, but I'd like to see the glass half full and say I have one and a half months to kill. My tropical adventure at home would generally begin with my finger casually flicking my air-conditioner on, doing the same to my PC, and typing inane claptrap flitting around across my head, playing some games, not the racy action type, but the laid back strategy games that take hours or even days to finish, and general indolence on my couch in front the TV flicking through channels pointlessly. Now that you have the general picture, Do the same thing for the next ninety or so days, slow down time till it inches away letting you savour and revel in every moment that makes you do nothing and you have Me, Myself and My Holiday.

Induced Insomnia

It was around eleven at night and the bus was getting uncomfortably jumpy as the driver wound his way through the quagmire we called a road. Things seemed pretty usual when the queer chap in front of me pushed his seat back so low he could see right into my nostrils. Being cooped up in what passed of as a seat with hardly any leg space was the least of my problems, and all hope failed when the idiot box, (courtesy GB Shaw) turned itself on for a nighmarishly long session of offensive, pungent performances of action and drama with extreme tomfoolery for comic relief that was a commercial flick a.k.a masala movie. Life has one of the most curious ways of shoving dirt on your face, and obeying this rule, it happened to be a Vijay film. Now, I have no idea what the name of the film was(it doesn't matter anyway, I mean they're all the same in the first place), but I do know that it was one of the worst three hours of my life. Let me put it this way, I would prefer being hit on the nose by a speeding truck than watch this catastrophe of a film any day. Since the luxurious extravagance of choice wasn't on the table for me to take, I had to endure, and I have this nice habit of mine. When I'm in a pickle, I start to go along for the ride. That was mistake number two, mistake number one being born into a world with commercial flicks in it. So, I could have just dozed off in an uncomfortable stupor, but no, I had to see the film, such were the vagaries of the human mind, it can be betrayingly suicidal. It was the protagonist's introduction, a really agonising entrance of a remotely humanoid primate into the scene with a schizophrenic mob crying his disappointingly common name out loud. He then got around to beat bunch of no good thugs, who though armed to the teeth, saw fit to just prance around the hero in a menacing yet comical fashion. The hero, on the other hand, just armed with his bare fists, flies around defying all laws of physics our scientists painstakingly discovered and pieced together. He punches thin air surrounding our menacing thugs and yet they magically get hurt and fly backwards with an expression that reminds you of something unpleasant stuck beneath your nose. Once he was done beating them up, it was time for some song and dance, with over the top visuals of the hero doing nothing but shake his leg to intolerably painful noise dubbed music. He now has another bunch of schizophrenic morons surrounding him, this time, they don't jump around threateningly, but adopt a more monkey see monkey do approach, doing exactly what the hero does, only twice as hilariously. By now, the hero finished his dance sequence and a hideously unattractive woman, ugly as sin, her clothing or lack of thereof showing extreme penury, walks in with all eyes upon her. She happens, contradictory to our first impressions, to be an extremely rich man's spoilt daughter whose profession is conveniently and sufficiently arbitrary. All we know is that he also has political connections, which would come in handy in hiring more goondas to beat the hero up later in the film. She's then offended by a passerby for looking at her for longer than usual in a funny way. The hero comes to her rescue and beats the poor bloke up for the crime of seeing that repulsive woman. Seeing this act of chivalry, she inexplicably falls in love with him and they get transported to exotic locations where they dance and make a fool of themselves. This moroseness, while standalone would be a shining beacon for mediaeval torture, wasn't quite enough apparently and the director feels the audience haven't got the taste of real pain yet, and another character, completely unrelated to the non-existent plot pops up unleashing horror in the name of humour. The music didn't help either and then, suddenly, as proof that goodness still exists in the world, everything stops, including the bus, in a derelict location with cheap restaurants and shabby stalls playing worse music. The bus waited there for a good fifteen minutes, the passengers all got recharged to see the next half of the film. By then, the road got even worse, at any point of time, only one of the wheels on our bus touched the ground, the rest were precariously swaying in mid-air, groping for something solid to grip on to. Joe-Onlooker would have been pretty amused seeing a bus gallop, if only he sat inside the damn thing, he would know the agony of rattling bones and bad cinema. With not so smooth drops and sky high G-forces acting on the body, I began to feel nauseated, not wholly independent of the hero's dressing sense for the song sequences. I mean, who wouldn't feel queasy after seeing the hero in green trousers and purple shades? By then, the wonders of sleep overwhelmed me and I gradually closed my sore eyes for a much needed snooze. But thing's never are so simple in life and we don't always have a happily ever after. We then hit a traffic jam, a fact that I knew because of the buss' uncomfortable stillness and the putrid smell of half burnt diesel. We waited for another hour in this hellhole, apparently the stretch of road was being mended, something that's been going on for quite sometime now (God knows when it'll be done) and slowly we start inching forwards. The passengers started losing patience by then, and I started losing faith in all that was good in the world. Finally we came out of the jam and I started feeling drowsy again. Even before I could close my eyes, the bus came to a screeching halt. We all had to get down, we had arrived in Chennai, and I did that without an ounce of sleep. With eyes all puffy and red, a sleep deprived version of me got down, furious and irritable, to face an all new day.