Madman Aadisht had his own take on what I went through and circulated it as part of a bigger email that contains interesting tidbits and snippets of life in general.

Here’s what he had to say.

Ironically, I am more jobless when I am employed than when I am actually jobless. But, that again is a no-brainer considering the fact that the pursuit of a job requires more effort than to keep it once one has netted employment.

Over the weekend, I had been to Bangalore to attend the engagement celebrations of the Telangana-born Lord of the Simians and despite spending only 13 hours in Bangalore, it was quite a memorable, noteworthy trip.

Not prone to descriptive narratives, let’s just say the trip involved drinking a little vodka first thing in the morning, followed by a super awesome buffet breakfast, a heavy continental lunch, meeting up with band mates and having wine at noon wines and finally going for the engagement ceremony that I was here to attend.

One of my biggest fears in life so far as my appearance is concerned is the onset of a paunch, and if I eat the way I ate yesterday for a week, then I’ll have a skinny frame and an unsavory paunch, to look like one of those US-return techies that spend way too much time at their desk working their butts off, while not going out to have fun or working out.

Thankfully, high BMR will remedy that. All my life. Touchwood.

Other highlights of the trip included the fact that pretty much everyone at the engagement had SLR cameras with multiple flashes that made the ceremony look more like a discotheque with white lights flashing all around.

The obligatory prank of gifting something intensely embarassing did come to the fore when soon to be Mrs.Monkee was presented with pink pyjamas with monkeys on them. Madman and Madwoman must be commended on their intense research for aforementioned gag.

The one thing that did mortify me, that was brought up in frequent conversation was the major reports of unrest in Andhra Pradesh and how the law and order situation was mud. Consequently, Mr.Monkee called me to check if I had reached Bangalore safely. I had people say how they wouldn’t have gotten out of Hyderabad to come to Bangalore and attend the engagement given the circumstances.

I was quite puzzled with this news, considering how I had an easy time moving through from the campus to Kacheguda railway station and I was not anticipating any trouble on my return.

However, my stupidly optimistic mind led me to believe (and I plead guilty to vocalizing this irrational thought to the rest) that even if miscreants wanted to torch the train, they’d ask passengers to alight along with luggage before setting it on fire. This would result in a long trek towards the nearest place where transportation was available, but it would be an adventure at the exchequer’s expense nonetheless.

The others had no such high hopes with regard to my longevity in the event that I’d be subject to an incident as mentioned above, and also requested Mr.Monkee to have a garlanded picture of mine on stage since he would be culpable for my untimely demise, should said torching have actually taken place.

All’s well though and I am back into the slipstream of madness on campus here, having survived many potential near-death experiences, all of which took place in my mind’s eye, though none in real life.

What bothers me most is that while the last call I’d make would be to my folks at home, the penultimate one would be to let friends know which pic of mine to select to frame and put up.

Congratulations to Mr.Monkee and a shout out to soon-to-be Mrs.Monkee who, turns out, reads my humble blog and likes it. Much respect to you on your choice of a husband (and blogs to read), more power to you, and good luck!

Of course, among a close circle of friends, there’s always been this comfort which has ensured that I don’t really need to be politically correct and watch my mouth, especially because fun is made of oneself as much as it is made of the others, sans prejudice.

However, in a professional context or in formal social interactions, watching what I say has been a process that has improved with time to a point where I personally feel that I can be convinvingly pretend-suave for a reasonable amount of time.

So much so that I can now say, thanks to enough water having flown under the bridge (5+ years) that a girl I once dated gave me a couple of additional brownie points because of my gender related political correctness while trading incessant SMSes one evening.

Now, with an ever increasing number of exams, reports, assignments and such to turn in, references have to be made to the customer. Since one can’t keep saying “the customer” in every subsequent sentence, an appropriate pronoun has to be chosen.

I have never really thought about the gender of the pronoun to be used in this case until now, but I see myself increasingly gravitating towards saying “she”, “her” and so on.

Ideally, I should be saying “him/her”, “he/she” and so on, but while writing it out, it takes a long time to do so and it is quite a butt pain.

I figured that even if I mention the feminine pronoun and use it constantly, men will not take offence the way women would if I were to use the masculine pronoun.

This is another of those instances where one bends to the will of the female populace in general just to escape potential pain that can be caused in the event that feminists take up cudgels against you in the name of political correctness.

Its not that they’re wrong. I just feel that they’re be barking up the wrong tree insofar as asserting their rights are concerned.

As an aside, I have a strong belief that God is a woman. Men are relatively simple and uncomplicated and couldn’t have come up with something so complex and messed up, like this planet, for instance.

We men only think about food, music, books, movies, war, peace and sex. Some of the items on the list are thought of as a means of getting some others on that list. So there.

Time to hit the books to write a couple of reports now.

Embrace me now, Sweet Mother Death.

As I type this post out, there are solidarity marches being held in major Indian cities including my very own, with people gathering in huge crowds to march from point A to point B, holding candles in their hands, hopefully with some tissue paper or cloth around it so that the wax does not drip directly on their fingers and then shout slogans and get emotionally charged up for the duration of the rally and then disperse and go back home to paying bills, watching TV and working away.

I’m all for marches and rallies. I’ve been to a gay pride parade in Oslo (accidentally, while walking around touring the city), as the sole representative there of all the straight people on the planet, been involved in a Free-Tibet march in Mysore and attended a protest march to protest against the 85% attendance rule for our juniors under the VTU regime. I did not give a shit about the last ’cause’, but it was either that or sleeping in class.

However, despite being pro-rallies, I fail to see the point of this solidarity march. Not just this march, but all other peaceful protests, and opinions and polls and SMSes that people send to stupid news channels. Heck, I’m even against pseudo-intellectual discources on personal websites regarding this, because I feel it is futile, and provides no value-add save for a marginal amount of catharsis.

As Aadisht summed up in an email discussing the solidarity march, “I think it’s middle class activism masturbation, stroking your ego to feel good about doing something, anything.”

I do not question the noble intent behind which most of my country’s citizens are trying to mark their anger and pain towards the recent events that have unfolded in Bombay, but I don’t see anything beneficial coming out of it.

However, I think we’ve all ended up being much more cynical about the whole issue, and this might be good for us in the long run, because we can focus and concentrate our collective energies more effectively on finding a solution to the best possible extent that we can, rather than being spectators / participants that aren’t accounted for.

Here’s also hoping that our government, that has been so callously sitting on its fat arse, does something to help stop such attacks in the future.

Signing off, on an altogether different note, do check out George Freidman’s piece on the strategic motivations behind the Mumbai attacks. Makes for super reading.

Having purchased my cycle, and not having had a full meal for the entire day, my hunger knew no bounds, and there was no better and awesomer place than Shiok to satiate my pangs of hunger.

At Shiok, in conversation with Madhu Madman Menon, while noticing a family that wasn’t particularly bothered about how the kids were behaving, our conversation drifted towards the Kansa society and its highly flexible rules that could accommodate parental slaughter should the need arise.

It was in that moment that a game was born, which can be played by anyone concerned in order to give them justifiable cause and negate the need to expiate themselves from any potentially harmful action of theirs. It is called – ‘What would Aadisht Khanna do?’.

Knowing his reputation for madness that can be exemplified first hand by his website (that I’ve linked already), and testimonials from his classmates at IIM-B who’ve witnessed his deeds, it is quite safe to say that the things he would do in response to any of the situations the game can be played in are quite random and wouldn’t be agreeable to many people, mommybloggers included. This means that the outcome of the game would be fun for you (assuming you didn’t land up here randomly searching for Omaba v/s McCain or Swagath Garuda Mall) and of course, me.

While we thought of the question and sniggered at the possible answers, the potential for this game remains enormous. Given the country’s population and the relatively low popularity of the game ‘What would Brian Boitano do?‘, the Desi version of said game that was born in Shiok on that fateful evening of 1st Nov 2008 might just bring out the answers to questions we’ve been hitherto afraid of finding out.

–
Hari Shenoy, founder, owner, chief blogging officer and sole contributor reporting for harishenoy.com

With new government regulations put into place that have banned live performances in places serving alcohol, smoking within enclosed spaces and other such rules that have good intent but aren’t enforced well enough to be effective in the manner that was intended, there are apparently ways to circumvent said regulations by obtaining licenses that will allow these activities to take place as before.

Effectively, the further increase in licenses and norms and regulations is only resulting in the government making more money, which it shall hopefully invest in things that benefit the greater populace, failing which the increase in red tape is strongly unjustified.

The whole funda about licenses has prompted me to think of how some of the more important aspects of our lives, that actually require some regulatory mechanisms to be put into place are woefully neglected by the government. We have to obtain licenses for riding vehicles, and governments give out licenses to kill, but nobody regulates people’s right to become parents.

If parenthood were a right enforced only via licensing, then crazy people would not have kids, making our society a safer and better place to live in.

On saturday evening, when having dinner with PGK, we noticed how some parents at this place named Grameen in Koramangala were encouraging their kids’ errant behaviour. Despite in favour of most of the ideologies of the Kansa Society, we weren’t sure whether ‘taking care’ of these retarded parents was a job for Kansa Society or not.

After a swift phone call to Madman, the following was clearly established:

Aadisht: Though the Kansa Society is primarily into slaughtering children, we do undertake the task of slaughtering parents as well, on a need basis.

People that want to have children should take a test, which will determine their eligibility. Those who score above a certain cut-off can be issued a license to parenthood, while those that have mid-range marks are eligible to re-take the test after a year or so. Those whose scores fall below a cut-off range will be issued a certificate, making them eligible either to a vasectomy / hysterectomy or a lifetime’s supply of Nirodh from their nearest health center.

Keeping in mind issues that include NHRC violations, we can’t remedy the wrongs that people have committed by having children in the past, and eliminate the offspring of those ineligible to have children now, but we can secure our future against such dangers.

This license will tackle many problems facing our country, including the population explosion, the population explosion of morons and imbeciles, reduce the growth of anti-social elements in our society and heal the world, make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race.

I was initially puzzled at this, but I suddenly realized that everyone was now switching over to daylight saving time, and Pacific Standard Time (PST) had now become Pacific Daylight Saving Time (PDT). The entire nation had moved ahead by an hour, and I was inadvertently caught in the middle of it all, not having experienced this previously in 25 years of my existence.

The repercussions of this change were soon to follow. In my last two weeks there, I had to wake up an hour earlier, and given how late I used to sleep, it was quite a task. But there were enough and more relevant motivating factors that prompted me to do so, without much trouble.

However, when I got back home, it dawned upon me that I had lost an hour of my life forever. I did not see 01:00 to 01:59 in the wee hours of 9th March 2008 for no fault of mine. I want that hour of my life back.

The only way this can be accomplished is by being in some place that is already running on DST and then being present there when they switch back to their regular time. However, if, due to circumstances, I am unable to travel to any place and be present when the switch back takes place, I’d like it if someone were to sponsor my trip.

I did gain an extra day by crossing the International Date Line onward to the US, but lost it again when coming back home. This meant that I had two days of my life which had the date 9th February 2008, and no day which had the date 24th March 2008, but since the total number of days evens out, I am not complaining.

Maybe I can go ahead and start an NGO, inspired significantly by Aadisht, called – ‘I want my hour back‘, which will ensure that whoever has been a victim by losing time due to the DST switch over gets to be regain it during the switch back.

This problem would, I realize, be compounded further when the person has experienced N DST switch overs, and less switch backs, but those complications can be remedied on a case by case basis.

The theme song for this NGO, if anyone would bother to compose it, can be sung to the tune of ‘Life is a Lemon’ by Meatloaf. If anyone wants to implement this idea, go ahead, please, knock yourselves out.

Not knowing what to do, I had previously linked my domain name to my blog, which most often than not received random traffic from search engines due to reasons I’d rather not be too proud about, for now.

I was additionally maintaining a livejournal wherein I had initially started putting in any arbit rambling that I wanted to pen down and preserve, and this sounding board then turned out to be the one that I used with greater frequency compared to my blog, which I was afraid I was going to abandon.

In the midst of maintaining a blog and a livejournal, I chanced upon a few blogs that were hosted on their own server spaces and had exclusive URLs, and this, combined with the need to customize what I spew out in writing prompted me to purchase server space and host this website on wordpress, which is what you are seeing right now. In this regard, I have to thank Aadisht and SKimpy, for their random tech support level assistance on gtalk as well as for having guided me to Madhu Menon, who provided me with the necessary server space, and deserves to be thanked as well.

Thanks also to Monkee, the cheap guy that he is, for having been the first person to subscribe to the RSS feeds of my new website, much before I could do so myself, and for some invaluable inputs and constructive criticisms that prevented me from doing some things that I realized in retrospect were stupid.

Shrenik Sadalgi, friend, colleague and photographer extraordinaire provided me with his old camera – a Canon powershot A620, which is super enough for my face, to shoot the pics that you can see in the header. Refreshing or clicking on other links will switch the header image, thanks to a php script written by Matt Mullenweg.

The wordpress forums are stud level so far as resolving issues related to everything under the sun is concerned, and it is a result of their assistance that I’ve been able to put my site in the current shape that it is in.

Clicking on the bars on top will take you to the different categories under which I’ve posted, and I will update and add new stuff to it. Currently, if your office’s internet proxy isn’t benevolent enough, you will not be able to see any media under the music category.

The primary intent of the blog is to fan my already bloated ego, and also to serve as a means of providing me with more freelance writing opportunities, the likes of which I have engaged in for a few print as well as online publications. I have managed to import and include most of my blog and LJ entries into this site, but I haven’t been able to tag and categorize all 400 (approx) of them for now, which means that you will still see that ‘uncategorized’ label on the top bar until I’ve had enough time, patience and enthusiasm to remedy it.

Feedback is most welcome, just leave a comment, and do subscribe to the RSS feeds of my site. This new blogging journey will be awesome!

I wholeheartedly intend to Rock you like a Haricane.

The first time I got my voter’s ID was when I turned 18 and was gung-ho about getting the indelible ink put on my left index finger after having exercised my right to vote.

Having had a change of address when my family moved to a new house circa November 2003 resulting in a consequent change in both the legislative assembly constituency as well as the parliamentary constituency, it was time to get another voter’s ID done.

However, I had to miss out on getting my ID issued when the rest of my family was having theirs done for the same reasons as I missed out on gatecrashing RJ Malavika’s wedding with Madman Aadisht (comments should indicate why such an action wouldn’t be undertaken even if I were in town).

When the electoral officials declared that there would be another round that would take place on 19th September 2008, I decided to get my card for it provided me with the ideal opportunity to play hooky from the office and not feel guilty about doing so.

When friday morning dawned, I was in for quite a surprise, because the government school where I was to get my ID done was not the one in the vicinity of my house, but one that was about two kilometres away in a village named maTTikyatanahaLLi.

Just as backgroud information, the place we live in is quite far removed from Mysore city, for unlike in Bangalore, if someone lives outside the Ring Road that surrounds the city, they are considered to be living on the outside of the outskirts.

Hence the place we live in is unblemished by the ways of the city life and is a peaceful and quiet sub-urb of sorts. Unmitigated bliss are there.

This explains why the whole hoopla of having to go to some random village transpired and now, I can actually get on with the narrative.

The walk to the village from our area was quite a pleasant one that afforded quite a few opportunities to take photographs, some of which I’m going to put up on my flickr account if I don’t feel too lazy later on.

When I got to the school after cutting through some fields and seeing a live mongoose cross the road without a care in the world, and also being witness to what I can only term as two buffaloes making out in a shallow pool of muddy water, I was quite surprised at how I enjoyed myself completely during the entire unplanned walk across semi dried up lakes and farmland, rendering me oblivious to the large distance I walked in order to get to my destination.

At the school, it was absolute mayhem as some lucky class was given the day off in order to accommodate this particular exercise. I saw kids peeping into the room where the photo IDs were being issued and giving all the assembled adults furtive glances, some of whom they were no doubt related to.

The queue was quite long, and the villagers were cutting in without any heed being paid to the protests by those behind them, who weren’t entirely overjoyed at the prospect of having to wait for longer than was necessary. So much so that some woman cut right in front of me, and stood her ground despite my repeated protests, which I realize in retrospect sounded more like polite implorings than anything else. Also, I Wasn’t keen on picking a fight with someone from the village because I was in unfamiliar territory and I guess I have to thank my lucky stars that I knew to speak the local language and have myself understood.

There were two main things that happened that morning that will remain in my mind for a long time to come. The first thing was not so funny, despite being superficially so.

The photo station was manned by some guy who had some basic expertise in operating a laptop with a webcam, and he was in charge of getting people’s photographs clicked. Most of the villagers that came to the school had no clue about their dates of birth and thus were not sure about their age. On being asked to provide their age / DOB, they were quite clueless. Some of them managed to give out a rounded off number while some others were assigned a number (usually a multiple of five or ten) by the guy behind the laptop.

A woman changed her age from 30 to 45 to 40 and finally settled on 37 because some guy was kind enough to calculate the mean of her maximum and minimum age. While this might seem quite funny, with the villagers having a hearty laugh when someone who was 50 saying he was 35 and all that, it showcased the basic issue of illiteracy among those in the villages to a large extent. While we monitor our ages, wait for our birthdays as occasions to celebrate and cherish, most of these people just struggle to make a living and are oblivious to regular things that you and I would take for granted and this particular incident was quite an eye-opener in this regard.

The second incident, which was quite funny was something I had anticipated. With three names that comprise of a family name, a given name and a surname (out of which I generally tend to drop the first one off), I knew that the probability of some fudge up taking place with the spelling tended towards one, and my fears were not unfounded, for the laptop guy, despite my having given him my old voter’s ID, mis-spelt two out of three words in my name, and made them all as part of one word.

(Turns out that the same mistakes were done for my folks’ voters IDs as well, but quite unusually, despite being highly vocal in their protests towards anything under the sun, as opposed to their easy going offspring who say ‘Meh’ for most things, they didn’t bother getting a correction made.)

After I recovered from the initial shock and shook myself off all the painful memories I’ve had since I could spell my name, when I found out much to my continued disappointment that others couldn’t, I launched into a vehement protest to get my ID done the way it was supposed to be. The official was not used to this, given the fact that he’d randomly assign ages and spell peoples’ names the way he wanted to, and after almost twenty minutes of arguements, I was finally given an opportunity to get a duplicate ID done.

Much to my disappointment, they took the misspelt ID from me and said I could keep it only if I could provide them with INR 25. Stupidly, I hadn’t carried any money with me and by the time I returned home, I was too lazy to go back to get it from them.

All in a day’s work. Whoever said getting a Voter’s ID card done is a cinch should be made to go through what I did on that fateful friday.

Plus I’d rather not get my “Meh” t-shirt or my “Security” t-shirt torn in any fracas that ensues from a retaliation to my righteous moral indignation.

I’ve ranted about virtually everything I can survey, including announcements at the airport loud enough to wake the dead, about cell phones and people who stand way too close to you when you are in a que.

This recent TOI article which put Madman on the front page has sought opinions from a bunch of people who’ve been strongly vocal about being all for child free zones in the country, and are willing to cough up some money to ensure some peace of mind. This particular set of posts makes for interesting reading, if this topic has caught your fancy.

I want to go watch Wall-E in the theatres shortly, but I am scared of going because of the noisy irritating kids, their noisier and more irritating parents, that will kill the movie for me. Sundays, in particular, are a bad time to hang out at a mall, which, by itself is a bad place to hang out in, in the first place.

Also, the presence of pesky badly behaved children on flights is is probably a reason why all international flights serve free alcohol, so that people that want to can drink up and crash. (Funny how using the word crash on a plane makes people cringe. It is one of the best ways of unfriending the person(s) sitting next to you.) In the absence of said free alcohol, twelve hour flights would be agonizingly painful, since the presence of kids guarantees a lack of absolute silence at all times, except during turbulence (which is quite fun to experience in retrospect).

An interesting incident that took place yesterday further fuelled me to write this post. I had been to Big Bazaar to buy chocolates to satiate my urge to gorge on sweets, which has lasted for more than a fortnight now, and alarmingly so. The chocolates counter was closed as a result of which, I picked up the next best thing, Hide and Seek Milano biscuits, and was standing in queue patiently, when some random kid who must’ve been four or five years old just walked past me, walked back towards me when she spotted the biscuit packet in my hand, and held into it and tugged it.

The shop was closing, and I had been sleeping all day and needed my sugar fix, and there was no way I was going to let a badly behaved kid snatch the pack from me. I did what I thought Wolverine would do in such a situation, I bared my teeth and growled at her in a menacing way, and since I hadn’t combed my hair after having woken up and was dressed in my favourite pair of horribly torn jeans, I could’ve passed off as a junkie who’s food shouldn’t be messed with.

The growl made the kid run for cover, and she hid behind her Mum and was taking a peek at me occasionally when she thought I wasn’t looking. The guy standing behind me in queue, who was standing too close initially saw the incident from up close, and then respectfully stepped back some distance when I went ahead to the check-out counter.

Growling and baring one’s teeth works. I’m sure if I had been even remotely badly behaved like said kid, my Dad would’ve given me a roundhouse kick. Thankfully, such instances were few and far between.

BTW, I vote in favour of child-free zones.