We’re looking at demo CD cover material, when we’re ready to come out with more songs that we’re totally comfortable with. In order to achieve this, we decided to get some interesting pictures at the railway station, as we stood stationary against a teeming sea of humanity.

What this was intended to achieve, I have no idea, honestly, but the image of the picture in my mind certainly looked really nice, as did the photo previews once Shrenik clicked a few and showed us on his DSLR.

There was a goods train which was parked at the station, and we wanted to get some shots in its vicinity, for which I approached the station master and took his permission. Initially, he mentioned something about having to get permission from some PR person in Bangalore city, and after a certain amount of convincing, which included flashing my press card, he finally relented.

Personally, I doubt we’d need special permission since there is no mention anywhere of photography being prohibited, and we only asked the station master for the sake of courtesy, so that he’d not get suspicious of our harmless activities and shoo us away.

In the midst of shooting photographs, however, a police constable appeared out of nowhere and asked us to stop taking pictures. I had to go and have a conversation with him again, and explain as to how we’d obtained permission from the station master and that it was all ok.

This cop then said we have to take permission from the Sub-Inspector at the neighbouring police station, and I told him to lead the way. I did not see why I had to get any additional permission, but I figured we’d have to ask whoever we had to.

Halfway to the station, this constable eventually said that he’d come back later on, and said I could go. On returning, we wrapped our work up soon, since it was getting hot in the afternoon, and I wasn’t particularly comfortable with the cop’s behaviour. As we made our way to the parking lot, this old codger, who seemed to be in his late 50s, came behind us and spoke to me, asking me what we’d done, and why these photos were necessary.

It was evident by now, if it hadn’t been already, that he was fishing for a bribe. However, he didn’t know that I wouldn’t pay a bribe ever. I was shocked at his blatant shamelessness in asking for money when, clearly, there was no reason for us to have paid him. We weren’t doing anything wrong, and even if we were, he had no business asking us for money on the side.

I politely told him that we’d be back in the evening and click more photographs, to avoid a full blown confrontation and we made our exit from there. Needless to say, I shall not be visiting the KR Puram railway station again for getting photos taken with the band.

I find it particularly sad that as free citizens of our country, we’d have to be fearful of doing something as innocent and innocuous as taking photographs at a railway station and be on our guard against unscrupulous elements who are unfortunately the ones who weild power and authority.

The MNS seems to have taken upon itself the task of cleansing Maharashtra of people of all different states, and ensuring that Maharashtrians get more jobs within the state. Having the chutzpah to openly make statements daring the state government to arrest him if they had the guts to, Raj Thackeray has effectively asked for it. Not that he wouldn’t be arrested if he weren’t so belligerent, in any case.

I am sure the activists of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike and the Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha are watching closely as to what will happen in the Maharashtra govt. v/s MNS situation in order to try and do something similar to protest the influx of people of all the other states who have made Bangalore their home.

Raj Thackeray should attack Bollywood, for most of the people in the Hindi film industry are from North India, and if he really wants to set an example, his party should rid the state of all these influential public figures rather than attack poor and helpless taxi drivers, pani puri vendors, railway examination aspirants and other such people who wouldn’t have the guts to fight back in the face of such strong opposition.

The KRV and the KCVP, similarly will go on an all out offensive against the labourers, the small workers and the IT industry employees who they would consider as soft targets incapable of fighting back, should they ever decide to engage in protests after being inspired by the MNS.

While making fun of HTs by labelling them Amit_123 and Neha_123 is quite alright, considering they call everyone south of the Vindhyas as a ‘Madrasi’, it is inappropriate to prevent a free citizen of India from making a living at any place of his/her choosing within any part of the country.

While it is necessary for the natives of a state to be entitled to jobs and benefits in order to make a decent living, it is unfair to target people from other states simply to vent out collective frustration. It is the occurrence of such events that put the brakes on our progress as a nation collectively. Despite the fact that most of us know that these events are being played about as a means of getting political mileage, it is unfortuate that there is nothing much that we can do about it, except shake our heads and hope that we aren’t privy to seeing more of such incidents occur in the future.

The whole world lies in wait to see what else Sarah Palin will say or do that will make McCain’s choice for his running partner seem much worse than his having finished 896th / 897th at Annapolis (conflicting reports on the actual number).

While most McCain supporters, who use ‘Obama Bin Laden’ to make fun of their candidate’s rival would think that the word I’ve made up would add to their arsenal, I would define Obaminable as being Obama-like; smart, politically savvy, aware of foreign policy and so on and so forth.

So if someone were to call you Obaminable, please consider it a compliment, unless of course they meant it as a typo with the first ‘a’ and the ‘o’ interchanged.

To elaborate further, AJM happens when you fall short of something by such a minor margin that disappointment magnifies manifold as opposed to the heartbreak one would face when one didn’t have a chance.

Now AJM has happened too many times in history and examples for the same can be found even if one doesn’t want to look. It happened in 1999 at the Camp Nou to all Bayern München fans. It happened to Indian cricket supporters in 1986 at the Australasia cup against Pakistan when Javed Miandad hit a six off the last ball, thereby causing extreme grief among all those in our country who had commenced the celebrations a few minutes prematurely.

AJM usually happens due to bad luck and it happens to everyone in general. However what I am about to illustrate here is the unusual case where someone has experienced so much luck that it can only be termed as reverse AJM.

Asif Ali Zardari, until 1987 was a nobody. He was some arbit guy who’s father was a rich businessman in the Pakistani province of Sindh, and he rose to fame and media attention due to his wife who unlike her good-for-nothing husband had graduated from Oxford, no less. Why she settled for Zardari (who btw hasn’t graduated and hence is also ineligible for Pakistan’s National Assembly) when she could’ve had any guy in Pakistan is a conundrum that’s caused many a logically sane person to scratch his head in bewilderment.

Notice I didn’t say ‘his/her’ head, because I’m sure women know the answer. Its a question that has crossed the minds of many men since times immemorial – ‘What is that cute/smart/stud woman doing with a hideous/dumb/loser guy like that?’. We digress, as usual.

Benazir’s legacy and her inclination towards active politics meant that Mr.Zardari had to come to terms with being in the limelight by association and not entirely due to his own efforts, though his inolvements in many a scandal did ensure that he got his 15 minutes on a more than regular basis.

In what can be termed as a blatant means of getting political mileage, Mr.Zardari even went to the extent of adding Bhutto in his son’s name, a move that is quite unusual in a non-matriarchal setup.

Now this very gentleman is the President of the neighbouring country and that too at a time when Pakistan is facing an acute economic crisis, internal strife due to issues over alignment / non-alignment with the US, the perpetually ignited Kashmir issue as well as the various other factions intent on blowing each other to bits if they can’t cross the border to blow us Indians to bits.

This is the exact opposite of an AJM situation, because our man has just been lucky circumstantially in a manner that very few individuals in history ever have. God help us all, seriously.

Edit: Based on news reports of how shamelessly Zardari put blade on the highly bladeworthy Sarah Palin, my stand has been justified. I am sure that there would’ve been some major uproar had Manmohan Singh said something even remotely similar to what our neighbouring country’s President unleashed.

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.

The BJP, after having a power-sharing agreement with the JD(S), finds itself in a possible position of being chucked out in favour of a Congress-JD(S) alliance, despite being the single-largest party in the state assembly.

Dorky Guffaw came into being, one fine ennui-filled afternoon, when a colleague of mine and I were engaged in arbit gtalk chatter, in the absence of anything else remote fruitful to accomplish, and even if there would’ve actually been something that may have been done, the enthusiasm levels had dipped to negative, facilitating some arbit chatter that lead to the creative section of the brain working overtime, thus resulting in DG’s birth.

It is a mere coincidence that he shares his initials with those of DeveGowda or Dolce and Gabbana, for any resemblance between this fictional character and the afore mentioned ones is unintended.

Dorky Guffaw is an uncoordinated klutz, who, in a quixotic manner, has become the self appointed saviour of the Indian IT industry, and its thousands of employees. Just like the absolutely jobless bunch of kids in Enid Blyton novels, that went around trying to solve cases or crimes they had no business involving themselves in, DG also takes up cases despite not being assigned any and his methods of working and going about doing things aren’t half as delightful as that of the jobless kids who, strangely, have alliterative collective names (Five Find-outers, Famous Five, Secret Seven and the like).

Dorky Guffaw’s trademark move is his dorky guffaw, laughter that rumbles deep from within his skinny being and is accompanied by pig-like snorts that he makes in an attempt to laugh. This is usually done at the end of solving a case, and for the sake of having continued readership, no attempts have been made to describe this sound, and our deepest pity rests with those that have an overactive imagination and need no descriptions to imagine Dorky Guffaw’s dorky guffaws.

Since this is DG’s blog debut, there was the necessity of having to have such a detailed background of his, a sort of ‘pilot-episode’, had this been a sitcom, and the author hopes earnestly that he shall refrain from going off on unnecessary tangents in future adventures, but can’t guarantee the same.

(Now would be the right time to add the subscription of this blog either to Google Reader or Bloglines or some other RSS feed reader).

This particular adventure begins on an A/C bus on the Mysore-Bangalore highway, which Dorky has boarded, in order to get back to Bangalore, and to his office. This particular adventure ends, as will all the others (well, most of the others), with his getting embarassed, but that to him makes as much of a difference as heavy rain does, to a thick-skinned buffalo. (That analogy sounded better in my native tongue, Konkani.)

Being a lone traveller on almost all his journeys, even on this occasion, the seat next to Dorky’s was empty. Normally, an empty seat would either stay empty, or be taken over by some random obnoxious guy who’d talk away on his phone on a loud voice, drowning out the loudest music Dorky could find on his portable music player, or someone who was bulky and would sit such that Dorky’s thin frame was further squeezed in the limited seat space that he actually had.

The ‘Maximum Moisturizer’ ad of old times, where a person sees a beautiful girl on a flight, and hopes that she comes and sits next to him, whlie she goes ahead and actually says that the guy is on her seat, is fiction. It happens only in the world of movies of the romantic comedy types and advertisements where you are then cajoled into buying random shit you never needed in the first place anyway, with the promise that if you do, someone who fits the bill of lovely woooman would come and sit next to you, and you’d get along like a house on fire and then either part ways or hook up. A lot of poor sods have ended up investing in Maximum Moisturizer, consequently, for no logcal reason whatsoever.

Dorky never had any such luck, but today was slightly different. Maybe it was because he carried two handkerchiefs, one for blowing his nose into, and the other standard issue one to wipe his face. The seat next to him was empty until the bus started, and just as it was about to leave, a real cute girl climbed in, and after scanning all the seats around, came and sat down next to him.

Dorky’s heart skipped a beat, for she was, in a word, beautiful. Just because he didn’t go out with too many women (too many = all the eligible ones out there) didn’t make him the kind who would drop his standards of beauty, so we can asssume, correctly, that she’d have actually been beautiful, if he says so.

With a mole on her upper lip, that was very Cindy Crawford-ish, but many times more beautiful in a manner that only Indian women can be, and with the delightful smell of Davidoff Cool Water (the only Wooman’s perfume Dorky could identify) watfting into his blocked nostrils, she was just the kind of person DG last expected to be sitting next to him.

Dorky had grown his hair for a year now, and had just begun tying it up in a ponytail, and was hence finding it uncomfortable to sit with his head against the headrest, for the felt, in earnest, the discomfort that goes with discovering how your head has something extra attached to it, that previously wasn’t there.

Who better than a woman with a ponytail to offer advice in this regard, Dorky thought and decided to ask the cute chick next to him, about how she manages to sit without her ponytail poking the headrest bothering her. It reminded Dorky of a Tintin comic he had once read, ‘Tintin and the Crab with the Golden Claws’, where Captain Haddock’s mate, Allan, asks him whether he slept with his beard under the blanket or over it, which led to the Captain having a sleepless night, trying to decide which way he actually did it.

What follows next is classic Dorky material. It must be said, at the outset that only a small fraction of initiating this conversation was in order to get chatting with her, while most of the intent was centered around resolving a genuine doubt.

Dorky: Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
(thinking to himself – could I have possibly asked something stupider than that??)

Cutie (raising her eyebrows, thinking to herself – here’s another one who needs to bite the dust): Yeah?

Dorky (pointing to his ponytail): I just wanted to know how it is that you manage to sit, without your ponytail bothering you. I try sitting and I am not sure how it happens.
(It was around this time that he realized that this conversation sounded so much more logical and cogent within the confines of his mind, which was where he should’ve let it stay dormant at, in the first place)

Cutie (incredulous look on her face, wondering what sort of weirdos still walk the earth): I don’t know, I am just used to it, I guess.

Dorky (shrugging his shoulders): Well, ookay. Guess it takes a little getting used to!

Don Juan he may not be, but he knew, thankfully, when he should shut his mouth without causing himself any further embarassment, while the other school of thought that was also in session within his head was trying to convince him that he’d already hit the pits and that since redemption was not possible after having unleashed the demons of stupidity, he might as well go all the way and continue the conversation.

The conservative school of thought won, as the Cutie drifted off into sleep on the adjoining seat, dreaming no doubt, about Prince Charming, who had a crew cut, and could come up with better starting lines of conversation, than something involving haircare, something about coalition politics or about Ishihara test frames to detect colour blindness.

He went back to his reading, and listening to music and continued the journey, not knowing where his next mis-adventure would come from.

Epilogue:What actually happened next was that DG commenced blogging about the entire fiasco, right during the journey after cutie nodded off. Cutie subsequently woke up, and on her own volition, offered him some chocolate, and they got talking and spoke for an hour. Pleasant, enjoyable conversation ensued, the kind that you could expect between two strangers who would never expect to meet each other again, and he eventually got off the bus, when his stop arrived, to head back to where he used to be.