Memetic Wierdry

Tagged by Aunty, am required to list 9 things about me that are weird, now, though I’m dysfunctional enough to finish this one easily, the problem is that, I don’t really consider myself weird.

Anyway, I’ll still try this one out, though I’m not responsible for what I list here.

1. I am obsessed with organisation, I have to arrange everything I own. Everything has to be just right, my bookshelf, my table, even the ‘my documents’ folder on my computer. Yet despite this, everything I touch turns into a mess. Right now my room looks like a bomb exploded in it.

2. Like I mentioned I’m organisationally obsessed. My bookshelf is also a victim of my distorted sense of organisation. For instance by my system of classification, Dostoyevsky sits between Spike Milligan and Wodehouse.

3. I get a sore throat when I don’t smoke.

4. I pierced my own lip, once for the stud and a whole lot of times just to scare friends, including the one time I did it whilst in class.

5. Sometimes on a long, wide, empty road, I’ll drive slow, cursing everyone else who drives fast, then when it gets crowded, I’ll drive like a maniac, switching lanes, cutting everyone off and cursing the people who drive slow.

6. I can go from boisterously happy to raging loony in under 5 seconds.

7. I can’t sleep unless it’s absolutely dark and totally silent. Even a hint of a radio within a kilometre radius keeps me awake.

8. I generally end up paying for everything when I’m out with friends, even when I’m almost broke.

9. I have an extremely short attention span, yet have been able to post regularly on this blog for over 4 months.

I think i'm supposed to tag nine people, fat chance, here are some tags anyway

Indian Lucifer, Ainz, Anamika, Confusion and Nothingman

Scientific Mythology

In a previous post, I had considered the scientific validity of Nivea’s claims that their DNAge product(s) can help prevent UV induced damage to DNA. While I think that their claims are technically valid, I came across another interesting view the other day, Rick points out that Nivea are exploiting the hype surrounding genetics to sell their product to a public that does not completely understand the implications of their claims. As a result most people will assume that the product can do much more than it is actually capable of achieving.
Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic, and that is exactly what Nivea seem to banking on to sell their DNAge.
Most science and genetics in particular suffers from this conversion into a modern mythology. Everyone has heard of genetic engineering, cloning and stuff like that and there’s so much popular debate on it that a lot of the ideas being thrown around aren’t necessarily scientific or very accurate. For an average person, it may become difficult to separate fact from fiction.
I had never thought this possible but even movies seem to influence a lot of people. Flicks like X-men, The Nutty Professor, The Hulk (or is it the Incredible Hulk?) and even Spiderman use a lot of pseudo science to try explain seemingly impossible phenomena. Now I never imagined that someone would take this seriously till a friend asked me if it was possible for mutations to create an X-men like situation. This woke me up to the fact that a people could actually take this seriously. If X-men can seem plausible then DNAge probably sounds like some kind of a scientific breakthrough.
What worries me about this receptiveness to scientific manipulation is not the risk of commercial exploitation but what it means for actual scientific research. Today, where there is much public debate surrounding research into genetic engineering and so much controversy surrounding GMO’s (genetically modified organisms), I wonder exactly how many of those raising their voices against them actually understand what they are opposing. Obviously if you think genetic engineering can create X-men, then sure, even I would oppose genetic engineering.
Unfortunately, I don’t think scientists spend enough time actually explaining their science to the public and that leaves a lot of room for people to push their own ideas to forward their own agendas.
Take for instance, this page I found on the International Vegetarian Union’s site (a vegetarian union, wtf?). The author states;

“Genetic engineering is wrong simply because scientists are mixing different DNA from different species, from different genes, from different families or orders. They are simply doing what Mother Nature tries to prevent through certain mechanisms, thanks to which the breeding can occur only between similar individuals, that is belonging to the same species. Nowadays genetic engineering can take pieces of bacteria or virus and put them into an animal or plant. Furthermore, they can take genes from an animal or human and put them in a vegetable or other species. In nature we could never find a vegetable with human genes, with bacteria genes or even with fish genes in it. .”

The problem with this is that there are a number of genes such as those for histone proteins or for cytochromes that are conserved across species. It isn’t accurate to classify any gene as being a vegetable gene or a human gene since many genes aren’t confined to a single species. Additionally I’m not that sure that ‘Mother Nature’ actually tries very hard to prevent transfer of genetic information between species. The inability for different species to crossbreed is a consequence of speciation not the reason for it. The author here doesn’t really raise any argument against genetic engineering other than that it is ‘unnatural’.

"…part of the scientific community strongly believes that there is a real possibility that feeding animals or humans with grain containing genes giving resistance to antibiotics, the intestinal and stomach bacteria can cross over with the bacterium in the grain, thus making the whole body resistant to antibiotics. In such a situation we would no longer be able to use certain antibiotics for veterinary or human health purposes."

Now in this one, I’m not sure if the original text has been modified after translation but this is mostly nonsense. However despite that he does raise a valid fear that genes for antibiotic resistance in plants may promote the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. What they fail to mention is that these antibiotic resistance genes are naturally occurring in many different bacteria in any case, they haven’t been artificially synthesised. There are also many other proposed alternatives to using these antibiotic resistance genes so it’s not much of an issue anymore.

“…90% of gene life in India has been patented in the US…”

This I seriously doubt. It’s not possible to patent those many genes, no way.

If you have read the original article, you may have noticed that I’m ignoring a large portion of the text, that’s because it deals with topics I don’t understand well enough to discuss. However there are more errors in the text than I have pointed out and I am not too sure about a lot of the figures they have quoted, particularly those pertaining to the dangers of GM food.

Random Ramblings

I finally got this post up. I was at it for an hour last night and blogger refused to publish the damn thing

I haven’t posted for a long time, mainly because I’ve been running around getting ready for the big move to Bangalore. There’s so much to be done, so much to take care of, most importantly there was the question of sending the money for the course. Naturally the more important something is the greater tendency there is for someone to try to fuck it up for you. First my wonderful bank, refused to approve the signature I had used on my cheques. To sort it out, I had to spend a day running between different branches of the bank, before they finally showed me what my signature should look like. Then the courier company, to whom I had entrusted the hard-won demand draft, kept me guessing by taking over a week to deliver it.
Just after the first draft had reached, I needed to send a second one out, again the banks refused to help me out, their computer networks were on the fritz and again I was shuttled between branches before someone finally made out the draft for me.
In between all this, friends who have ignored me for the six months I was in Delhi with nothing to do suddenly want to meet up, as a result I alternated between getting hammered and arguing with difficult bank tellers who seem to live just to make my life miserable.
Next thing on my to-do list now that my major financial and social obligations were taken care of was to actually book my ticket to go there. Normally this would be a no-brainer and I’d just sit at my computer and book an airline ticket in five minutes but since I’m going to have to carry a lot more than 15kgs (the allowed limit), I had to get in a long queue to get the train ticket. Train lines are really irritating; first there are the smart-asses who try to jump the line, then the people who insist on spending their time screaming into their cell phones and to top it off there are the ones who insist on standing right next to you, touching you. The other line always seems to move faster than the one you are in and when you switch lines, your new line suddenly slows down. Then there are those wonderful individuals who sit behind their plexi-glass screens, who somehow never have any change.
Me: ”How much is the ticket?”
Irritating Man: “fifteen hundred and twenty three rupees”
I give him three five hundreds and a fifty, he throws the fifty back in my face, “no change”
I have to go about a kilometre to the nearest shop to get change, luckily twenty-three bucks is exactly how much change I get back on a pack of fags.
After the drafts and ticket are taken care off, shopping is the next priority. I buy clothes once year and I never actually buy as much as I need. As a result I lived in college off an average of 3 pairs of jeans and a few assorted T-shirts. Now, a limited wardrobe necessitates regular washing and since I had to wash my clothes myself, by the end of the year most of my clothes would be shredded. Shopping is something I can’t stand, I feel uncomfortable buying anything and what’ makes it worse is that those irritating attendants always guilt-trip me into buying stuff I don’t like. Most of what I buy is on impulse and either doesn’t fit or falls apart after the first wash.
The one thing that I have to do, which I look forward to is selling my bike. I have only had it for two years, I bought her second-hand in college, but she is easily my favourite possession. I learnt to drive on her, I first experienced true freedom on her, freedom from cheating rickshaw drivers, from irregular bus time—tables, she affected my life profoundly. Despite being thirsty for fuel, expensive to maintain and a pain to drive sometimes, she still is fun as hell.
There is still a lot of shit to be taken care off before I leave and I still don’t understand how I am going to be able to manage it all because I’ve (for maybe the tenth time this year) decided to quit smoking. It’s something I try on a very regular basis and most of the time I cant manage it beyond about 5 or 6 hours. Right now my head is swimming and the keyboard is zooming in and out, so I think I’ll quit before I lose consciousness.

Something funny- the powers to be at google have decided to show me a little favour and are sending a few searches my way, but what searches they are, here are a few key words that are leading people my way;

malyali porn (Google)
tamil movie ah..aha (Google)
South indian bathing aunties (Google) [!!! wtf. !!!]
JNU+campaign (Google)
Rajnikanth bullet scenes (Google)
export companies culture about us in indain company (Google)

bianca castiafore beauty past compare (Google)

two people were disappointed for sure.

The Celebrity Within

Found This extremely cool little thingy on Confusion's blog, haha I'm Marlon Brando and Gabrielle Union's love child, not bad.

A Glimpse of Truth in a Mad World

Aunty Helpful Dictator, scourge of the senile; left me this link on my previous post and urged me to use my limited scientific knowledge to expose Nivea’s lying ways. Unfortunately it seems that there may be a hint of a scientific basis to their claims regarding their DNAge products.
They claim:
” 80% of skin ageing is a result of external influences, e.g. exposure to sunlight, which lead to damage at the skin cells’ core… With age, the DNA’s own renewal capacity declines and cell damage accumulates… Contain the powerful combination of cell-active Folic Acid and Creatine to stimulate cell renewal from within and protect the skin cells' DNA against future external damage…The result: The skin looks younger and firmer and wrinkles are visibly reduced…”
Accumulation of errors in cellular DNA is generally regarded as one of the major causes of ageing and UV light is capable of introducing errors in our DNA. I don’t know about if sunlight is responsible for 80% of skin ageing, however folic acid is responsible for major DNA repair mechanisms particularly with those responsible for repairing UV damage. Here however, repair doesn’t imply a correction of errors that are already present, rather it merely implies that any errors that creep in during the replication of DNA are corrected before they have a chance to become permanently established in the DNA strand. Additionally the folic acid will only make a difference in those individuals whose diet is deficient in that particular vitamin (folic acid is a B-complex vitamin), for those whose diet provides them with their RDA of folic acid (0.4mg/day). It is estimated however that 88% of North Americans suffer from folic acid deficiency. For those who don’t, any extra folic acid won’t make a difference.
The folic acid however cannot, as I already mentioned, corrects errors already present in the DNA. Since wrinkles are a result of an accumulation of errors in the DNA of skin cells, folic acid cannot remove wrinkles already present on your face. This they seem to claim is the role of creatin, which in their words “stimulates cell renewal” to somehow iron out the wrinkles. I’m not sure if creatin is capable of doing this, however it makes me wonder whether you really want to be using a formulation that stimulates cell division.
What we were taught in college was that any animal cell has a finite number of divisions that it can undergo before dying out. The reason is that with each cycle of replication the number of errors in it’s DNA increase, (errors that folic acid cannot prevent), till eventually so many errors accumulate that the cell dies, so voluntarily stimulating unnecessary cell division seems counter-intuitive. Of course it will have been clinically tested before approval for marketing, however no clinical trials last long enough to test this theory of mine out. Such a test would involve regular use of the product for many, many years and clinical trials that long are unheard of.

Diwali!

Aah happy diwali, it's a beautiful diwali this year, there's a chill in the air, every one looks happy and I'm a miserable little fuck.

Sulk sulk.

Happy Diwali everyone

The Beautiful People Part Deux / Advertisements Gone Wild / It’s All Lies Folks

For more scary ass pics, visit celebs without makeup, thanks for ruining the illusion guys

I got a gret link from Confusion on a previous post, check it out.

This is the second instalment of my post, ‘The Beautiful People’, I know it’s been a long time since I posted that one but I have a few more things to say now.
What provoked this post was an ad for a major bathing soap, manufactured by a brand whose name rhymes with ‘fucks’ and believe me that’s exactly what they are doing to our minds.
Some time ago, they introduced a miracle soap (yet another one) that contains collagen and grape-seed oil. These two constituents of the soap allegedly help ‘firm’ up your skin against the ‘ravaging effects of ageing’. Yeah right, what complete and utter bullshit, grape-seed oil maybe but collagen, never.
Collagen is a pretty large protein with three polypeptide strands per molecule, each fibril of collagen has about a thousand amino acids. Now how does something that large get through your skin? Keep in mind the cells on the upper layer of the skin are dead so there’s no question of them taking up anything. If it were possible, then why would people with diabetes be sticking needles into their arms every time they needed their insulin, wouldn’t it be easier to use an insulin ‘patch’?
How do they allow this kind of advertising? Aren’t there any regulatory authorities whose job it is to keep this kind o crap under control? Apparently there aren’t because this kind of misleading advertising is everywhere.
Take for instance Manikchand, who manufacture chewing tobacco, banned by Indian law from advertising their main product; they began marketing mineral water under the same brand name. The main focus of their campaign was the fact that their water contained 300% more oxygen. More oxygen than what? The polluted air we breath? Anyway what is this oxygen going to accomplish? We aren’t fish so water is not exactly where we get our oxygen from and even if we did, we’d have to snort the stuff, not a pretty thought.
Then there was an air-conditioner manufacturer who claimed that their AC’s blew Vitamin C enriched air, a water filter that can filter viruses and soaps that can kill viruses. How does it make a difference, how do they manage that and right on is all I have to say.
Advertisements in India cross over from product endorsement to the realms of fiction and it sucks because nobody seems to care. There needs to be slightly more scrutiny of their wild claims, someone needs to put an end to their lying ways.
Even worse are the tele-shopping channels; somehow everything they peddle was discovered by scientists in the depths of the Amazon jungle, from pills for weight loss to those that make you grow taller. Those products not of Amazonian origin were discovered by sages meditating atop the lofty peaks of the Himalayas, for some reason they took time off from their spiritual aspirations to produce fairness creams and anti-acne lotions.
What’s dangerous about their products is that I doubt that they actually do anything apart from parting you from you money. They are not manufactured under the standards required of pharmaceutical products as is evident from studies which show that a lot of ayurvedic ‘medicines’ contain very high levels of heavy metals including arsenic and mercury.
Forget a clear, ‘fair’ complexion, you’ll probably get Minamoto’s disease and grow a lot of attractive holes in your face, but hey, holes in you face help reduce weight right?

The Magical Mystery Movie Tour

The mystery behind the movie that I referred to in a previous post has been really irritating me and I finally got down to looking it up with my trusty search engine Google. Following up on a clue that Anamika had so kindly provided, I first searched for ‘SaiKumar’, no nothing here, I found a huge list of movies he’s acted in but none fit the bill. I was getting tired and frustrated so in a fit of desperation, I tried a search for the caption, ‘When God is silent, he is violent’; and there they were, three links to movie review sites.
As it turns out the name of the movie is ‘Thirupathi’, not ‘Thruth’ as I had mistakenly read. Here’s a brief review of the movie I found on one site, complete with Indianised grammar;

When God is silent he is violent. That is Thirupathi.
…There is nothing new in the story. It is the same old revenge saga after beaten life in the beginning days.
Thiru (Sudeep) has served 10 years in jail and in these years he has grown up tough. Thanks to his mother and jailor. He is good in studies and sports. As he grows he becomes a tough cop.
… It is Michel Raj the king maker who is behind all ruckus in the society. This Michel Raj is nothing but Dhanraj father of ACP Thirupathi.
…Now the one point agenda of ACP Thirupathi is to destroy the empire of Michel Raj as he has done injustice to his mother…
... He uses his power to relieve him from the cop job. Now Thirupathi finds it easy to take on things…
…he makes everyone believe that Michel Raj gang has done the killing. Now the Home Minister completely tensed asks Thirupathi to save his son. In return Thirupathi ask for reverting him back to duties and shoot at sight order to end Michel Raj. With uniform and order on his hand Thirupathi goes on a hunt but his mother and fiancée are kidnapped by Michel as expected….
This is a feast for action lovers. No disappointment for Sudeep fans

I know you won’t be able to make much sense of the storyline from this heavily edited review but believe me; you really don’t want to know the rest.

So that’s that taken care of, next; Ainz made a reference to a particular south Indian actor who catches bullets with his teeth, well there is only one man who does shite like that, the indomitable Rajnikanth.
Rajnikanth along with a few other south Indian actors like NT Ramarao, MGR and Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi (a scriptwriter) are worshipped across south India, to the extent that most of them have based successful political campaigns based on their popularity. Their fans worship them; build temples in their honour and riot when anything happens to them. Schwarzanegger may be governor but he’s got nothing on these people.
Rajnikanth is known up north but not for being a great actor but for crazy antics in his movies, here are some I’ve heard off, keep in mind these are based solely on what I’ve heard so they may not be entirely true, though knowing Rajnikanth, they probably are.

Scene 1, Rajnikanth is on one side of a wall and the bad guy is on the other side, he picks up a metal pan and chucks it in the air. As it is about to go over the wall, he shoots at it, the bullet ricochets off the pan and hits the baddie.

Scene 2, Rajnikanth has no bullets left in his revolver, but the bad guy does. The villain shoots at him, Rajnikanth slides out the bullet holding thingy of the revolver and catches the bullet with it, then he takes the bullet out, turns it around, puts it back in and shoots the bad guy with it.

Scene 3, Rajnikanth has one bullet in his revolver and there are two bad guys, he also has a knife. What would a normal hero do? Naturally, he would shoot one and try getting the other one with the knife. Aah, but you forget this is not just any hero, this be Rajnikanth. He places his blade in front of the barrel and shoots; the bullet splits in two and kills both the evildoers and puts an end to their evildoing.

What I really love south Indian movies are the fight sequences, while in Bollywood, they go at it without thinking, South Indian heroes have to pause to tie up their Lungi first, fuck that’s funny.

And The Trip to Bangalore Was a Success!

Dear KARTIK RAJAN (Appl. No.:XXXX),

I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected for the Postgraduate Diploma in Bioinformatics. The offer is subject to your meeting all the admission requirements.

Ah aha haha! I though I'd fucked up my interview but apparently I had not. Aah this means another year and a half away from my beloved Delhi. Who fucking cares, I'm going to Bangalore!

A Multi-Cultural Land Called India

Though technically I’m a South Indian, I have lived in the North too long for me to be accepted as a fully fledged south Indian, it’s a bit funny because in the North, people are happy to categorise me as being a South Indian despite the fact that they (South Indians) will have nothing to do with me. That’s mainly because I don’t speak any of the major South Indian languages so when in the South, I have to try converse in Hindi, which automatically makes me a North Indian. Not that it bothers me much, I’m quite happy being the true product of the national integration that we Indians are so fond of talking about.
Despite being genetically South Indian I am most definitely culturally affiliated to the North but that’s only because I’ve been brought up there. As a consequence my frequent trips to the southern half of our country always involve a bit of a culture shock.
He first thing that I noticed about Bangalore this time whilst coming in to land at HAL airport were the palm trees. Like I mentioned I’ve been to the South a lot since most of my extended family is settled there and palm trees aren’t anything new to me, but for the first time I noticed that they bother me. It’s not just the palm trees but everything they are associated with. Every self-respecting South Indian house has as palm tree in the garden or somewhere close by. It’s the houses that disturb me really, not the trees. I can’t describe it but they have this whole terracotta tiling, weird overhangs over the walls, barred windows and funny intricate facades all over the place. Not that north Indian houses are any better, most are just badly lit boxes, but I’m used to looking at theses boxes. My grandfather’s house in a small village in Tamil-Nadu (another South Indian State) is another example of a crazy architecture because Tamilians for some reason love blue and every second house in the state is painted blue or brilliant green. I know it sounds silly but it’s one of those weird associations I make, I hate palm trees because I associate them with South Indian architecture.
The funniest thing I saw in Bangalore this time was a movie poster. Movie posters are another major difference between a city like Delhi and any of its south Indian counterparts. Delhi walls though adorned with urine stains and tobacco spit are mostly free of movie posters. Here it’s a wild poster-fest, with posters for everything from dubbed English movies to B-grade kannad flicks. The posters themselves range from black and white stencils to full colour ones. My favourite was one for what I’m assuming was a kannad flick, in the centre of the sheet was a picture of an actor dressed as a cop (a favourite Indian theme), he was wearing Ray Ban aviators and held a machete in his outstretched hand, the word ‘THRUTH’ ran behind his head (spelling mistake or a kannad word?). What really caught my attention was the caption under the title. It inspired this Ally McBeal-esque fantasy, bear with me for a bit.
I imagined a caption writer, sitting in a dark and miserable room, lit by a small naked bulb hanging from its wire from the ceiling, its feeble rays struggle against the oppressive darkness intent in enveloping the room. He sits, head in his hands at an unstable desk, cluttered with scraps of paper. He lifts his head for a moment as he throws back the last of the desi in his glass. Sweat runs through the furrows on his wrinkled forehead and flows in steady streams down the grimy stubble on his face. Then for an instant his countenance clears as he is struck by inspiration, he bends over the desk, a chewed, blunt pencil in his hand scribbles furiously across the sheet in front of him. At long last, he collapses back in his chair, which groans dangerously under the burden. He reaches for the paper and holds it against the light and reads to himself the caption, which will define a generation. He reads to himself these lines of pure genius, he reads; ‘When God is silent, he is violent’.

Leave of absence

Sorry for he long time since I last posted but I was away, I'd gone to the great garden city - Bangalore. Will write something of it tomorrow!
Much love to everyone!

When Memes Attack

Once again Terra out of the goodness of her soul has tagged me, this is a more sinister meme though, on working and on death, seemingly unrelated topics? I think not.
A word of clarification, since I do not have any real workplace at the moment, I’ll consider my college lab as a workplace. I’ve already taken on the ATC lab so this time it’ll have to be the Recombinant DNA lab.

What is the best thing about my workplace?

100% pure alcohol. Compare it to; normal hard booze (~42%), wine (~9%) and VicksCough Syrup (9%) and you’ll get what I’m talking about.

What do I hate about my workplace?

It goes a bit like this;
*Crash*, the sound of a glass beaker smashing on the stone floor, my teacher sticks her head around trhe door.
“Kaaaartiiik”
“It wasn’t me maam, I was here in one corner, I’m not handling any glassware maam, I’m only working the centrifuge, it didn’t do it.”
“Did I say anything?”
“No maam.”
”Then why are you defending yourself?”
“I didn’t do it”
“Why do you talk so much”
“Yes maam, sorry maam”
“Who did it?”
“Not me maam”
“Did I say you did it?”
“No maam”
She walks off in mock anger
“Maam?”
“Yes what is it now”
“Is this a black thing?”
She throws a beaker at my head as I beat a hasty retreat.

What small irritants at my workplace really annoys me?

Sharing the weighing balance with people who tak an hour to measure out a gram of bacto-treptone and then leave a stick mess on the scale, which I inevitably get blamed for.

Describe the actions/quirks of the weirdest person I work with (can be a co-worker, employer, or a vendor if you are self employed):

A friend ‘S’ who felt the heat more than everyone else. He kept opening the windows in the lab. Since our lab was pretty high up, every time the window opened, a strong breeze blew through the lab and everyone’s flame (on their bunsen burners) would go crazy. Once the guy while sterilising a bottle with alcohol (see College Days), covered the whole thing with alcohol not just the neck of the bottle (as was required). When he flamed it, the bottle and his fingertips caught fire. Haha, very funny. He was a good friend though (just to clarify).

What is one thing that I would change at my workplace to make life a helluva lot better?

If they allowed smoking in the lab (not likely).

Pick five songs that I'd like played at my funeral......

Ideally when I die, I’d like the national anthem to be played as they take my body through the streets. Beautiful young girls would throw themselves at my dead body (since they refuse to throw themselves at my living body) weeping. The country would go into mourning at the loss of a national hero and a national holiday would be announced in my honour.
But I‘d happily settle for these five songs, played in this order of course.

1. Child in Time- Deep Purple
2. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
3. Paranoid – Black Sabbath
4. A Hazy Shade of Winter- Simon and Garfunkel
5. The End/ When the Music’s Over – The Doors

But it sucks to have to pick just five songs.
---
Now for the tags (I rub my hands with glee): Anamika, Ainz, Aunty, Confusion, Indian Lucifer, Jill and Nothingman, you are all tagged (in one fell swoop he tags them all, haha…HA).

Chapter -41, Where A Conversation Compels Kartik to Reflect

It all started slightly over three years ago when ‘M’ moved into the hostel, into my room. We were possibly the worst matched roommates in Boys Hostel D and our relationship developed as such. For the first few months that we knew each other, we hated each other’s guts. While in the hostel we were seldom in the room together, and at college we mostly kept out of each other’s way. Then a few months on, ‘G’ moved into the room with us, it changed the whole equation, from being arch rivals; we began to bond out of our common hatred of ‘G’. By the time our first year at college had ended, ‘M’ and I were pretty good friends. Then when college started again, I moved into and apartment with another friend and by that M’s parents had moved to Pune, so he was forced to stay at home. Despite that, we remained good friends and by the time college finished, m had become one of my closest friends.
I moved back to Delhi and he stayed on in Pune, neither of us is good at staying in touch so in spite of Orkut, Yahoo messenger and the good old telephone, we hardly talk.
Then earlier tonight he called.
M: “Oye saale Kartik how are you?”
Me: “M! kaisa hai?” (How are you?)
M: “Dude, this is going to be my last call for a long time.”
Me: “Why, what happened?”
M: “I’m off to OTA.”
Me: “You’re leaving? When?”
M: “Tonight.”
We spoke for about half an hour but the first ten second were enough to depress me. OTA for those of you who don’t know is the Officers Training Academy, one of the institutes that trains Officers for the Indian Army.
I knew he had always wanted to join the army and that he had been selected for the OTA but hearing that he was actually leaving shook me up a bit, thinking that in eleven months he’ll be sitting in a bunker on the border taking pot-shots at a Pakistani, who in turn will be after his blood. I know, there are literally thousands of Indians at this moment sitting in bunkers doing exactly the same thing but I don’t know any of them do I?
The first time I realised the futility of our current state of affairs was two years ago while on my way back to Delhi from Pune for my summer vacation. Travelling on the train with me was this guy about my age, with one of those black metal trunks that are so characteristic to army personnel. Trying to strike up a conversation, I asked him if his father was in the army;
“No”
“I only asked because you looked like you’re from an army family” (children of army personnel really do look different from us civvies)
“That’s because I am in the army”
Wtf? This guy was only a year or two older than me and he was already doing his bit for the country. We got to talking and got pretty friendly, that only made it worse for me because here was this great guy going up north, possibly to get killed.
Now, it’s the same, only much worse, much, much worse because it’s such a good friend of mine.
It’s a truly fucked up system that takes intelligent and productive men and women and puts a gun in their hands and sends them off to be killed for the petty whims of a few corrupt politicians who can’t manage to take a piss without getting it all over themselves, let alone manage a whole friggin country.
And that’s all I have to say about that.

...And The Results Are In

Ok fine now it gets fun for me, this is the part i love the most where i tell everyone that no-one got all ten right. Hah!
Before I reveal the correct answers. Anamika, no you dont get extra points for being cheeky. Confusion and Aunty (espescially Aunty) I didn't make up anything. Here's what a bitter gourd looks like;

You aren't missing anything great though because it tastes awful.

Ok now before I reveal the correct answers, here's the principle behind the whole thing. A fruit is defined broadly as a mature ovary ie. the reproductive part of the plant. Or more simply, anything with seeds is a fruit.

Here's the list of answers.

1. Banana - Fruit

2. Brinjal / Aubergine / Eggplant - Fruit

3. Karela / Bitter gourd - Fruit

4. Potato - Vegetable It is actually a modified stem, for the storage of starch.

5. Carrot - Vegetable

6. Lemon - Fruit

7. Pumpkin/ Squash - Fruit

8. Cucumber - Fruit

9. Onion - Vegetable It is again a modified stem, the layers of an onion are actually modified leaves.

10. Tomato - Fruit

Hah total brainfart (to steal a phrase from Confusion) eh? Don't worry though and dont look for cucumbers in the fruit section of you supermarket because this classification is the botanical clasification, not the commonly used nomenclature.

Thanks for participating though.

Fruit and vegetable game

Ok here's a silly game i invented at college. The reason behind inventing the game was to convice my parents that I was actually studying at college, so everytime I came home I'd bug them just to remind them I was actually doing something useful there.

This is how it goes. Below is a list of fruit and vegetables. All you have to do is point out which one's a fruit and which one a vegetable, easy right? Oh yeah, No googling (sp?) allowed.

1. Banana

2. Brinjal / Aubergine / Eggplant

3. Karela / Bitter gourd

4. Potato

5. Carrot

6. Lemon

7. Pumpkin/ Squash

8. Cucumber

9. Onion

10. Tomato

If anyone gets all ten right you get (pause for a drumroll.....) nothing. Did you really expect anything anyway?. Good luck and god speed.

Gandugiri!

I know that this is the second time I'm picking out Sanjay Dutt for ridicule, it's not that i don't like tha guy, frankly i don't really have an opinion about him either way.

Sanjay Dutt, released his newest movie Lage Raho Munnabhai recently. The movie has recieved a lot of praise for its attempts at promoting Gandhism ie. nonviolence. Dutt as being hailed as the the new messiah of Gandhism, few notice however that the release of the movie coincided nicely with the his court appearences for posession of several AK-47's. Hardly a Gandhian.

Gandhigiri as they refer to it the Gandhian philosophy in the movie roughly means; to act according to that particular way of life. It is derived from the word Dadagiri ie. to act like a bully/ rowdy or to generally behave as a roughneck. Here the suffix giri implies acting according to a particular stereotype. Methinks Sanjay Dutt would be more credible promoting Gandugiri; or the act of behaving like an ass (slang).