Chronicles of a Monsoon BIker

WARNING: Post peppered with profanity.

Clutch, flick, release and twist, the newest dance on the block, clutch, brake, tread and release, it’s the craze baby. Faster, clutch, flick, release, twist, release and brake, can you keep up? Hold on now it gets complicated, clutch, flick, release, twist, swerve, brake, release, twist, swerve and twist some more. See now you’re getting the rhythm, now the grand finale, all together, no point losing it all now. Clutch, flick, release, twist, brake, clutch, tread, release, twist, swerve, clutch, flick, release, swerve, avoid-a-cop, twist, jump-a –light, twist, release, swerve, cut-the-bastard-off, twist and crash.

Got all of that? Now, do it all over again, you want to improvise? Sure, sure that’s where the fun’s at. Just remember the basic steps of clutch-flick-release -twist and clutch-tread-release-twist and everything else is yours to decide. Add in a swerve or too if you are feeling sprightly, brake a lot if your day’s been off or just throw in a lot of scrapes and crashes if that’s how you get your kicks. No children, nothing’s taboo, what a man (or woman) and a bike do behind closed doors is nobody’s business.

Drink and drive, smoke-up and drive, hell , shoot your damn head off with a sawn-off shotgun and drive, do whatever just don’t get in my way.

Just spent Sunday driving, clocked up close to a hundred in this choked and congested shithole, Hyderabad and boy was it fun. Came home with an aching left wrist (my clutch hand, for those not in the know), sore ankles from all the braking and gear shifting and in a foul mood.

Driving in an Indian city on our obstacle-course roads is a challenge, cos if the pot-holes don’t get you, some psychotic motorist surely will. Sure I’m a bloody loony on the road, but if you can’t beat ‘em join the motherfuckers, cut like nobody’s business, rip, swerve, pop a wheelie just for the heck of it. Like Cat Stevens now Yusuf or whatever said, baby it’s a wild world, it’s hard to get by just upon a smile. That would just be dumb, sitting at the side of the road, flashing an inane smile at the insane motorists that pass you by.

Sorry, just feeling a bit anarchistic at the moment. I am a partly responsible motorist for sure, I stop at every red light, even if I feel like a total idiot stopped in the middle of the road while people whizz by, stopped at the risk of being rear-ended by some jackass who won’t believe that someone’s actually stopped. In Pune it was easy there were a fixed set of signals that every one jumped, so you could learn pretty easily and avoid any untoward incident by doing something unheard of and actually stopping at one of them. Here in Hyderabad I’ve figured after about a month and a half of driving that they have their own rules too. There are a set of lights that people don’t stop for, just that it’s a bloody universal set and contains every bloody light in the city. Nobody stops unless there’s a frigging cop standing swinging a baton and a book of traffic tickets on a string, whistling nonchalantly to himself, not a care in the world, taunting you, tempting you, daring you to try, try jump the light .

Jim Morrison told us to roll baby roll, obviously he’d never been caught in office traffic on a post-monsoon waterlogged road on the back of a bike ankle deep in brown gook, being sprayed by every passing car like a succession of dogs marking their territory. Honestly sometimes I feel like a wholesale lamp-post and not even a bloody enchanted CS Lewis Lampost (The Magicians Nephew and the Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe, if you’ve never read the books or watched the movie) just a regular, shitty, half rusted lamp-post, up to my knees in stirred shite, gnashing my teeth, growling under my breath and occasionally out loud.

Blah! There, I said it, that’s how I’m feeling. All the excitement of getting out of office, the day’s work left behind. A whole bloody evening left to look forward to, catch the elevator down, out into parking, swing a leg over my machine, thumb it to life, put it in gear and open up my throttle, only to have to slam on the brakes as I leave the gates and enter the traffic jam. The lake bordering the road out of office has flooded it’s banks from the recent rains, the construction site bordering the road has been flooded. Both are emptying water into each other and on to the road that runs in between. I roll up my pants, tread down a couple of gears and make my way warily through the water almost up to my engine. The car in front flashes his brake lights, I slow down to a dead stop, look around for a way out, none, reluctantly I put my feet down. Damn, the only thing I hate more than wet socks is wet underwear.

The moment my rear wheel emerges from the water, I throttle up, I fishtail as my soaked tyre struggles for grip on the slick silt and gravel. I’m spraying everyone, including myself, I couldn’t care less. All I want to do is get home now. The moods worsening now, out of sympathy, the clouds part slowly to reveal an impotent orange dying sun. Nothing save a drink, some Old Monk (black rum, my favourite drink after a cold beer on a hot day) maybe and some loud music can salvage my mood.

Back on the main road that runs through Madhapur, the arsehole of Hyderabad, now I’m in my own element, traffic is fast, but I’m faster. I know every pot-hole, every bump, every cop, where the bus will pull over, I know the best line through the turns, I know where the wanker with the death-wish will jump on to the road. Like a level in a video-game that I’ve played a million times, I brake, twist, clutch, release, twist, flick and tread without even thinking about it. It’s so predictable, my favourite turn, a long right, where everyone takes the inside, leaving me the outside all to myself, I know, just after the turn is where the slow moving traffic accumulates, in my lane. I flick my indicator, right, indicate with a slow flick of my hand, which could mean anything from screw you to watch out here I come, then hand back on throttle, I pull through the gap between the white sedan and the red SUV, found another gap, power up, as I chase down the next car. Out come the big guns, just like in a video game, I put away the Desert Eagle and pull out my Uzi, pepper the SUV I’m overtaking full of lead. Next the cab in front, he’s a tough bastard, all over the road. Fake to the left then hard to the right as he covers his blind spot, AK-47 in hand I scream past him, blood and guts, bing! One more kill, the points rack up, the engine quietens as the road slopes down, now I’m on a roll. They’re fleeing helter skelter, Ha! Meet your maker you sorry sons-of-bitches....aaargh I’m a god, a GOD I say, bow down before me you insignificant specks of turd, flecks of a wet fart on the sides of a toilet bowl.

On the home stretch now, smaller game, pedestrians, easy kills as I warm down, only the road is done, I’m on a stony slippery mud path now, still spraying the scenery, excavating the road as I pass. Tight turn, slip on a patch of damp, clutch, tread, tread, brake, tread, open the metal gate with my front wheel. Tread again, half a flick into neutral, engine-kill, kick out the stand, twist-key, push-in-key, twist handle to the right, twist-key, pull-key-out. I’m home. Press-release-button, tug-at-strap, pull-helmet-off. Level complete. Game over.

Not Just A Scent

The smell stays in your nostrils for days after, you think you smell it on your body, on your fingers, on your arms, on your chest and you can taste it on the back of your teeth.
It’s not just one smell, it’s a mixture of perfume, of sweat and of love. A heady mixture that has the power to carry you back in time to places you were, back to the things you said and what you did.
One whiff brings back that smile that killed you the first time it flashed your way, another brings back the heat and the proximity of the body that you held and a third, the pain of parting.
You smell it in an elevator on the way up to work, you sneak a glance but the source is nowhere to be seen, not the source that you wanted anyway.
I’ve heard that we have no memory for smell, well not one that parallels sight and sound. But somehow I do remember and like the Lady Macbeth no matter how much I try to wash it off, my fingers still smell.
It comes to me at the strangest of moments, when I take a drag, it’s not the nicotine that hits the back of my nose, but the smell. When I pull off my t-shirt, there it is again. I spray on some deo, Brut should do the trick, well it gets me through the day but back home again, it pursues me.
I remember the first time I noticed it, happier days, the wind blew it my way, a dense cloud of hormones and sunshine and monsoon all at the same time.
It’s the smell of rebellion, of freedom of the wind in your face as you drive, the weight on your shoulders and pain in your wrists and the warmth on your back. It’s the long strands of hair that whip against your face as you are caught in a crosswind, as you tread through gears and hold the bike steady as it careens to one side encouraged by an enthusiastic gust.
It’s a wave goodbye, it’s a promise whispered in your ear, it’s the unspoken promise from one pair of eyes to another. It’s the sinking feeling in your gut when you hear the words, ‘we have to talk’. It’s the expression of hopelessness mirrored on your face. It’s knowing what could be perfect is being torn from you. Knowing decisions that affect you, your life are being made and you could scream your charred lungs out and it wouldn’t make an ounce of a difference. Not to you not to who matters, it only hurts more. The smell dries out your eyes, it hollows out your laugh and draws lines across your forehead.
A mere whiff that killed you the first time it wafted your way, now drills painfully into your head, knowing that it belongs to another. Let it go you tell yourself, but there it is on your fingers, on your arms, on your chest and against the back of your teeth.

Pulling A Disappearing Act

Hello stranger, welcome to the blog, c’mon in, the waters real nice. There was a strange being that inhabited these shores once, gather round children and I’ll tell you a tale of an obsessive compulsive. Are you nice and comfy? See, I told you the waters nice, yes, that is a turd floating by, ok so I may have lied a bit.
This is not a grand reopening post, I cannot guarantee that there will be many more to come, I can’t say anything for sure at the moment even whether this particular one will make its way online. The creature that initially inhabited this shell has left and is long gone. I’m trying it out for a fit to see if it suits me.
First a shout out to all those that have left their kind condolences for Kartik’s passing; Yaseer, AHD, Confusion, and Nothingman.
The last time I took the time out to post, I was in Bangalore, yes I’d been bangalored baby, but sadly it was not to be. After nearly a year of working and drinking around the clock, I upped and was shipped off to Hyderabad, the city of Nizams and Biryani. It was the former IT hub of the country till it was bangalored. Now it’s a fucking ruin. To me it looks like Hyderabad was on its way to growing into a somewhat sophisticated city till the IT industry tempted by the cooler climes of Bangalore moved. Now this place is stuck in a fucking time warp, half way between cosmopolitan and a provincial backwater.
That of course is the irrepressible arrogance of a Delhiite. We run around the country bitching about how screwed up the rest of the country is despite the fact that we live in the biggest shithole of them all. It’s just that Delhi is like a drug, not even Mumbai with its humidity, sophistication and film industry can substitute. Only a true dilliwala loves the city for everything that everyone else thinks is insane.
I’m working now, yes a real job. The parents are ever so proud. I earn now, finally my time is worth something, yet I still find time to waste sitting around doing nothing, scratching my balls. It works out to something like a couple of bucks a scratch.
That of course in my own twisted way is the story of my life thus far, like it or lump it, your call. Now on to the real stuff, yes children it’s anecdote time, gather around at the feet of pervy Uncle Kartik, little girls stay out of the reach of his hands at all times, boys, mind your arseholes. Somebody bring the fags (cigarettes if you are American and homophobic), get a light and settle down.
Five minute break while I go out to get a smoke for myself and my hung-over roommate.
So here goes, (where to I know not myself), two friends of mine and I just moved out of the hostel we’d been living in for the past five months and into a rented apartment. It’s actually what they call here, an independent house, with two, two-bedroom units, three of us in the front and three other guys at the back (more on them later maybe). So we were properly stoked at the idea of finally getting our arses out of the hostel into a place we could call our own. Now this independent house is stuck in the corner of the ‘colony’ with no neighbors (what attracted us to it). So the other day, I get back from work, groceries in hand headbanging to Children of Bodom playing on my iPod. My only concrete plans at the moment are to rip a couple of movies a friend at work lent me. I get in the gate and see the door is locked from the inside and a light is on in one bedroom. I figure one of my roommates is home surprising since he generally comes in about after eight and it’s only seven. I pull one of the windows open and holler for him to open up. No response. The bastard’s probably got his earphones on and can’t hear me, typical. I holler again louder. Nothing. Now, I’m irritated I just want to make myself a cup of tea and settle down to watching Papillon, if it’s half as good as the book, it’ll be well worth the while. Why the fuck won’t he open the damn door. I’m pissed now, I move to the door ready to start pounding on it, that’ll wake him up.
My eyes fall on the bolt, it’s hanging loose, the sleeve’s broken and the supposedly solid bolt is bent. Fucking hell, I think. My brain is working slow, too damn slow, I confuse this new information with my previous train of thought. My brain still assumes my roommate is in the flat but now it’s thinking something terrible has happened. This happens in a fraction of a second. Now I step in. In the gloom I make out a large mass in my normally empty bedroom. Oh fuck, oh fuck. My groceries go flying , the bread and potatoes crush the tomatoes. For some reason, I pull off my I-card and fling that into the hall. Ignoring everything else, all sense of personal safety out the window, I rush into my bedroom, ‘Shot in the Dark’, Children of Bodom, cover Ozzy on my iPod.
“Out on the streets I’m stalking the night, I can hear my heavy breathing”
I fumble at the light switch.
“Prey for the kill but it doesn’t seem right something there I can’t believe in”
Light floods the room.
“Voices are calling inside of my head, I can hear them, I can hear them”
Terror.
“Vanishing memories of things that were said and they can’t try to hurt me now”
Horror, shock.
“A Shot in the Dark...”
The earphones come flying off as I tug at the wire, shove them into my pocket.
The room is full of clothes and open suitcases, a battlefield littered with corpses.
I run across it straight to one of the open shelves, to where my laptop normally lies.
Sweet relief. It’s still there.
Later, once all the drama’s over, I’ve called my roomates to survey the carnage. We've examined the damage, nothing was stolen... seriously, what a bunch of fucking amateurs.

Both the rooms were ransacked, all my beautifully ironed clothes were screwed up, one roomate was so traumatized he didn't sleep the whole night. Me after I managed to sort out my room I fall comatose exhausted from the shock, worry and work.

The next day, I have a great story to tell in office and to blog about.

Real Life Simpsons Intro... Awesome!

The Beautiful People Part 4

Continuing my crusade against the beautiful people...enjoy.

The Jewel Song

(No, I'm not high, skip to the end if for a full explanation)

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Exploit Jewel,
I captor time

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On, with kingston evelyn was me,
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They songbook.
Thought Blanca,

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A mignon they dane cadmium mucilage thought bronx.
Of, why ecology granulate thought this songbook Jewel

I Paris Jewel can't cell own functorial,
Benedikt gilchrist love option.

A sample of some of the spam I recieve, formatted by me but otherwise untouched. Though Gmail kindly dumps all of this into a spam folder for me, once in a while prompted by sheer boredom, I go through some of my spam.
Looking at the sheer volumes of spam that's going around, it's pretty obvious that most of it is being generated automatically rather than being manually typed out as was the case with 'traditional' spam. What fascinates me is how they manage to generate the stuff. They are obvoiusly using some algorithm to generate the text so as to make it look like it is meaningful.
One such possible way of doing that, which I came across was using second order hidden markov models (and they were talking about it in the context of protein structure prediction). If this is the kind of shit being used, it makes me wonder why spammers don't get real jobs!
Anywho, my semester exams have started (I had my first one today). Statistics is over and done with (hence the hidden markov models) and now only about a dozen left before they let me go home. Til' then.
Ps. Confusion, do a google image search for "Falcon tubes" you'll see what the alleged 'condom' actually was, I'm feeling too lazy to put a picture up right now.

I'd LIke to Thank

...My parents, the academy and my legions of fans without whom, none of this would have ever been possible. Of course I'd like to thank god, my great seaven headed, fish scaled, cloven hooved god who has always attempted to sabotage my every endevour. Oh yes, I'd like to thank Aunty, the ever Helpful Dictator for actually tagging me with the "Thinking Blogger Award".
The award has a few simple rules:

Thinking meme
If you choose to carry this meme forward, remember to tag only those bloggers who stimulate your cortex....or something like that. Please make sure you pass the rules to the blogs you are tagging.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2.Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme The Thinking Blogger Award
Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' (if you should ever want to find it, I'm putting up on my blog in the sidebar to the left of you)
<-- The five blogs that I've linked to are:
1. Confusion's Poetry Blog
2. Indian Lucifer's Blog
3. Nothingman's Stories
4. The Ainz Years
5. Thus I Spake