Dazed and Confused

(yes the title's stolen from Led Zeppelin)
I’m a creature of habit. One little change in my surroundings is enough to ruin my day. So today, the left rear-view mirror of my bike snapped (a parking accident (yes there is such a thing)), it’s the less used one but nonetheless essential. I can’t ride with a single mirror as it throws off the visual balance of my bike. Today’s a Sunday and tomorrow, republic day, so the earliest I can get a replacement is on Tuesday. Like I said, I’m a creature of habit. This effectively means I can’t ride into the city till I get a replacement. Apart from the minor inconvenience of not being able to spot Audi's and Porsche's as they zoom past me, my bike sans the two mirrors just seems odd, the whole thing seems smaller, more compact, somehow a shadow of its former self. I can wave my hand around in the area formerly occupied by the suspended bits of glass and quite frankly it freaks me out. I feel like I’ve been castrated, like some leather-mask-wearing, chainsaw-wielding horror-movie-freak just popped out of my screen and lobotomized me, like I’ve been gutted with a blunt machete (you get the idea).
I’m disoriented confused and my life is seriously out-of-whack, I spent the day, the whole day, the entire-fucking-day browsing a single site and when I got out on my bike, I thumbed the starter at oncoming traffic (right thumb = starter, left thumb=horn). I can’t remember whether I dropped my bike today in the morning or if it was yesterday. If it was yesterday, then why did I take so long to notice the Picasso-angled rear-view, and if it was today, how on earth did I drop it before I left home?
The only lesson I can learn from this whole affair is that maybe it’s time I laid off the ethanol and stuck to artificially flavoured, artificially coloured, sweetened, tetrapacked 100% natural fruit juice instead. Oh yes.
It gets worse, I rode past an accident today, one of the riders that Terra mentioned in a recent post , rode into a bus and then bounced his skull on the road till his brains (apparently he had some to spare) were plastered to the road, like butter spread on a hot toast (yum –anyone like bheja fry? (no, not the movie(actual bheja fry(bheja=brain)))).
I forgot my debit/card at my supermarket (ratnadeep), luckily I have one of these setups that sends you a message on your cell every-time you spend on it, so I knew it was in responsible hands. I got it back of course, the girls at the checkout counters know me, I don’t have a fridge and am forced to buy my hybrid tomatoes there twice or thrice a week and oh yes, I have a metal stud going through my lip.
(There’s a two hour break between the last paragraph and the next one - I have a heated argument with my room-mate about how bikes transfer power from their engine to the rear wheel, he’s the engineering student , I’m the biologist and the one talking about clutch baskets and pressure plates and gear ratios).
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. An argument about ripping your bike in first gear vs. fourth gear, too detailed and too heated to get into in a post. Good fun and hugs all around once it was over.
I’m not going to apologise about this but my favourite word is “how”. Till now, I’ve studied with people who had been trained with answers from the finest textbooks, from molecular biology to genetics. Their answers were standard and sure to get them full marks in the half yearly’s, now I’m with folks who are convinced that menstruating women can spoil pickle and doing it doggy-style can ensure male progeny and I’ve found the most effective response to any assertion is “how”.
I’ve referred to programming as part of my work and for those who’ve been following my blog for some time (Aunty, Terra, Scissor), you know I have dabbled in a bit of biology, so what puts me into a tax bracket? Clinical trials. I work for ‘big pharma’ (find out who for, by skipping back a few posts). I program those reports that go to the FDA and the EMEA, I do safety reporting, I report everything that the authorities need to know about the safety profiles of our drugs.
Conversation with a close friend about the navy now, he lives ten feet from me, he’s polished off a couple of pegs at my place, but we still talk over Gtalk. His father is in the air-force and my grandfather was an admiral in the navy, we’re comparing ships we’ve been on. He’s been on the Talwar class frigates, I’ve been on a Rajput class destroyer and a Foxtrot class sub. HA!
Naaa naaaa naaa nananaaa nananaaa Hey jude!
I have twelve revenue stamps on my table, intended to use them for rent receipts for my tax returns, turns out, as the someone very close revealed. I’ve paid more taxes this year than I needed to, I’ll get a refund in maybe a year or two. I like the sound of that, I’ve heard horror stories of people who didn’t get paid for two months for tax deductions. I’ve been spared. The government owes me money. HA again!
Tuesday afternoon is never-ending , Wednesday morning papers didn’t come...
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Each day just goes so fast, I turn around its passed.
And she keeps calling me back again.

And as I always say;
proc sql noprint
create table _BS as
select * from roomies
where upcase(logic) in ( 'FALLACY' 'PREPOSTEROUS')
and rationality != 'TRUE'
;
quit;

#You programmers should get this one, simple code, even if the syntax is SAS;
#Wildcards as in Unix, everything else is simple SQL, think ORACLE, think mySLQ;
#I hate people who don't indent code but the editor on firefox/blogger doesn't support indenting or " " the HTML code for spaces, so my code starts at the first column. Sorry about that!

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Tucked away between two IT parks and surrounded by massive boulders, in a recess, just off a newly constructed road, there are four rickety wooden tables. Behind one stand a short, dark, thick lipped lady and her tall, lean husband. On their table, there are half full cigarette packets, loose cigarettes, shiny, colourful packets of chewing tobacco and two thermos flasks full of hot insipid tea. In the morning, they’ll have two buckets with vegetable curry and coconut chutney and a metal tray with pale , crisp, flaky puris. Behind them is a large wok (that’s the closest i can get to describing it in English) on a gingerly balanced metal framed-soot covered stove. Their helper, a short, fat, dark North-Indian with henna dyed hair alternates between their metal cart where he rolls out the puris and the fire where he deep fries them. What I love about the guy is his hair, henna has a wonderful characteristic, where it first blackens then turns white hair a bright orange. His wild unkempt hair is black at the tips, then orange and finally has a good four inches of white. I’m not sure which cart he actually works at because I’ve seen him working at a number of them. He had a tea and cigarette table of his own, once, but that was before the workers blasted the rock and earth away to construct the new road. He had two kids working for him, crowding around the table attending to the customers, I’m guessing they were his sons from his paternal air as he sat back on the rocks, smoked a beedi and cursed them in a hybrid tongue.
The road earlier ran across a kilometre stretch of IT parks before it made a sharp left down to the lake, in front of the building I work, on its way down to the lake. But it was a narrow road unsuited to the large volumes of traffic that pour in and out of the parks, so the municipal corporation decided to widen it, splitting lanes around my building, standing a serene concrete, steel and glass wedge between the opposing lanes. The tables once stood closer, but the construction forced them back on to the rocks, occasional corporation drives left their carts smashed and their gas cylinders confiscated, but they always returned. Now they have burrowed a hole from themselves, a fortress, surrounded by ten feet and twenty tons of rock.
In this hole there are three other tables, the one to the extreme left is (wo)manned by ‘Aunty’, a barefoot goliath in a plastic chair. She sits in a plastic chair, next to her stove where she fries her own puris, rolled out and handed to her by one of the old man’s sons. From her chair, she oversees the son rolling while his father curses him across carts, the skinny girl in jeans with flowers embroidered on them and simultaneously converses with the customers. She’s the celebrity there, everyone from the construction workers to the security guards to the software engineers wants to talk to her, they enquire after her health, they make small talk anything to get a minute of her time. She’s my favourite, I love watching her while I sip my tea and she in return seldom fails to entertain. Her favourites are the old man and the other puri seller. She fights with the woman and arbitrates on behalf of the sons when the old guy shouts at them for spending too much or getting into trouble with the cops. She sits her moulded plastic throne, her bare and swollen feet stretched before her, thick silver anklets digging into flesh. When there’s no frying to be done, she’ll pick up a plate, load it with food and tuck in, chatting happily in between mouthfuls of food.
The food there in that grotty little alcove is cheap, greasy, filthy and tastes fantastic, if you can stomach it that is. There’s a fixed menu of puris and bondas (fried lumps of flour) in the morning and rotis in the afternoon. In the evening though the place comes alive, when the road crowds with people leaving office, waiting to catch their cabs and buses . The crowd around the stalls is a good two hundred strong and they’re all sipping tea and everything is deep fried and hot and salty and did I mention filty?

Top Ten Lists

A quick list of my top tens, not in any particular order, just my ten favourites for this year, they are not necessarily things that happened this year. This list is based on how I felt about them this year.
Songs
1. Death of Love (Cradle of Filth – Godspeed on the Devils Thunder)
2. Asator (Amon Amarth – With Oden on our Side)
3. Machtkampf (Arch enemy – Doomsday Machine)
4. Set it Off (Audioslave – Audioslave)
5. Love to You (The Beatles - Revolver)
6. I’ve Just Seen A Face (The Beatles - Help)
7. Lai Lai Hei (Ensiferum – Iron)
8. Selling The Drama (Live – Awake)
9. Symphony of Destruction (Megadeth – Symphony of Destruction)
10. For My Lover (Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman)
Albums
1. Doomsday Machine (Arch Enemy)
2. Whatever People Say, That’s What I’m Not (Arctic Monkeys)
3. Help! (The Beatles)
4. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles)
5. Victory Songs (Ensiferum)
6. United Abominations (Megadeth)
7. Dark Passion Play (Nightwish)
8. Master Of Puppets (Metallica)
9. Stadium Arcadium (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
10. Ten (Perl Jam)
Books
1. A Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
2. For Whom The Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemmingway)
3. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
4. Tortilla Flat (John Steinbeck)
5. Scoop (Evelyn Waugh)
6. The Song of Troy (Coleen McCullough)
7. Papillon (Henri Charriere)
8. Our Ancestors (Italo Calvino)
9. The Girl On the Boat (P.G. Wodehouse)
10. Adrian Mole The Cappuccino Years (Sue Townsend)
Brands
1. Puma (My favourite sneakers ever)
2. Budweiser (Guess)
3. Old Monk (Indian dark rum)
4. Hewlett Packard (My Laptop)
5. Bajaj (My Bike)
6. Ratnadeep (The Supermarket that’s opened right in front of my place)
7. Novartis (Guess again)
8. ITC (The Indian Tobacco Company)
9. Google (Who can live without it in one way or another?)
10. Spencers (Some really good, some godawful bread)
Stuff In General
1. Water (I’ve had all sorts of problems with this stuff this year, been through a lot to get some)
2. Broadband internet
3. Newly Laid Road
4. Love
5. Work
6. BitTorrent
7. Wikipedia
8. Food
9. My iPod
10. Electricity

The Dancer and Creation

In the beginning there was sky, no clouds, no wind, no stars and no planets, just an endless stretch of the great blue beyond. Then appeared the dancer, from where, no one knows for sure, maybe she came from the halls of the immortals that lay to the east or maybe she came from the plains of the undead to the west of the sky, no one knows for sure but the important thing is that she appeared. Clad in nothing but a wisp of condensation, her own cloud cover, she proceeded to dance across the sky. A boom from the heavens and thunder and lightning and celestial music sounded across the blue.
A bow to the north, to the south and then the east and the west, then arms raised upwards, her head bowed, hair damp and covering her face, she stood. Stood, slowly raising herself on to her toes, pivoting, she turned, a slow circle. Now with the rising sun behind her, she proceeded, slow, sinuous to the music, a crouch, leap and pirouette. Ripples formed where her toes touched the sky, they spread and merged, peaks and troughs, light glittering over the irregularities in the normally smooth surface of the empty blue.
Dancing faster, now, beads of sweat appeared on her brow, a flick of her head and a quick twist, the beads, travelled down the length of her hair and flew. Where they hit the sky, they created ripples of their own, these suspended drops hung in nothing then began to grow, they grew into vast bodies of salty water and so were born the oceans. Now the sky was divided, the blue on top and a great expanse of ocean reflecting the calm of the skies above.
Still she continued to dance, skipping lightly off the water and the sky, suspended in between, the sun now overhead, illuminated her in a halo of yellow and red and green. A leap backwards, she flew, circumscribing an arc around the ocean, the colours followed forming a trail in her wake and so she was the first rainbow.
Faster than ever now, spinning and writhing, the could that covered her now turned an ominous black and as they clashed and crashed, they began to rain, they started off with a drizzle then proceeded to pour over the surface of the ocean. A storm whipped across the surface of the water, the wind raged and howled, as she danced. Angry now, her brow furrowed as she looked across time into the future into the time of man, when her creation would wage war against itself.
She saw the blood and the tears, she felt the pain and she heard the cries for help, she continued dancing. But she wept, tears streaming across her face, falling through the sky to the surface of her ocean.
She could feel the smoke and soot of the fires clinging to her skin, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she had to break out of it. Running a hand across her face, across her body, she collected the soot that had accumulated on her into the palm of her hand. Still dancing, she opened her palm and blew. The soot carried through the sky and landed on the surface of the ocean where it sprouted land.
She still felt unclean and impure, the actions of her creations had sunk under her skin, so again, she ran her hand over her skin, this time collecting the soft hair that grew on her skin, she sprinkled this on the land where it gave rise to the trees and herbs and shrub and the creepers that would wind their way through the forests. It was still there, she couldn’t rid herself of it.
Again, she ran her hand over her body, this time, she peeled off her skin and flung that on the land and into the sea where it gave birth to animals and fish that would inhabit them. She continued to dance across the skies, the sun travelled over her head and the earth and the oceans passed under her, she danced, all muscle and bone and life.
It wouldn’t leave her, the agony and the hate still haunted her, so of what was left, she scattered herself over the surface of the earth again. From her bones rose man, from her muscle, he fashioned his environment and of her blood, he nourished himself, of her organs he built his tools and of her brain he taught himself to survive.
And thus was the world created and thus we were born of the remains of the cosmic dancer, our mother and our first meal. She died of our sins and she died so we could be born. She died from acts we did not commit but now are bound to.
And this is my story of creation.

I'm Drunk

I'm drunk, no, I'm smashed, I don't know why I'm typing this into my browser, but I want to post,I have a crazy need to post. I'm hitting keys but not necessarily the ones I want to hit.
I'm depressed so I'm listening to Gwen Stefani but I'm thinking to myself this is all crap.
I'm going to switch to the Beatles now. For someone I love McCartney, anything he's sung, anything he's credited with. My best friend, my bosom buddy G likes Lennon stuff but because he died, I don't think that's a valid excuse. I think Lennon was hyped beyond his coke bottle frames were worth.
I started listening to the Beatles when I was a kid, my mom had a bunh of LP's, the Beatles, The Stones, Janis Joplin, The Seekers, Billy Joel, Joan Baez, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich. I loved it, grew up to Help, Revolver and A Hard Days Night. Now I'm hooked.

Just remembered Dave Dee et al., got on to youtube and listened to 'Hold tight' a song I so loved when I was a kid, haven't heard it in maybe fifteen years, god that's a long time.

Talking about years,just turned twenty four, god it feels so fuck-all, I'm OLD, OLD so damn old and everyone I know (that's elder than me) telling me these are these best years of my life. The best years? I feel so cheated, no, hell no, not possible.
It can't get worse, me, an impotent Lochnivar, I'm dead so dead so drunk and now it's only eight, so long to go to tomorrow.

I'm going to hit publish post now, before I pass out, buh-by good-night

The Fish

Once, in a land far, far away, in a time aeons ago (give or take a few centuries), there was a fish, in a lake. Content, swimming along the bed, around the stones and flora that flourished in the waters that played host to him and others of his phylum and class, he whiled away his time. The one day, a flash from the heavens struck him and spirited his body away, leaving not a trace. That is the end of his story and we can all learn a very important lesson from it, though the exact details of which I’m yet to figure out.
In the same land (far away and long ago) there was a fisherman, yes the land was inhabited by anthropomorphic beings much like you or me, that’s about how far my imagination will stretch at the moment. So this fisherman, would sit at the banks of a shallow lake, crouching on a boulder that stuck out of the pale blue water, holding his spear above his head. Perfectly still he sat, sat and watched the little fish go about their business , swimming around in the water. He gave them names, he sat and described their lives to himself, every little twitch of a tail would mean something to him.
“... and this little fishy here, he shall be known as Balthazar, why? Maybe because it’s the shape of his scales, the way they catch the sun, he’s a pretty one for sure. I’m sure the lady fishes dig him.”
Balthazar swam around in his little pool of discontent, he was fucked, he’d just about managed to drag himself out of bed half an hour lat and now he was so going to be late for office. He sleepily swam his way to the nearest weed that looked remotely edible and gave it a quick nibble.
“Ugh what crap, well no time now for anything fancy, will pick up a fly or two at about noon I guess”.
He managed to reach the school just as they were doing their fourth lap of the course designated for the day. They flicked in perfect unison, “left, right, now double time, fifteen degrees up, now against the current, work folks, work. You, you, the late one, fit yourself somewhere at the back, I’ll have a word with you later”.
“Damn that Ali, he’s managed to get in next to Radha, the bastard, just because his father could afford to pay to have his scales chromed, he thinks all the ladies will fall for him, I’ll show him.”
Just then a loud shout can be heard from across the water, “Balthazar, get back here, what are you doing with that spear?”
“Coming Maa...” shouted the fisherman, “Look alert, shouted the fish leading the school”.
With a twist an a leap, the fisherman, dove into the water, the fish scattering under his shadow as he passed over them. With long strokes, he drew his brown skinny body through the water heading to the shore where a heavy set woman could be seen gesticulating in anger, one hand over her head, the other swinging at her side, a thick leather leash clenched in the fist.
Later in the evening, leashed to the veranda by his neck, Balthazar knelt over the ground, over an ant hill, he watched the busy little buggers go about their work, frantically dragging biting, dragging, feelers waggling and their tiny little feet whirring, left, right, left, march, stomp, dig. Head held low, scouring the earth some in disciplined lines, others, randomly seeking out new scents.
He enjoyed drawing lines in the earth through their columns, interrupting their progress, then watching them flow from that point outwards and inwards again till they picked up the trail. Try as he might, he could never interrupt it too long, anything short of kicking up the dust for a couple of feet around them was ineffective.
He wished sometimes he could have been an ant, busy, work to be done, surging forward, ever forward with thousands others, he wished he could be a fish, free to swim in the lake beyond the grove. He wished he was a coconut growing on a tree, high up in the grove, disconnected from everything around him, he’d be so far up, so fucking far up that no –one would ever be able to reach him. From up there he’d be able to see so much, he’d have so many stories to tell. He’d be able to see his mother from up there and she wouldn’t be able to bring him down, he’d see his uncle from up there and he wouldn’t be able to hurt him anymore. He’d see the ants too, only they wouldn’t bite him in his sleep.
Thinking, quietly, he rested on his hands and knees, his eyes closed and face twitching as his neurons flickered on and off. Then as often did happen, a fit of rage. Screaming at the top of his voice, he began to stomp at the ground, kicking up dust obliterating all the ants he saw.
A loud shout from inside the house and uncle came out, belt in his hand, swivelling off the ball of his right foot, he let loose on him with his right, crack as the leather flicked through the air, followed by a loud smack as the dead hide came into contact with living flesh. Then shoving him into the shadows and glancing over his shoulders to check if anyone was looking, he pulled open his trousers.
The sun came up, the fish awoke and the ants poured out of their holes again, the morning breeze ran through the grove, carrying with her dried leaves on her invisible cape. He could hear her giggle as she passed him, like a little girl amused by his prostrate form on the ground. He reached out to her as she passed and in response, she did a little pirouette in front of him, raising a whirlwind of dust near his face. Then with another giggle she ran again, looking over and beckoning him to follow. He would, one of these, days, but not now, he had to get back to his fish, get back to the lake somehow, he had to see if anything had transpired since the afternoon of the day before.
----------------------------------
Will anything transpire? Will I actually manage to beat myself back into the chair to continue this, will I stop taking out my anger on fictitious characters?
Who knows?
El Oh El

Just Because It had to be Said

Just a random collection of questions that have been haunting me for quite some time, stuff I had to say, just I couldn't, not to anyone I know, so I put it up on the net (!), anywho, no poetry will result from all of this.
For Zee: It all remains as it always was, it’s just the conditions you laid down are too difficult for me to handle, I’ve tried, honestly I have but it just eats me up inside.
How long can you live disconnected from reality before everything around you comes crashing down on you? How disastrous would it be if everything you live is carefully constructed in your own head, how fucked up would it be if one of those flimsy playing cards that you stacked so carefully, so painstakingly into formation with about fifty million others, just one, slipped bringing the whole damned thing crashing down around you, leaving you stranded in the ruins of your pointless cardboard existence. How long and to what extent can you deny the obvious before reality screeching past, deafens you?
Just how much would you give up and ignore, just for the chance, for the remote possibility that what you want so badly may come to pass? To what extent would you suppress your ego, how much of your pride could you swallow for a fleeting moment of happiness.
Is standing in the face of obvious defeat the ultimate act of heroism or is it complete and utter stupidity.
I don’t think I’m ready to figure any of this out yet, but I guess that’s a good thing because if I had all the answers all ready and polished, I wouldn’t have seen and felt a lot of things, stuff I hope I will eventually be able to look back on without regret.