There has been some kind of inactivity of late in this blog because of the launching of our (me and my IIT friends) very own football blog. We called it Earlykickoff.
Ratan Tata said he was not happy with the never ending Singur issue when Mamata Banerjee caved in and vice versa, John McCain appoints the inexperienced Sarah Palin as his running mate when he himself is guilty of accusing Barack Obama of being inexperienced, Liverpool FC had to defeat Manchester United , their fiercest rivals, in their own backyard after seven years when two of their best players in the last decade did not start, the tiles of the floors in most of the HP petrol bunks resemble Shell’s logo, Tendulkar, arguably the best Indian cricketer ever was absent when the Indian team won a World Cup, the federal bank decided no to save Lehman brothers from bankruptcy even though its chairman , Richard Fuld, serves on the board of Federal bank, Heath Ledger was sadly robbed of the opportunity to see the response to his best performance ever, Kurt Cobain, the most celebrated guitarist and rock star, was never long enough to woo his fans with his music.
What’s the connect to all these? All these highlight the contradictions which rule our lives. These highlight the spice that unpredictable turn of events such as these add to our lives. What is the thrill in driving a car on a lonely highway day after day? What is the point in running a lonely never ending race where you don’t face a single hurdle?
Imagine a world without the contradictions, where one would lead such a mechanical life that one would have to be oiled for every ten days for proper functioning. In reality, in this world we might be rusty, we might not be the smoothly functioning machines but we do give strange outputs that have kept even the best of psychologists thinking. Imagine a world without any sort of contradictions and Sigmund Freud would have been jobless.
Though we hate the unexpected turn of events which keep happening in our lives, we wish we would never be deprived of such contradictions.
Amidst the Singur ‘land wars’, Tata has promised to give the people of this country a car worth just one lakh.Manmohan Singh promises us that the Nuclear deal would be beneficial to the country and would not make India America’s slave. John McCain hails himself as the ideal candidate to actually force a change in the working system of
Did they (filmmakers) satisfy even the average rock fan? This would definitely be the next point to be debated upon. Over the years we have come to associate rock and its stars with a certain kind of attitude, an attitude that some would love to posses. The rebellious nature of the rock stars is well known. The real rock stars are those who don’t conform or have never conformed to the norms of the society. They have always expressed what they felt about a particular situation either through their controversial lyrics or through their forthright interviews. The rock stars have expressed their views about politics, nature, history, love and many more. While some songs question their sanctity the others urge us to completely break away from the chains of the society. Rock stars are not just about strumming their guitars and making a heavy metal song, they are about their persona and they are about their attitude. In short rock stars don’t compromise and this where the story of Rock On differs from a rock movie. The characters in the movie make compromises and defend those. They finally fall in the booby trap of the society. They never let their desires take a form which would be controlled only by them. I had my friend translate the lyrics for me and they rather don’t fall in the bracket of rock songs barring ‘Sinbad the sailor’. They neither create an aura nor do they stir you up.
The movie is a wonderful watch without a shadow of doubt but whether it is actually
Chapter 1: I have a dream
Finally the day had arrived where I could be myself. I could do all that I ever wished to do, realize a dream which if unrealized would long haunt me to death. I had everything in place and I just had to pull the trigger. I knew my desires would be oppressed as they have been ever since I smelt the soil of this land, redolent of an
That was how we landed in the Café Mondegar (hope I spelt it right). We got ourselves what I always wanted to; drinking Cobra, Budweiser and Tiger on the same day. We took the day slowly; we took the drinks slowly until we realized that there were three girls sitting right next to us and who seemed interesting. Of course we concluded that they were interesting because they were matching us in every step, every drink that we ordered. We were three, they were three single ladies and we decided to dive ourselves into something that eventually turned out to be a mess up.
Chapter 2: My friends said
My friends said I had to give the ‘freedom speech’ yet again and it was time for me to pull my weight. But I insisted it was time for someone to take over the responsibility and how glad was I when I saw my friend putting his hand up. My friend then went through a myriad of options, he came up with countless pick up lines, I for one had never seen him thinking so brilliantly under pressure. He even came up with the idea of writing his lines on a tissue rather than blurting them out. Though I failed to understand the logic behind such a pick up I excused him for that day as he was half way through the stairway to heaven by then. Finally my friend gathered the courage to ask them about a disc, they were more than willing to give away all the information about the discs in that area but had not shown an iota of interest in accompanying us. So we let them go, rather they sped away from there. This was my freedom day, how could I end it so badly, I suggested that we should hunt for a disc which would allow stags.
Chapter 3: So then we began
So then we began our earnest search to find a disc which would give us an entry. All our efforts were in vain as all the bouncers at the discs would brush away with their little fingers. We waited at one particular disc hoping that a few girls would lose their minds to come to the disc all by themselves without a huge guy taking care of them. We had fun time just gawking at some of them, but we had the hollowness in us just like a hunter would have when all he can do is just admire his prey from a distance.
Chapter 4: Unbreakable
Unbreakable was the word which could have perhaps best described our optimism that day. “We need to do better than this” said my friend. The rest nodded, fearing to go against that opinion for one might have been tagged as a spoilsport if the opinion differed. So I called up my friend to see if we could after all get to see light at the end of the tunnel. My friend dropped in the name of a disc which showed some mercy on stags.
Red Light that was the name. That day it appeared to us that the name could be associated only with the disc that we were in search for. We went about the final phase of our ‘glorious day’ asking the taxi drivers for the address. We never, for once, mentioned to the taxi drivers that we were looking for a disc by that name. Hence what ensued should be quite predictable. We were led into dark streets which had the foulest smell one would want to avoid. Our optimism was never shattered until we came across huge walls which read ‘prohibited area’. We suddenly became sober; we realized where we ended up and took the first taxi back home.
It has exactly been a month since I set out to travel across the horizon, to the west from the east, from the ‘city of joy’ to the ‘city of undying spirit’. People in Mumbai and Kolkata are so apart from each other as is the west from the east.
In Kolkata I have witnessed the laid back attitude of the people and in Mumbai the dynamic lifestyle. Do people ever sleep in this city?
I grew up learning Kolkata as the city of garbage unlike the epithet given by Dominique Lapierre. To my surprise I found the part of Kolkata where I was residing to be pretty neat!! . Then came my curious mind into functioning or rather it started malfunctioning , I came with a theory which explained why the Bengalis take so much delight in using the word ‘crap’. That has been imbibed into their system, I reckon after seeing the streets of the city. The reason being the average number of dustbins per street in the city is way less than half my CGPA. There is a friend of mine who takes great delight in collecting others’ litter and throwing it into the dustbin himself. The dustbins were so few in the city that he would end up walking miles with bulging pockets!! My company , which likes to believe that it is one of the world’s top companies, doesn’t have a dustbin on the entire ground floor.
The laidback attitude of the people there is pretty damn infectious, you virtually end up having a ball of a time when in fact the script suggests otherwise. I was there when there was a bomb scare in the city and the people were so nonchalant about it and played the threat down with ease, some were even anticipating it to happen like my cook in the guest house where I was staying. You just end up appreciating that kind of an attitude.
When I just started to enjoy the city courtesy to the new friends I made over there, I was handed a ticket to Mumbai by my employers. The transition from the slow paced life of Kolkata to the ever running life of Mumbai was quite an ordeal for the first few days. But this city has that buzzing enthu about it that you start to love the place. Of course I have been helped all the way by a few incidents.
Vignettes from the West:
In Mumbai, so far I have been like a two faced guy, much like Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight. I have a ball of a time after my office hours but when in office I’m as bored as a child in the 2nd grade who is being told about Einstein’s relativity as part of his story telling class. I had to break away from the shackles of ennui and hence I decided to take a few days off, in other words decided to bunk. So firstly I zeroed in on the ‘bunk days’ quite prudently considering my ‘Nirvana sessions’. I call my sessions of watching Manchester United play during the weekends as the ‘Nirvana sessions’ for the joy that they bestow upon me. Then I decided to not wear a tie until I’m up and running and handling a project all by my self.
1.Then quite smartly I decided to do something which gave me great joy for the first few days though I regret it now. I started to come to the company when the sun is in the overhead position. That meant I could sleep for an extra couple of hours and I had my room mates green eyed. After all the boredom in the office I would leave the premises even before the sun thinks about setting. This joy of making my selves more useless to the company went on for over a week and then a sharp thought struck me. I realized then that I was actually living a life of a homemaker for all that week, a house wife who would first send away her husband and kids and then get herself ready for the gruesome day that’s in store for her, a house wife who would go to the market to get some vegetables, a house wife who would find her maid as the only person whom she can talk to. Now I have to unlock my self from this situation and then go through my post house wife rehabilitation programme.
