A farce called ‘love at first sight’

Does love ever happen at first sight??

I had a pretty boring day today (nothing unusual about that) . was lazing around all day plaiying games and watching movies; that was until a friend of mine called up. We had this long chat from which the following post is derived.

He says.that when you’ve reached the slog overs of your life, the person whom you want to be at the runners end at that point is the person you love. Do all the couples going out today claiming that they love each other….think about doing that??

I absolutely second this thought. I said that the people who say ‘I Love You’ to each other have already assessed their partners to be of this level. But how can you assess if you have only just seen the person? Do you pledge a lifetime of togetherness based on one look at the person? Without even exchanging pleasantries? Does this ever happen?

One of an indirect contact of mine…exclaimed once that ‘if an attraction lasts only upto 3 months, it is an infatuation. But if it continues beyond that , it is love’. Is it true that love can be measured by definite time periods. There are people who live their entire lives together but still cant claim to love each other and there are few who only take a few months to do so. But the common thread connecting these people is that they have spent time together. They have tried to explore each other. Not some childish wish list saying that I want to marry this person if I marry at all. Mr. H Roshan made this claim on a talk show saying that when he was twelve years old, he just had a look at the now Mrs. H Roshan and decided that she would be his partner for life. Either the guy was mature way beyond his years or as is the usual case, he just had had a bout of first attraction.

There was this person, whom I claimed to love sometime back. But some days back, when I was pondering over my relationship to this person, the first thought that had occurred to me was that what was this feeling I had for her then? What would you call it? I decided to call it an infatuation ( the politically correct term). But then I thought I have been following and unconsciously thinking about this person for quite a long time. Would that be called love? Then the next thought was ‘Okay! Lets look at the person she is now’. I studied and made my permutations and combinations and my probability analysis. I discovered that this person had entirely changed from the image I had in my mind. Do I still have the feelings for her. The answer was ‘yes and no’. Yes I had feelings but no I do not have the same feelings which I had back then.

I am still confused about a one line summary. But what comes out of the whole exercise is that I had to spend time and think before I could decide that I love the person or not. It is only foolish that I say ‘I love you’ to a person without understanding her.

Love is never spontaneous. Love is never knee and jerk. Attraction is so but not love. Love only comes when people spend some time together. Love is a thing that grows. It doesn’t just appear!! You don’t love a person because her face is beautiful, her figure is a perfect hourglass or that she has a perfect ‘package’. You love someone because you want to be with them for a long time. And that feeling never comes at the first sight.

P.S- thank you guruji!! for stimulating my grey cells for the day.

the ring, the deathstick, the dollar and 42

As most of you might have guessed by now (how would you??the last one’s quite a bit of a toughie for newbies!!) these are the heights or depths or widths of my reading…

I am actually a fan of fantasies..although sometimes in an elite group that I would admit that I actually like to read non-fiction/ biographies/ autobiographies/ self help/ nothing and I am presuming that none of those elite get to read what I write now.

The primary reason is that in a fantasy novel, there seems a reason for me to go on…I want to know what happens next!! In a non fiction novel read in a very non fictitious kind of a way…there is nothing!! And these fantasies mind you are no work of nitwits like Sidney Sheldon, Tom Clancy or for that matter the booker of bookers Salman Rushdie.

Let me begin by the book that I read first- codenamed the dollar:
The books description talks about a dystopian (whoa!! What??) world where the people who created wealth destroy their earthly possessions and let the world go to ruin. They then come back and rebuild the world as they would like it to be. I would like to state here for the record, that this is my most favourite book till date. I kind of idolize this book and the suthor!! I have gained lots from this book. You can say that it has shaped almost 40% of my thoughts. Whenever I encounter a situation closely resembling the ones in the book…I say to myself….I am the motor of this world. If I stop, everything stops and that has helped me avoid lots of nasty memories.


The second book – codenamed 42:
This book is actually a comedy or as I found it while reading, a sarcasm on most of the more mundane human habits like queuing, following cricket, deodorants, restaurants etc etc etc. without going back into the details of why or when I bought it, I would say that it was the most humorous of the books I read!! Of strange creatures in strange lands- people claiming that earth is actually a computer made to understand the meaning of life, that the mice are actually very intelligent creatures and that they are experimenting on them. That earth was actually a very boring planet according to the guide and that robots who could think would curse themselves for being made to do such boring activities like opening a door!! Nothing to take from this one…this was just pure fun.

The third one- codenamed Deathstick:

This one blew me off!! Quite simply the best of the lot penned by the author. One of the characters especially intrigued me. The one whom I thought would be a villain was shown as the hero at the very last and how!! Things to take away…unending love. Love which could make you lose your life and yet you stick on to it. Never letting the other person know that you were actually his benefactor and stoically going on through life. Some would comment that it was afterall a fantasy, but my dearies…it is fantasy that we should strive to achieve. Who wants to achieve the possible?

And the last and yet unfinished- the ring

This is quite simply as fantastic as fantasy can get. The author invented a language, to support the language he created people. For their staying he created kingdoms. For those kingdoms he gave rivers, deserts, mountains and roads. And for those kind souls who created all that was good in the Arda, he created the Undying Lands. The story of the book is not as fantastic as the mythology. It is exactly this reason why I have put this one and all the others related to it in my sixth five year plan. Hopefully, five years down the line I should like to write a critique on the author in Sindarin and not in English.

PS- I wanted this post because I thought I was really becoming a victim. I hope I shall not be so from now on.

The Scientific Superstition

Most of us have come across these reports of various scientists who have carried out ‘research’ in each and every field under the sun.

There are reports of scientists researching the effect of smoking on pregnant women, the effect of mobile phones on our..uh..virility, the effects of eating oranges and lemons and ginger and turmeric and fenugreek and so on…

I sometimes (okay, a lot of times!!) read these reports and I am awestruck at the variety and the depth up to which the talented scientists are researching the subjects the world wants to hear about.

Sample this article which appeared in ToI sometime back, “Scientists tested a group of 100 women in the age group of 25-40 and showed each of them a picture of Brad Pitt and a bar of chocolate. Almost 78% of the women found the bar of chocolate to be more desirable.” The scientists then are said to have come to the earth-shattering conclusion that women preferred chocolate to Brad Pitt. Einstein would have ‘ROFL’d (sorry for using this internet slang, but I found its usage more appropriate considering the tone of the post) hearing this and would willingly forsake his Nobel Prize for this theory!!

Another similar article which was a lot less ‘scientific’ reported that a sample survey of people in Indian cities showed that Idly and Dosa were a preferred dish for Breakfast. These compared to aloo parathas were a much healthier and a tastier option. On one hand, a report indicates Garlic is a very good antioxidant, a must in our everyday diet while on the other hand, we have another report suggesting that men who had just eaten garlic were 64% less likely to have sex later!!

Another one on chocolate indicates that some chemicals in chocolate induce testosterone flow and hence act as an aphrodisiac while a report published just a week later indicates chocolate to be one of the major causes of some heart or liver disease.

Dagny Taggart, one of the characters in Ayn didi’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is shown to turned her wrath upon a scientific institute which could not/ did not report the merits and demerits of ‘Rearden Metal’ accurately. Accusing the institute for blasphemy as it did not carry out its function of accurately determining the properties of that metal. But of course, that was fiction!!

Laymen like myself tend to take all this research outputs to be true and try to change our lives until another experiment proves that oops!! That was wrong. I begin to imagine what it would be like if a man would believe every report ever published. What kind of life would he have. Would his life be just the number of breaths he’s taken??

More important is the question which kind of researchers research the ill effects eating burgers at midnight!! Who supports and funds this frivolity masked by the term science?? And why do papers publish this crap being dished out from these so called scientific institutes?

Science was supposed to be exact until a Mr. Heisenberg turned up. But scientific reports still have to be holistic and not contradictory. The issue at hand is supposed to be viewed from all angles until a report is published and dished out to morons like us. If you cannot predict the exact results atleast, give the band in which the results are going to lie. But the bottom line is give us the whole picture when you are hell bent on dishing out your “Research Papers”.

Happy Reading!!

Of 'Movies' and their 'Stars'....

Inspite being bitten by the ‘movie’ bug quite late…ive nevertheless seem to have made it in the who’s who of movie watchers in my circle. Ive tried my hands or shall I say eyes at almost everything I could lay my hands on..from the very cheesy Rajnikant and Chiranjeevi movies to the most ‘niche’ ones like the Quentin Tarantino or Shyam Benegal films.

“Some movies are to be tasted, some are to be bitten and some movies are to be chewed and digested” says yours truly when it comes to watching them. Theres so many movies around that you will probably die before you run out of watching movies churned out from Bollywood, Hollywood or South Indian Cinema every year.

But one thing that unites all of these movies is crap. There is crap in bollywood, there is crap in south Indian cinema and (yes my angrez loving friends) there is crap in Hollywood too.

You find movies which are poorly made, have no semblance of a story or a backdrop, have actors look like fools, pathetic comedy, even more pathetic melodrama and the worst climaxes. And yet some of these movies end up recovering their money or worse, becoming hits.

Ive watched probably every Akshay Kumar film since I joined my job. Each and every one of those movies had all the above characteristics and yet the truth is Akshay Kumar is now one of the highest tax payers in the country, is being pursued by every major director for his film. The same goes for the Rakesh Roshan films since Koyla. Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, Koi Mil Gaya, Krrrrrrriiiiisssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh (pun absolutely intended!!) or the most recent form of torture he invented, Kites. These movies had no good stories to tell, not one of them had decent songs save KNPH and all of these movies had fiascoes for climaxes.


This takes even a more serious turn when it comes to Hollywood. Avatar, now officially the biggest grosser ever had nothing going on for it on the story front. All it had was the visual effects. I sometimes feel why do actors get paid so much if the real ‘hero’ of the movie was the VFX guy!!

Nagesh Kukunoor (the guy who made Hyderabad Blues) once commented at a famous award show, “We have a 1000 million people here in India, there is no need to look west for stories”. Yet all we have to offer to our people is bull dung like “De Dana Dan”, “Singh is Kinnnnnng”, “Chandni Chowk to China”, “Om Shanti Om”?

Of Indian actors and actresses (nay they are not actors, they’re just ‘stars’) the less said the better, we have idiotic looking people like uday chopra, jackieeee bhagnani, Harman baweja, Twinkle Khanna, Sameera Reddy becoming stars. There is nothing these people can do save show off their six pack abs or ignorant smiles. Imagine this, Aishwarya Rai, with a false American twang, with a face that could well be called a doll's for the fact that it can display no emotion and B grade Jag Mundhra type films to show for her Hollywood 'career' is the face of Indian Cinema , even India itself to the world. Guys! She’s just that : a face. An expressionless, false but nonetheless beautiful face.


The worst of all are us, the people who watch these movies and help people like Akshay Kumar become highest tax payers or an unknown entity called Barbara Mori to become a household name.

People! Grow up! There are people for whom movie making is a passion and they make good movies but are not able to recover their money just because they don’t have a starcast or are not able to market the movie well or plainly cannot include songs in them!!

Movie making is supposed to be an art! Acting, Music, Lyrics etc are all contributors to each movie. Let the purity of the art remain so and not let it become a business people like the ones cursed above have made it out to be.


I melain berio le.

The ‘Khatta’ Identity

My intention in writing this post is very noble. This post should serve as a ready reckoner to all my ignorant north (or west or east for that matter) Indians about a seemingly difficult topic- South India.

What I would be writing is pretty basic, but should be able to drive through a point through the thick skulls of some people; One point-WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS. Period.

There are 4 major states comprising the south of India- Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The IPL teams from these states too are different- Deccan Chargers, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Chennai Super Kings and the yet unnamed team from Kochi respectively. So 4 states, 4 teams- once again my friends- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS.

The English accent of the people of all the four states too is different. The AP guy would pronounce ‘your’ as uuuuur and ‘sure’ as ‘shooooor’. The kannadiga would add an extra vowel to the end of each word which ends with a consonant. E.g: what(e)? night(e) and the like. The e at the end sounds like the first e of ‘elephant’. The tamil guy will try very hard but ultimately fail not to put the suffix ‘da’ at the end of each sentence E.g: “Whaat are you doing da?” “Its not my fault da!” “I love you da!” They also are sometimes prone to play a little verbal football (pronounced futbaal) with the Ss and Zs. The kerlaite on the other hand would say sumthin like this “hi! My name is sam Jonny” (the jonny is pronounced like the second n of the hindi word mani” So four states, four different accents- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS.

Some myth busting about “Typically South Indian” things-

a. Our Cuisine is not limited to Idly/ Dosa/ Vada. We normally eat these things only for breakfast. There are other things that we eat for lunch/ dinner. So, if at any restaurant, they serve you dosas at dinner saying that it is a south Indian culture- you know u r being screwed!!
b. We do not add ‘Imli’ to each and everything that we cook. And the tamarind used is in general a substitute for the north Indian tomatoes which bring a tangy taste to the dish. We prefer eating tangy/ spicy food. Our food has a predominant taste unlike east Indian food which mostly comprises water and vegetables with about a milligram of spice thrown in with a kilogram of vegetables or north Indian food which comprises huge dollops of ghee/ butter or west Indian food which has tonnes of oil and quintals of red chillies (marathi)/ sugar( gujju) and nothing else.
c. We do not understand each other’s languages. This is the most important/ prevalent myth. Hence I need to assert once more- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS.
d. Our film stars are different. Although there are people who dabble in more than one language, it is mostly Chiranjeevi for AP, ShivRaj Kumar for Kannadigas, Rajnikant for Tamils and MohanLal for Mallus. I would very much like you people to google these names so that you get a clear idea who/ what I am talking about.
e. Not all south Indian women have the so called ‘thunder thighs’. It is for the masses that women like these are put to use just like the lewd songs in bhojpuri/ hindi/ Punjabi.
f. Our filmstars perform the seemingly impossible stunts only to please the masses (who else). The next time you think south Indian movies are cheap for this reason or the one above. Pls go watch Mithun Chakrborty/ Kanti Shah/ Ravi Kissen (Bhojpuri) or the endless B grade Punjabi pop singers.

So, the end approaches for this post. And Pls people- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS!!!



Navaer Im Mellon..

Middle Class Me!!

I don’t seem to understand this culture (for the lack of a better word, thanks to my miniscule vocabulary) that is gripping most of the people I see.

People visit spas, beauty salons every weekend, wear all kinds of outlandish clothes to malls, movies and the like. I don’t seem to get why people send thousands on a massage using exotic oils when I can get the same done for ten bucks at my local barber shop using nothing less than Navratna thanda tel. Why attend dance classes when youre over 30? And bang comes the answer…”uff! You’re so middle class!!”

A few years ago, when I first visited Pune, my friends and I went to this (then) swanky mall called the SGS. I was then wearing some cheap local tailor made half sleeve shirt and trousers. Wearing footwear of some cheap brand of which I cant even recall the name, I stood in awe of the crowd over there. Girls and guys wearing the best brands, flaunting oversized glares and swiss made watches. I used to think, my time will come. Soon, I will have a job, get decent money and will be able to wear the best brands, flaunt my glares and my watches and my shoes et al.

Today, Im earning decent cash for people my age. I am wearing nothing less than Reeboks for footwear, fastrack glares and branded Tshirts and denims. But inspite of all this, whenever I visit that mall, hoping to make some mark, I stand dumbfounded right at the entrance. People still wear better clothes, have still got the whackiest hairdos which other people take notice of, the hottest girls going around with good looking guys and I as is usual, stand alone. Even my batchmates, those I could crush (intellectually) way back in school or in college are going around flaunting the latest in fashion. These people are my age, earn more or less the same amount that I do, if not less. Then where is the difference? Why am I supposed to look like this stupid ‘gaonwaala’ in front of these ‘mod’ guys?

I cant seem to put the blame on either my college or my school background or my hometown as the same people I used to hang out with have moved way up on this ‘social’ ladder. Who am I supposed to blame then? Why should we bear the brunt of having to look so ‘out of fashion’? why should we be looked down upon as idiots who don’t seem to understand this culture? Why should I be treated as an outsider in my own hometown? When will I be able to join their league? Wouldn’t I be too old to do this stuff?

These are questions which remain unanswered. I have tried expressing this irony to those who are close to me and they either don’t seem to care or are in the ‘elite’ league already.

I still try and retain my hope but it isn’t going to stick around for more time……..

AIDS (Austerity for India's Development Syndrome)....

There have been recent reports that the central govt is soon going to turn luxury to a swear word...our MoS for external affairs Mr. Shashi Tharoor will second this.....having already been rapped for his tweets he is now being crucified for his love of luxury...travelling executive class, enjoying his stay at 5 star hotels..etc etc etc...

Even the high flying CEOs and MDs of private enterprises have also not been spared...and the originator of the curse is none other than M S Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the planning commission. Mr. M S Ahluwalia.

Now, what would our favourite Ayn didi have to say about it??? In her books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn didi talks about value creation, the need to enjoy the fruit of the labour...after all it is these CEOs who are filling up the govt’s coffers with crores by means of excise duty and TDS??? Don’t they have a right to enjoy?? Why does a CEO have to travel economy when he can afford executive?? Does he have to stay in a dingy dorm, the kind which we see near most railway stations , when he goes for a business trip abroad?? Does he have to wear an S Kumars trousers or worse still Khadi clothes when his counterparts settle for nothing less than Gucci???

All this crap about austerity, asking the CEOs to cut down on their pays when they are creating value to the country and employing thousands of people is ultimately passing the buck....and unfortunately the buck has originated from the place where it actually has to stop (quoting a US president’s graffiti on the wall). Why don’t our ministers cut down on their Z class security cover??Why don’t they live in a 2BHK apt instead of living in a posh govt bungalow in lutyen’s delhi??

I believe that people who create money (again quoting Ayn didi) have the right to enjoy it. In fact they are the only people who ought to enjoy it...not our ministers and bureaucrats who live off taxpayers hard earned cash.

So my dear Ministerjees and bade babus....there are thousands of other problems facing india today than the fat pay packets of CEOs which require much more creativity and competence of yours..so please ‘would the real policymaker please stand up’???