Two to tango!

I simply don't like insects; But the way these two flitted about each other in mid-air was too engaging even for an insect-phobe like me.

And a close-up of one of them! Yuck!

Cream, butter and hips! :P

Description of sway of hips of a voluptuous woman from a story by Isaac Asimov. The stupid grin on my face took a while to vanish :P.


"...for she was indeed magnificently convex. She also had a narrow waist, and generous hips that swayed as she walked and even as she stood. If her pelvis had been full of cream, it would have been butter long since".

My li'l Miss Sunshine!

She is the reason behind most of my smiles these days - my little Miss Sunshine - my darling niece!

No wonder my friends say I should not think much!!!!

Its one of my not-so-useful-but-still-may-be-pertinent-sometime-to-someone theories – that travel as an interest is mostly a sugarcoated expression of one’s desire to escape his or her current present - a need to be a guest instead of host – expression of need to escape decision making – the desire to divest personal accountability in the process of realizing and retaining personal happiness – an intention to identify and retain difference between self and folks belonging to different places.

In light of aforementioned deducing, is it possible for someone to become traveler to a place where they actually belong and currently not residing but still have not yet been devoid of that piece of her/his identity which was contributed by the place? Can they be really amused as a traveler who is stepping on its soil for the first time and there is not even a single similar thing in common with the locals of the tourist spot? Will the experience of hospitality that is to be received be the same or will there be a partiality?

I always feel a pinch of bitterness whenever I happen to travel to any place where folks of the same ethnicity I belong to happen to be the majority. Predominantly, the experience may be pleasant (yes, Money is indeed quite powerful in extricating humanity buried deep inside every human but will not be shared unless coaxed by powerful stimulant like money) but there are times when I have wished that I had been completely different.

For one, I totally love the experience when I do not understand the language spoken at the place. That way, I will not get to know if I am being manipulated which may happen in few cases. I wouldn’t want to know if I am being dealt the short end of the rope. Another aspect of it – I really can do better than the real impressions made by me on the locals. When a local passes by and makes a comment on how he fantasizes you, one cannot cease the reaction gushing from inside – could be positive or negative but definitely unwarranted.

And when you have to share the attention of host with someone else, you pray fervently it better be not a ‘firangi’ – esp in Indian context.  Well – what to do in such circumstances? Oh – just be a better dost to firangi than your host. Yep – anything to make the travel experience worthy of a queen.

Maybe I need to introspect if I should be more open-minded with respect to few stray incidents encountered during my travel experience while traveling within the country but cant help wonder if I am really onto something here J

And hence these ramblings in a blog!

When the F word rules the mind!

You know your life is fucked up when you find time to write 2 posts in your blog space a day!
More so, when you feel the need to go dig up his past from his posts written 5 years ago.
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Wonder what happened to AP CM who has been missing from morning!

You don't see this often - Thank goodness for that!

System maintenance testing holding up real-time operations? Tsk Tsk :P

Obsessed!

Clocks matter no more

To my sense of time!

For, O Crafty one,

You've merged

My day and night!

You've got me

To redefine moments

As your messages arrive!

Neither an amour

Nor a friend

And not even a foe

You are to me!

Yet to define you

Magnet of my thoughts!

So obsessed

I find myself to be!

My two cents about Jinnah and whole lot of shit about Partition!

Yes - it can be only two cents or maybe something lower in denomination would also do as I hardly knew anything about Jinnah till few days back. Thanks to Jaswant's book (which I have not read) and the ripple-effect caused by it, I had to get my over-pampered ass out of the couch leaving the newspaper with its compliments and barbs about Jinnah to find my resourceful friend (or fiend??) - Wiki - to know more about Jinnah.

Thanks to our history books and the current state of Pakistan - Jinnah could have never been imagined the way he looked in the snaps from archive. He is Quaid-e-Azam or Qatil-e-Azam - depending on which side of the Radcliffe line you are. Every story needs to have a villain to spice it up and Indian Independence saga had to do with Jinnah. Anyhow - whether Jinnah was a mastermind or victim of mislaid plan, it does not matter. Pakistan is a reality which gave rise to another bitter reality - Bangladesh. Lets leave Jinnah to rest in peace, if he can and proceed to milestone of his life - the partition.

For purely psychological reasons - I think partition had to happen and it did! Good - I say. All said and done - India was a landmass ruled by Muslim rulers for more than five centuries before it was usurped by British mainly and whoever saw that we are the best audience to experiment the divide and rule policy. Yeah - if Coldplay's Viva La Vida had been released in 1857, it may have been pictured on descendants of Mughal family. Coming back to the point - no - lets digress a bit - Imagine those times when you were that obnoxious kid. And then came along a bully with a slingshot and demanded that you handover that favourite toy of yours. And you did. But - here is the glitch - the toy was never yours in the first place but you have had it with you for such a long time that you even forgot you bullied someone else - a meeker kid - from whom you grabbed the toy. Now the stage is set where the recent bully got tired of non cooperative attitude of the once-meek kid on whose side even you are on. So - now its you two against one. So the recent bully decided its not worth the efforts to stake claim on the toy and decides to abandon it.

Aha - now, its natural you assume the toy has to be returned to you as you 'owned' it before its most recent owner. But the fact - its original owner has grown strong now meant your apparent possession is what it is - apparent. The toy you have had for such a long time exclusively - a matter of pride for you - may have to be shared or worst case - be handed over to the meeker kid who is no longer weak. And what if he remembers all those days you have bullied him and refuses you to even let you touch the toy again. Would you still think about an arrangement where the toy has to be shared? The toy - which has become part of your identity though not yours to begin with - possession of which implies power - Can you hand it over to someone whom you considered worthless sometime back; someone whom you bullied and felt superior about! Its simply not possible psychologically to accept this humility!

So you say - let us draw schedule for playing with the toy which will allow each of you exclusive access to the toy during which the other may not interfere. You are just trying to assert yourself because you are insecure. But the other kid thinks its stupid to even consider such a claim as he just refuses to acknowledge you as a separate entity to allow you to stake claim for the toy - so he says "Just play along when we all play". Oh no, you think, even before the toy is being completely abandoned - the meeker kid is acting all smart. You think its not acceptable and its a harbinger of changes in power equation that will happen once the toy is available. So you begin to throw tantrums and threaten to break the toy into pieces to make the experience worthless for others too. And the big bully is interested now although he will be leaving shortly. One final chance to act as headmaster, he thinks. He agrees to negotiate between you two and is immensely entertained by the proceedings. He also harbours malicious thoughts of mutilating the toy that he no longer possesses. So he pretends being neutral while having the last laugh. Hence he suggests that the toy been broken to pieces and that you been given the right arm of the toy along with the few fingers from the left arm and the rest to the meeker kid who is beginning to grow impatient as he cannot wait to get back his long lost toy. You are astounded when the meeker kid says - "So be it" and you are left with an arm and fingers! Later, even those fingers leave you coz you bullied them too!

So - you see - its all psychological. Someone who has been holding the sceptre for too long cannot imagine eating the humble pie! Its better for such disruptive folks to leave the scene completely than let them be with you and harbour bitter thoughts dreaming "Viva la vida"!

Few moments of merry in Cubbon Park, Bangalore!

Wish I could present the park in the truest glory it deserves! Few snaps taken during my stroll in the park couple of days back. More snaps to follow as I finish walking its perimeter sometime!

Men seem to have moved to Venus while Women are heading to Mars!

Am I reading too much between the lines or is it really happening? It looks as women are shying away from marriage, men have no two-minds about exchanging vows and say 'I do' these days. On Monday, I was witness to nth instance of a human male whose age is <= 26 sharing news of his soon-to-be marriage.

Was the popular perception that men are commitment-phobic soon going to be a myth? From when on, the nightmare that was associated with the word 'altar' turn into sweet dreams for men? Gosh - are they going to start blushing too? :- Or is it some kind of side-effect of emergence of women as the gender that does no shy away from one night stands any longer and thus instilling a sense of insecurity among the males? Or is any mutation in natural drives of men in progress?

Even after those quite unnerving questions, I can quite understand and rationalize why these men want to marry and settle down (hopefully). After all, marriage has been considered for eternity a quintessential element in establishing the fact that the male involved is a successful primate who has reached a stage where he can afford to maintain a mate and contribute to the propagation of human species. With the advent of IT industry that got the wallets to bloat, there are quite a lot of men out there who think a marriage shall seal their quest to prove they have settled in life. A decade back, how many men could have boasted having a own house, a vehicle and a zillion girlfriends before turning 25?

But what seems quite fishy is - why would the women (who would obviously be <= 26 , in other words - in prime of their independent life), who are going to join these young men in matrimony, decided to do so?

If the way the women return a blank stare when inquired about how long their profile will have the status as 'Single' be used as indicator, it may seem that women thru ages have perceived marriage as a stepping stone to a convenient and risk-free existence ( I think emotional security was just a veil women used to hide behind lest their self-centered motives reveal themselves ;-) ). With the objective being fulfilled these days without help of men, there seems to be hardly any incentive in getting into any sort of long term deal which quite often ends up in one party having an upper hand when it was supposed to be a mutual deal. And then, typically Indian marriages come as package deal - Marry the guy and his entire family to deal with comes for free! When the current rage is about being 'flab free' these days, its quite hard to believe why would anyone fall for such mass deals! And for those moments of weakness, when a lady feels a need for company (This is again a manifestation of vanity - how many ever girl friends a woman might have, she still feels lonely without a man to admire and woo her :)), this is the age of 'instant' things where social networking sites are always there for some instant companionship. Mind it - I'm not even talking about physical gratification here (Just mentioning it so that I can use it as disclaimer lest any social networking site wants to sue me). And lets not even talk about kids here - that deserves a whole new post. Look around and see those couples who belong to DINK* category and ask them why no kids - they give you that threatening stare from Chloromint ad and reply "By choice". In short, if you are an advocate of marriage and you see you have a women-only audience, its better to take a bow and leave the stage coz probably you ain't gonna sell anything here!

So why those young women would want to marry? Doesn't it feel like a contradiction? Dr. Akston says in Atlas Shrugged "By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find one, check your premises and you will find that one of them is wrong.” So what premises of marriage should we be looking at to identify if there are any ulterior motives involved? :)

So my dear guy friends who are ready to jump into the fire, think before you leap! Do you really want to wake up with a member of that species that have given you no clue whatsoever about what constitutes them? Why this mass hara-kiri?

* DINK - Double Income No Kids.

My new BF at work

My new best friend at work!

http://www.bosey.co.in/

Why? I've been to Mylapore but not to New Orleans :)

To my friend

My best friend at work

http://notalwaysright.com !

Would love if I get introduced to more such friends :D

Caught Twitter-bug!!!

Don't know what its all about - but what the heck, it just involved creating an ID! So I'm on twitter too - I twit here.