(I'm shamelessly copying this from an earlier post of mine, but as pointed out by a friend this post really belongs here.)

Laurels were only meant to decorate your head, but you expect to ride on them all your life. Lovemaking to you is an achievement. The blocky angular plastic world around you has left its mark in your head - its jagged edges continue to hurt you from within. You smile just so people will not bother you with their concern, your life simply ticks by the sound of bugs crackling on the bug killer. While your hand curls up yet again to give you empty pleasure, and while the world momentarily fades out, giving you one moment of clarity, one moment to move up to the ceiling of the room and see yourself as you are and be free of all the hazy lights and the screens and the unbearable noise, you consider giving it all up. That's the only way. Clear and delightfully simple.

A moment later you are washing your hands, and all the years of filth come back inside you, and you fear the clarity once again.

We were on a train journey back from Goa. The three of us. We had shared some good times, shared a few details of our lives with each other.

We got down from the train with not a worry in the world, on to one of the smaller stations the train had stopped at. There was a small crowd gathered on one side of the platform. But of course we went and poked our heads in amongst the onlookers. It was a gambling game, a game simple enough to understand upon but one glance: three cards, one being an ace, were first displayed and then shuffled around face down. All you had to do was guess which one of the three was the ace, post-shuffle.

I know what you're thinking... Well, of course it was rigged, but the false and utterly conceited notion that we could outwit those uneducated con-men ensured that we fell right into their trap. I remember how strongly I urged my friend to place a 500 rupee bet and that too twice! Of course I couldn't in the end see through what they were doing, and of course we lost our money. I did pay my friend my fair share of the losses, but I'll always remember how stupid I felt. How helpless. How humiliating, the experience of being fooled, in bright daylight, even when we knew what we were getting into.

I had to swallow and bury this little incident. I told no one unless I absolutely had to. We all have such memories, don't we? Ones that still bring back such strong emotions in us that we get min-choked into silence. Ones that sting just as strong. Ones we want to forget and we can't.

Still, we do what we can to make sure we don't make the same mistake. Don't give ourselves the chance to feel like that again. And in the process create barriers. Iron fortresses of defense. Which our minds can run into, with everything we need. All except some light. Incidents like the one I just described and others have not made me less gullible. All they have succeeded in doing is make me feel so.

And I noticed that there are people who are so skeptical and paranoid about everything and everyone that they often miss something that they needed to hear. Grimacing, they tend to analyze what they hear to no end, because they think they know best. They wish to take everything with a pinch of salt, but more often end up with just a whole lot of salt!

I still don't consider myself old enough to have stopped learning. I'll absorb all I can get, understand where the words are coming from and what they might mean projected onto my little world. I know I'll be fooled enough times in my life whether I am careful or not. At least this way I'll learn a little more.

She opened my eyes.
I came, I saw, I did not conquer. I watched.
I saw the landscape from the hill.
But I still sit on the hill alone, glass in hand, watching.

I see no difference in what I see.
Through the glass or without.
Surely I think I'm smarter than that.
Only I'm not.
And all that's real to me is the grass.
And the glass in my hand, alone.

I was brooding over how the meaning of comedy has changed over the years, only to discover to my further brooding (broodance? brood?) that Douglas Noel Adams had done it years earlier. In an article he wrote in 2000, he described a time when a stand-up comic cracked this joke:

"These scientists, eh? They're so stupid! You know those black-box flight recorders they put on aeroplanes? And you know they're meant to be indestructible? It's always the thing that doesn't get smashed? So why don't they make the planes out of the same stuff?"

While the audience roared with laughter, Adams sat uncomfortably. He thought he was being pedantic in thinking that the joke was absurd because it was scientifically unreasonable - was it obvious to only him that the material used to make those black-boxes would render the plane too heavy to fly? He then settled on the realization the joke to an extent relied on ignorance. It made him wonder if he was cracking ignorant jokes too. Whether jokes that seemed funny to him were simply because he was missing some knowledge that was otherwise commonplace? And then he realized humour itself was changing.

Moving away from this tea-infatuated man on stilts, I realize that we're seeing much the same phenomenon on Indian TV. If I try to draw a parallel to American Sitcoms, one series alone holds fort, being well capable of defending all of American humour. And it often starts with a balding psychiatrist going "I'm listening". But in India, post the Great Indian Laughter Challenge (GILC), things have just one from bad to worse (Q: What did the Gujju say to the singing prostitute? A: "You are going from bed to verse!". But I digress).

To be honest GILC itself was a great show - it spawned a new industry really, and clearly although all contestants were not all equal, it did provide a pedestal for some talented people to show off rather unique skills. But GILC brought with it a new interest in the public for humour, and the TV sitcoms and shows that followed have changed the definition of humour. Not to say that the humour is bad - it's appealing in its own sort of way. Rather than relying on clever allusion or intelligent satire, this humour relies on comic timing and slapstick. But there is not an inkling of genious in it, not a smear of greatness. And every time I revisit the television (this generally happens when I visit home) after weeks of watching and reading the likes of Python and Adams, I pretty much spend my evenings laughing half-heartedly while the show has everyone else in guffaws. I dare not say I felt the way Adams felt watching the stand up comedian; I do not share his comic genious. However, I did share the feeling of a being in an alien world. Pretty dramatic, you would say - it's just a few jokes, for heaven's sake. Well, to you I only have this to say:

A: Knock Knock!
B: Who's there?
A: The interrupting sheep.
B: The interrupting sh...
A: Baaaa!

Go figure, while I walk away with the look of an intellectual.

These strips really are brilliant. That's one thing I think I severely lack as someone who's tried his hand at comic strips - using shared experience effectively. Something PhD comics, Calvin and Hobbes and xkcd all use very effectively.

In case anyone's remotely interested, I watched Aeris die too and did finish the game, by the way. Oh, and Rinoa - wayyhay better than Aeris, guys! I know none of my friends will really get this strip. It's about time you learned the wonder of RPGs, you little Sephiroth-spawns.

"Apparently God didn't consider cynicism when he gave us rays of hope..."
- Arjun Karande

"Why does melodrama have 'mellow' in it?"
- Arjun Karande

"When it's getting late, it mostly already is."
- Arjun Karande

Man, I think I should consider other professions.

I think I'm pregnant. I have this craving for lime juice suddenly...

In other laments, why do some people in India try to use English when they clearly can't? It's perfectly OK to be good at your native language and be proud of it, I would want to believe. Yet, even in the remotest corners of India, you'll find big sign boards in English when more than half the population around those parts cannot and doesn't care to understand what they say. Very strange.

This, of course, is totally unrelated to the situation in my house. We are a Maharashtrian family employing two Tamilian maids who converse in Kannada with each other in our house so that we can understand them too. Now that's just the beauty of India - why discard all that for English? In my defense, I blog in English because unfortunately it's the language in which I can best express myself. But that's what everyone else should do - use the language they can express themselves best with. That depends on the listener as much as the speaker, of course. Which brings me to the next paragraph.

Given that my company is American which has employees from all over India and visitors from beyond, I do cut the staff here some slack. So instead of protesting when I see their deformed notices and signboards, I just take a few photos and smile. Once in a while someone comes up to me and asks (in English of course) whether there's something wrong with the signboards. I say "Kaadu" and walk away.

Here's today's catch:

The first is our feedback register for the company's canteen. Apparently, Bock was fed. They just wanted to make sure you knew that.



And then, I was glad to know that when the company bathroom is under maintanse, we are duly informed. Why it is dangerous to enter the bathroom while it is under maintanse, I'll never know, though.


Cute skull huh?

On the way back from Jayanagar in an auto rickshaw - I was amused at how easy it was to find beauty in the smaller things. How at one point of time in the bigger scheme of things, you let yourself drown into the smallest of details - the way her fingers fold into yours; that single lock of hair that dangles down seperate from the rest; that wonderful smell of hers; that wonderful smile of hers; just how smooth and flawless her skin is.; the warmth of her hug; the way she shows she doesn't want to let you go at the end of the day, because there's never a tomorrow...

I understand now what great lovers meant when they said they could write epics about a single eyelash of the one they loved. I understand now, because I often find myself painting visual poetry in my head. I find myself smelling her in my mind, holding her close again, watching her smile. And smiling back.

Yup, I'm fucked up.