Chuck Norris

I've always wanted to be Chuck Norris. Why?

1. Some kids piss their name in the snow. Chuck Norris can piss his name into concrete.
2. Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs. Chuck Norris can kill 100 percent of whatever the fuck he wants.

3. Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. They are now The Islands.
4. Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.
5. Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Chuck Norris.
6. Chuck Norris can speak braille.
7. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
8. Chuck Norris doesn't cheat death. He wins fair and square.
9. Chuck Norris can delete the Recycle Bin
10. Chuck Norris can slam revolving doors.

The list is endless. Keep watching this space for more Chuck Norris facts!!

Living beyond your means

Just when you think you've seen enough of the present financial turmoil that the world has gotten itself into - another snippet of news flashes across indicating that yet another giant has fallen and yet another index has breached an all-time low. The real surprise these days is when markets are in the green. And even then that is always accompanied by a feeling that this is only temporary and that things are going to be bleak again soon. If you ask experts they will give you a hundred esoteric reasons for the current crisis. Most of those are likely to involve cryptic academic terms(well cryptic to people like me anway) like 'subprime', 'liquidity', 'leveraged', 'toxic asset' and the like. But what no one will be willing to tell you is that we are simply living beyond our means.

I have indicated in previous posts too that the greatest problem with our lifestyle today is that it is unsustainable. For a number of reasons. To start with, we simply do not have enough resources to support the kind of life that we're selling to more and more people by the day. By creating an aspirational lifestyle modeled on cowboy capitalism we're simply stretching the limited supplies of most everything that we have on this planet. Space, clean air, fuels, water - you name it. To further complicate matters man invented something truly ingenious to masquerade as a resource - money. Look how we've built an entire industry out of just that. What every self-respecting Wall Streeter will tell you is that he manages money for a living. So much fuss about something that isn't even backed by gold anymore. Yes, the Gold Standard has long been replaced by Fiat Currency. In other words if you hold a billion dollars of cash in your account and feel mighty pleased with yourself, don't - it's just paper.

What is even more baffling is that some of the people who claim to be champions of the free market and the pioneers of the super-capitalist economic model, find themselves in a soup today. America is crumbling, and how. Make no mistake. This is the very nation whose policies and lifestyles are aped by most of the developed and delveloping world today. And one fine day you wake up to realize that they're wrong anyway. What the Americans have managed to do for so long and so desultorily is live off the rest of the world's money. By promising the world that America is the best place to put your money, they have bloated themselves on the savings of effectively the whole of the global economy. And now they're going down, it's only natural that they should take us down with them.

What if things had been different? What if someone drove some sense into the heads of those hedonistic Americans early enough? What if their politicians weren't the spineless, goading buffoons who simply refused to say at any point of time that the party was over. What if we didn't idolize Wall Street managers who seemed to be the perfect success stories till only yesterday? What if...

The fact remains that there is an urgent need to rethink the lifestyles and economic models that we have been espousing as superlative for the past century. Anyone who has watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' or knows more than zilch about the environment will tell you how we are at the crossroads on this planet today - we could take the bumpier road which entails responsible living or we could take the glistening tarmac that leads to a planet ravaged and overstretched by the gluttons that its inhabitants would have become by then. The choice is ours to make.

The Ob-Man Cometh

I've been planning to write about Barack Obama for some time now. Just haven't brought myself to doing it. I started out having mixed opinions about this man - and my opinions were coloured by the fact that India's equations with the Republican establishment in Washington are at an all-time high and that India stands to gain significantly from a continuation of that regime in the United States under the leadership of John McCain. But Obama, the man, has changed it all.

The story of Obama is one that holds universal appeal to anyone who thinks that democracies really work and that in a land of freedom like the USA or for that matter, India, anyone with the right attitude and skills can make it... and make it big. Obama stands for what he has preached to millions on his campaign trail - Hope. His two books - The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from my father are said to be remarkable memoirs of an even more remarkable man. They bring to light the challenges faced by most anyone who is born into a life akin to that of Obama - a life of struggle and trials. It didn't help that he was an 'African-American' in a predominantly white nation. What truly brings out his character is that Obama has succeeded thus far, in spite of the odds that he has been faced with.

The story of his life, at least the initial part, is not unlike that of any young man facing many challenges - financial instability, experimenting with drugs and the like. What distinguishes Obama is the choices he made when faced with the same situations that all of us are faced with. Obama, for me, is the greatest beacon of hope in the 'free' world. While he has had his share of not-so-proud moments along this campaign, he's more than made up for those few and far between occasions. And yes, I hope that he becomes the next President of the United States. Despite the fact that he may not be Nuclear-Deal friendly. Despite the fact that he may clamp down on outsourcing. A good man deserves to be on top. Let us not believe otherwise because of our personal prejudices.

Mea Culpa

Free India is Sixty-one. It's been an Odyssey of sorts - a long and eventful journey for a nation that is truly unique in its identity. That identity too has undergone a transition. We have moved on from being a land that was the spiritual watershed of the world to one that is on the brink of modernity - we're both proud of our past and secure of the present. We have great hopes for the future and a passion to prove ourselves on that stage of the world. But as much as we might want to take heart from the fact that we have moved forward by leaps and bounds in a number of areas since 1947, there are just too many departments where we have shamed ourselves. No. I will not go into a detailed autopsy of the nation's failures. What I will do is fix blame. And I am convinced that the blame lies squarely with one person. Me. India isn't what it should be today because of me, because of my inaction as a citizen. I have failed. And so has every other human being who resides in this country, smug in her air of self-righteousness. The real culprits are those that sit in the comfort of their homes and complain about everything that is not what it should be. We're all wimps. Resigned to our lives of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in a nation where we see only problems and no solutions. The roads aren't the way they should be? Well so what're you doing about it? Have you filed an RTI petition to find out what went wrong? The quality of public health is dismal? Have you done anything to ensure that things change? Well if I haven't, then I also lose my right to complain. Democracy, my friends, is a two-way street. Your duty is not limited to voting once in five years. If you want all the services that you expect from a functional democracy you have to be active enough to ensure that you get them. It is the bare minimum expected from a citizen. The obvious question that comes into mind here is: How can I, a single helpless soul make any difference to a whole system that's composed of countless people and has a lot of inertia going for it? It's simple really. Do your bit and encourage others to do the same. That's the essential nature of a democracy isn't it? The whole thing works on the assumption that everyone will do their bit and that all of it will add up to something larger than the sum of its parts. James Surowiecki calls it 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. As part of a crowd of a billion plus people, all you have to do is make sure you do the bare minimum expected from you. If everyone does the same, there's simply no way the will of the people won't prevail.

Capitalist Coffee

I have nothing against coffee. Or against capitalism for that matter(well most of it anyway). But I can't stand the way the two combine to represent that which is not right in our lives and times. Truth be told I like my coffee. I just don't like the way it's been commercialized into something way cooler than it really is. Coffee is coffee. When you start charging us fortunes for obscure variants of the same darn beans, you're overdoing it. These days people sell coffee as if it's part of a whole new lifestyle. Dude! What kind of loser do you think your customer is? We have better things going on in our lives than your stupid 'thiswillblowyourmind'ccinos.

I especially hate it when you go around telling me that this or that brand of coffee is a specialty that you've imported specially for me from half way around the world. Now hold on a minute. Either of two scenarios is possible here. Either you're lying, in which case eat shit and die. Or you're suggesting that you shipped something as trite as coffee over thousands of miles just to sell it to eager dimwits who'll roll their eyeballs and lap up your pseudo-special cup of capitalist coffee. In which case don't bother selling your stuff to me. I ain't buying. Literally.

And it's not just coffee. These days everyone from everywhere in the world wants to sell us everything. There are guys who want to sell us three McMeals a day. And unfortunately for a few of us, they manage to stay in business. What most of us fail to understand here is that we're being sold a lifestyle which is not only unhealthy, but also unsustainable. For all of capitalism's great boons, this is something which is simply not acceptable. You can't try to get the whole world to eat your way simply because you can sell it cheap by leveraging your huge industrial supply chains. It'll screw up the planet. If you think about it, you're suggesting that food which is consumed at Point A be produced and shipped over from Point B, on the other side of the globe, just because someone's figured out a way to do the whole thing profitably. There's something so inherently wrong about this that in the long run, it could challenge a whole lot more than just our health.

To be continued...

How do I make a difference?

A couple of days ago I was having this discussion with my friends. After a hard day's work(especially on days when you've been rubbed the wronged way in most of your interactions with other humans), these discussions tend to border on both the insanely idealistic and the depressingly cynical. And the 'tone' of the discussion usually fluctuates randomly from one side of the aforesaid thin line to the other. So, anyway, this discussion was about what we should do with our lives. As young kids straight out of college we still have some dreaminess left in us - the part that wasn't drowned out in the drab practicality of the so-called 'real' world. So you see, we're still in it to make a difference. How we're going to get anywhere close to achieving that, I have no idea. And it's probably because we felt that maintaining the status quo won't get us anywhere close to being able to make a difference, that we had this discussion in the first place.

So how does one make a difference? And to dissect this godforsaken question even further, who or what do you intend to make a difference to in the first place? To society? To your sense of duty towards yourself? I don't really know the answer to this question or any others which we may have posed to each other and to ourselves during the course of that discussion. But what I do know is that the discussion kept going back to a well-known speech by a certain Mr Steve Jobs. That impassioned speech by Mr Jobs to the graduating class at Stanford exhorted his audience to 'find what you truly love'. I guess that's what it boils down to at the end of the day. If you're trying to make a difference, you're going to find it really difficult unless you love making a difference with whatever it is you're doing.

The nature of these discussions never allows one to draw a definite conclusion about the conclusions from the discussion. You just feel better because you had the discussion. That's a great reward, per se. So it was with this one too. We never reached a consensus on what it is we should do to make a difference, but we did remind ourselves to continue to keep looking for such pursuits.

I will always remember...

I will always remember...

Those mornings and afternoons spent sleeping...
The nights spent watching movies..
The zillions of hours killed in the canteen..
The long walk back from Khalsa...
The mad mugging on the last day before all exams..
Those countless hours spent on 'bakwaas' in other people's rooms..
Those anxious minutes spent waiting for the BIT bus at Xavier's..
The daydreaming and sleeping in all classes...
The fight to somehow reach 75% attendance..
The constant cribbing about Mess food...
Those afternoons and evenings in OC doing nothing..
The Samosas and Chais in Sharma Dhaba..
The mad rush to the birthday boy's room at midnight...
The 8 PL's spent doing everything but preparation..
The fakait cricket matches in front of the hostel..
The thousands of CS matches and the myriad cries of "Fire in the hole!!"
The placement parties in Madhuban...
The beauty on campus just after the rains..
The bitter winters spent cuddled in the hostel room..
The 5 Rs coffee at IC..

All those magical moments spent with friends at BIT.. I will always remember every one of them... Cheers bhai log!

Bad, Bad Times

I've been thinking about the world at large recently- about the events, people and attitudes that have shaped our world in recent times. And I have to say, these are bad, bad times. I didn't find much to be cheerful and optimistic about. Why do I feel this way about things? Well, to start with the general politico-economic mood in the world is gloomy. The greatest country in the world is in the throes of economic recession and the repercussions are evident the world over. Every day in the news we get to hear about another financial institution having run itself into muddy waters.

Till just a year ago, our country India seemed unaffected in the face of this global gloom. We seemed to outshine circumstances with our internal growth story. People said that India's economy has finally come of age and things will continue to look up the way they have. Our Sensex scaled astronomical highs within weeks and experts were out of breath just imagining where it might go in the future. But very abruptly we were reminded that we're living in a world where everything is increasingly interconnected. Just one of the perils of our globalized times. When one section of the seamless global economy feels the heat, so does everyone else.

Oil prices are rising and with it the prices of all essential commodities. Our populist government has tended to keep us insulated from high oil prices by passing on the burden of subsidies to public sector oil majors, but that seems to be an increasingly tenuous solution to our problems. Inflation rates are at their peaks and garrulous housewives are complaining. To add to all that an unforgiving summer is approaching fast. This could mean more power cuts and water shortages in a country where the infrastructure has never kept pace with our huge population. Of course, come monsoon showers and we will conveniently forget our summertime woes. And come autumn, no one will remember the floods of the rains.

As if all this were not enough, our country has run itself into a huge food deficit. Our per-capita agricultural production is at the levels of the seventies. Which essentially means that after the Green Revolution we conveniently assumed that we had done enough to ensure food sufficiency and happily went to sleep. This time around though things are different. Given the steep rise in commodity prices across the globe, no country will be willing to export important agricultural products like wheat - at ANY price. We can't even buy our way through this mess.

The alarm bells that are ringing now should have been ringing long back. Even now most people choose not to hear them. Those who do are bemoaning the vileness of these times. I say if God has been waiting for an opportune moment to send us a Messiah, THIS is it.

Give it back to the Aussies

It's getting out of hand now. Sledging and 'psychological disintegration' is one thing and being assholes is quite another. The Aussies have overdone it now. When Matthew Hayden called Bhajji an 'obnoxious weed' on Brisbane Radio he proved to the world that the Aussies indeed are a bunch of overweening jerks who do not play with any sense of values. Apparently to them, winning is everything and they are willing to sacrifice the spirit of the game on the altar of victory.

Even the occasional sledging that the Australians were accustomed to could have been overlooked and wished away as part of their twisted 'strategy' but the cheating and foulness that they have resorted to in this tour is simply unpardonable. They may be the best in cricket at the moment but they rank right at the bottom when it comes to sportsmanship. Perhaps Aussie behaviour is a good instance of atavism gone wild-after all most of them trace their origins back to hardened English criminals who were banished to run free down under.

The Indians have been given a raw deal on this tour. Far from being shown the requisite hospitality that we could have expected from our hosts as reciprocity for our own 'Atithi Devo Bhava' principles, we have been alienated and offended. So enough is enough. It's time to give it back to the kangaroos. The only recourse for the Indians in the finals of the Commonwealth Bank Series is to sledge when necessary and leave no gibe unanswered. The likes of Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds who never seem to get tired of displaying their needless arrogance need to be brought down to earth and silenced with their own medicine.

India has some good young blood on the team. Uthappa, Ishant and Sreesanth should take it upon themselves to challenge the foul-mouthed Aussies and humble them on home soil. Give it back to them guys!

I believe.

It's the age old question. The question of faith. And when it comes to this, you're either on this side of the fence or that. You couldn't be sitting on it. You either believe or you don't. People do call it fashionable names. Atheism, Monotheism, Polytheism, Agnosticism, Mysticism... there are as many creeds as there are philosophers around every street corner. But if you were to have to break all these belief systems down to their most fundamental notions, you would have to hinge each one around a single pivotal macro-question: Do you believe? I would urge you to note here, that this question is very different from another omniscient query repeated across the many neatly printed philosophical volumes relegated for eternity to the antiquated shelves of obscure libraries: Is there a God? You may have reason to believe that the answer to the latter question is in the negative and yet choose to answer the former question in the affirmative. It's only a question of faith. And faith, does not draw its lifeblood from the drab morass of reality. It's something more sublime and pure of spirit. Faith is made of the same stuff that gives life to living.

On the question of faith, I always reflect back on the events that unfold in a certain movie that I watched some years back and have watched numerous times since- The Polar Express. It's a simple children's film-one of the many that are repeated on one of the 'English Movie' channels on Indian television every Christmas eve. The theme, again, is neither novel nor curious like some of the more recent Hollywood movies aimed at a school-going audience. But it raises and addresses a question that draws you in and forces you to stop munching on your jumbo pack of Act II popcorn. The question of faith. Over the course of the movie, a young boy's faith in Santa Claus is rattled by a series of events. He is on a train known as The Polar express, one that takes kids to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus. One of these kids will be the lucky one and will receive from Santa the first gift of Christmas. Right through the eventful journey, the boy is made to question his beliefs: Is this for real? Isn't it bizarre that a train should travel to the North Pole in the middle of the night to meet a guy called Santa Claus? Huh. What hogwash. Isn't this guy bogus anyway?
But that's not even the point. Even when the boy gets to learn of the answers to these myriad skeptical questions and reaches the North Pole to meet Santa Claus, he's faced with another crisis of faith. He discovers that he is unable to hear the bells of Christmas. Flustered and disappointed he watches on as all the other kids rejoice at the sounds of the jingling bells and the sight of Santa Claus and the elves.

Then it happens. He raises the bell to his ears and whispers.. almost in doubt, "I believe." Then louder again, " I believe!" And now he gives the bell a little jiggle and lo! He hears the most beautiful sound in the world. It is for the movie to narrate the rest of this most delightful story. What baffles me is how, through such a juvenile plot, a question of such immense import can be addressed. Do you believe? Well that's all that matters isn't it? It doesn't even matter what's true and rational and scientific and logical. What matters is what you think. The story in the movie is narrated by the same boy who has now grown up and is an old man. He ends the movie thus: "As years passed by, most of the kids around me stopped hearing that bell... because they stopped believing. My parents could never hear it. My sister stopped hearing it. But for me, and for those who truly believe, the first bell of Christmas still tolls.... "

Of lazy Sundays and quality time

I simply love Sundays. That's one day of the week when I get to do what I love most-be lazy. That's the only day in the week when I let time pass by unhindered without worrying about absolutely anything under the sun. Although some Sundays in the month do end up getting devoted to 'cleanliness', I see this as more of a necessity-part of my desperate attempts to keep myself and my surroundings civilized.

I never set any kind of pace for myself on Sundays. That's taboo. Things are left to happen by themselves. I just happen to be a casual participant in my life's events on Sundays. This is when free will and the stuff that fills endless management self-help books melt away into oblivion and what results is pure ecstasy. The sheer joy of having nothing to do and no compulsion to do anything seems blissful.

Last quizzing season of college

Been quizzing lately. I'm mid-way through my last quizzing season in college. It's been a lukewarm start. We won the regional round of the IMS Quiz at Patna. Since then it's been hard work and no rewards. We moved on to NIT Allahabad for their annual quiz fest Gnosiomania. We were in for a rude shock when we found ourselves up against corporate teams. What's more, these guys were behaving worse than school-kids in their desperation to win. Our team from BIT was by the far the best among the college teams. Our best result at Gnosiomania was a 2nd place in the Corporate quiz conducted by Biswabijoy Sen. Lost by narrow margins in some others.

After a week-long breather, it was on to Kshitij, IIT Kharagpur. We reached a day after the fest had begun, so we were made to run around for accommodation. You would think that IIT Kharagpur would be more amiable when it came to their neighbours from BIT Mesra but nothing of the sort. We weren't any good when it came to the Tech Quiz hosted by Avinash Mudaliar. Came in a close 4th in the Biz Quiz conducted by Arul Mani. Feeling kinda down. By this time of the year, Shoaib and I usually have our pockets nice and warm with a few thousand quizzing bucks. Well, looking forward to giving the eastern teams a good fight in the quarter finals of the IMS Quiz in Calcutta. Will be another good quizzing weekend.

Haven't spent a single weekend in the hostel this semester. Been traveling all over on quizzing trips. My expenses have gone through the roof. The prize money from NIT Allahabad would help to buffer it out for some time, but that doesn't seem to be coming in either. That's the big problem with college fests in India. The prize money never comes. They all make big promises. In this case, a certain Saket, the chief organizer promised us that we would receive our cheques in a jiffy. Never happened. Still waiting. I really hope the rest of the quizzing season is more productive materialistically.

Where does it all go after this? I don't know. I have no idea whether I'll find the time to quiz with the same fervor in the coming years. Been one helluva time quizzing in college. Great win record and even better memories. Some really fun trips to unlikely places with friends. It's not over yet. You can't take the quizzing out of the quizzer.