Telephone behind a glass partition

Recollection of Harmony

November 20th, 2008 Roshan

There was a time when Metallica was cool. Everyone and their dad flashed the heavy metal salute while listening to _the_ band of the time. Then things changed, Metallica went after Napster, they went after their fans, some people who celebrated them. Things changed quickly, Metallica is now Public Enemy No. 1. But sometimes I look through my cassette tapes, go over Motorhead, Styx, Soul Asylum, Uriah Heep, and wait with anticipation as the tape hiss segues into Metallica. I know how it’s going to start, years of listening to these cassettes has my mind primed for the next note that comes through.

Listening to those tapes brings with it all the memories of a time when we were all younger: you can almost feel all the teenage angst, all the anger and pain, the childishness and the stupidity. Often you can remember happy times, and the people you knew, and who knew you. Nostalgia comes in waves, not in drops. I’m sure everyone strongly associates music with memories.

Take this rendition of Nothing Else Matters. Tell me it doesn’t remind you of anything.

PS: An RSS aggregator is a nice thing to have. Also, I can’t stop listening to the last thirty seconds of Around the World

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Veni, vidi, reveni

November 9th, 2008 Roshan

I am back, bad Latin translations and all, to the city where I was born. Bombay is one hell of a city, count me impressed. Madras is an okay place, an overgrown town perhaps, but there’s nothing like having everything just the way you want: from cabs that you can register by email to drinks with your dinner just about anywhere. In Bombay, things get done…except if you’re Vodafone. I’ve had them for a month and a half now and I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a human customer care rep. and they don’t honour their own DND lists.

There’s nothing like taking a train into the south end of the city and being faced by tranquility along long sidewalks, overhung by trees. I got my tickets to concerts sent to me by SMS, my wine delivered to my door, my local train pass in 40 seconds. I’ve walked by crazed BJP activists, stared in apprehension at TV sets on my bus fizzing with police warnings while the MNS’s riots were stopped short by the police, and anxiously stood silent as a truck loaded with Hindutva nutcases waving flags careens around the corner in front of me. Excitement and wonder are cheap. I’ve lost myself on paved streets, wandered into cricket matches and bazaars alike, and stood on the edge of a mosque’s sea-wall staring into the sea. It was bright where I was, the people had changed.

Things happen in Bombay. You open the papers to find someone or the other shot, to find someone caught for shooting someone else, or the best of all, to find that the cop who shot all those people was a mob hitman, extortionist, and land-grabber. Posters called for alertness, plainclothesmen played terrorists to catch sleeping guards. Getting to work is an adventure, the lines ferry as many people as there are in all of Chennai. Everything is faster, bigger, more complex. Everything was nicer.

I was happy.

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Answer these questions

October 7th, 2008 Roshan

Chitra is the reason for this. Blame her. Also, yes, I am aware that non-committal answers are completely useless.

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
Karma’s a bitch, but in the meantime, there’s my impotent rage to deal with.

2. If you can have a dream come true, what would it be?
Realistically, to have a nice small family, a job that pays enough and gives me enough time for me to take two weeks off at least each year to visit a foreign country. Not so realistically, I want to be Bov Ine - the fire-breathing god of doom who rides a cow whose hooves strike lightning and whose horns are a portal to Discworld.

3. Whose butt would you like to kick?
Guns, I believe in peace.

4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
Buy a stake in AIG (ha ha).

5. Will you fall in love with your best friend?
I don’t swing that way.

6. Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
Can’t I have both? I don’t know otherwise. Think hard, and you probably won’t either.

7. How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?
If they love me…forever. If not, not at all.

8. If the person you secretly like is attached, what will you do?
Depends on what they’re attached to. I generally stay clear of people attached to cows, for instance.

9. If you could root for one social cause, what would it be?
Universal education. This is very important. Secondly, the mandatory death sentence for harassment.

10. What takes you down the fastest?
Ha ha! Like I’d tell you my only weakness!

11. Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
Exactly? In bed.

12. What’s your fear?
Heights.

13. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
A very cunning character.

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
Once I would have chosen the latter, but it makes little sense, so I’d choose the former.

15. What’s the first thing you do wen you wake up?
Hit the snooze button. Yes yes, I know everyone was thinking the same thing, and then we all go back to sleep. And you won’t believe it, it was just five minutes but when we woke up it was 3 hours.

16. If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?
Henry Hill (the guy from Goodfellas) said it best, “If you can’t love two people at once, there’s something wrong with you”. No, not really.

17. Would you give all in a relationship?
I try. I would love to.

18. Would you forgive and forget someone no matter how horrible a thing he has done?
No, I’m the exact other end of the spectrum. I nurse grudges on tiny matters. I still don’t forgive Bikram for spilling lime juice on my sandals two and a half years ago.

19. Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
The latter, but it does give you a little freedom to not be.

20. List of 6 people to tag:
Marc - Because he won’t do anything about it.
Isha - Because she’ll laugh at me and call me … a very bad name.
Volunteers please - I don’t get that many comments, you see.

When I was a kid I decided to write a chain letter, it didn’t get very long. But I sent it anyway, and I cheated, I used carbon paper. So take that, suckers. I was a young spammer. Sadly, now that’s all coming back to me.

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The Gardener: A Dream

September 4th, 2008 Roshan

I had the wildest dream last night. It had a whole lot of characters, but sadly because I was doing other stuff till now, I’ve forgotten most of it. The parts I remember was this time when two kids were stuck in the rain and they decided to shelter in a garage of this big house. So while they’re in this garage, this creepy old woman opens a door from inside the house to the garage and she looks at them and says, “Come to stay here, that’s really nice.” and she closes the door. Then the younger kid opens another door wondering what’s behind it, and this woman opens her door again saying, “Oh yes, you’ll find that interesting.” and then the door slams shut behind the kid. When he opens the door again, he’s somewhere completely different, and this keeps happening with him opening doors and finding himself looking into some different place altogether. The final bit is when he opens the door and a big dog-lion thing jumps out, but he manages to dodge it once. After that, it switched to a completely different thing.

I was in the same house, and this really fat friend of mine (completely fictional) was right there next to me. And just as we started to talk, I noticed a really old withered man coming down from the hill. He had a scythe in his hand, and I recognized him as the gardener. To play with my friend, I said, “Oh shit!” and started running away from the house and along a path towards a marsh. The terrain was rolling, so if you went over the crest of the path you wouldn’t be able to see along the back again. All the while when I was running I kept yelling, “It’s the GAAAAAARRRRRDENNNNNNERRR!” and after a while this friend of mine was also running alongside me yelling that. It was like some sort of Indian warcry except that it wasn’t because I was starting to believe in this whole thing myself and getting pretty scared. The marsh is like a field, at this point of my dream and set in a rough square with a path down the center and other such grid-like stuff. The path we were running along met the field at the point where the road down the center was, but we decided to take a right and then a left to run parallel to that. At this point we met another withered old man who was driving a caravan train with nothing inside the caravans. I managed to run fast enough to catch up with the last caravan and hop on. The driver was off the train now and just yelling at whatever was pulling the caravans (couldn’t see it) and cracking his whip, and he laughed maniacally as he made the caravan turn down that center road and back up the path to the mansion. Then suddenly, the fat friend (and I mean really fat, he was huge!) came around the bend and thundered down on the caravans at an immense speed. While the old man cackled, my friend managed to lunge for the last caravan and get on. I nearly fell down trying to get out of his way as he boarded, the old man softened at this and told me to watch out. He then yelled, “The GAAAAAARRRDENNNERRR!” and I saw the gardener coming down the path headed straight for the first caravan moving at him.

I now remember the first dream, I wanted to explore this desert called the Red Desert. The sand there was like it was on the surface of Mars or something, completely red. And it wasn’t sand as much as it was loose rocks mixed with some sand. What I was looking for was this thing called the Black Hole which is in a lake somewhere in this desert. There were two lakes, one with the Black Hole and one without. By the time I found the first lake, I was really thirsty, but the liquid in the lake didn’t look like water at all. It was black or maybe a very dark shade of green. So I soldiered on towards the Black Hole Lake which I could see not too far away. When I got there I saw why it was called that, there was this giant whirlpool in the center of the lake and while the edges were a dark (almost black) shade of blue the center was absolutely black and the water was swirling around this whole all the time, but there was no more coming from anywhere, so it mustn’t have been going into the whirlpool as much as just spinning. There was no wind, just the sun and the red sand.

Just when I thought I was going to really start needing something to drink or I’d die, I saw a bunch of horsemen come up over the top of a ridge and in front of them, running as fast, was my younger brother. When I looked where he was running I saw that this whole Black Hole Lake thing had been made a tourist attraction, and people were coming here just to look at this place on organized tours. It was like a big circus town, and there was food and drink and even an Indian Bank ATM. I tried to get money from the ATM but it kept getting jammed with my card and not doing anything so I just settled for what I had. Then my brother came along with a camel and asked me to get on. I got on, and we went around the circus tent town and my brother and the camel looked under the roof of one of those tents to watch the tricks inside but I couldn’t see because I was sitting at the back, I remember I got quite angry at that. Then that faded out and the rest began.

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Hello lazyweb

June 16th, 2008 Roshan

Hello World, I’ve been waiting for the chance to see your face.

There’s a jingle that starts that way, where have I heard it? It’s stuck in my head.

Update 15/04/2010: I’ve got it! The awesome power of the Internet at work. Thanks to ‘naam’ on the Discovery Channel forums, I was able to get a copy of an episode of Travelers and get the intro theme out of it. The only reason I even found out what it was is because of the first comment here, courtesy S.a.

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Exams

April 17th, 2008 Roshan

They’re nearly done. There comes a time in the history of a course when the brain of George, long suppressed, decides to find out just what it’s about. I had Astronomy today, and that’s when it happened. I felt this inexplicable urge to find out just what that paper was all about. Then I went to sleep.

Not really, that’s out of chronological order. I was sitting there, peacefully poking around the Kumaravelus’ book when it struck me: I had no clue what the whole thing was about. Today, I am free, I still don’t have a clue what the whole thing is about, and I’m unable to wrap my feeble mind around four new co-ordinate systems. But, with a few calls, and some clever rationing of time, I managed to learn exactly what came for the exam. Almost exactly.

Another day, another exam.

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Ouroboros Support

March 18th, 2008 Roshan

A funny feeling when you Google for something and find that someone else asked it before and you offered them a solution back in 2006. Have I forgotten more than I know? Anyway thank you Me, now I shall return to listening to Catfish Rising.

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It’s a proper noun

March 3rd, 2008 Roshan

Why yes it is, but that doesn’t mean you can have your way with my damn name. It’s not even a hard name, it’s an easy name, a nice name, it has but two syllables, and four if you count the second name. And yes, that second name is mine too. No, you can’t make the George a G., write my name “Roshan G.” and then call the G an initial. That’s not even fair to the damn G., you put it at the end of the name and you call it an initial. Call it a final if you wish.

Stop with this propa propaganda, a name’s a name, it isn’t just that set of letters there, it’s a sound, and mine is like that unheard melody you’ve all been told about, except it’s heard. Actually, you know what, I forgive you all. Really I do, because I don’t really care how you pronounce it, so long as you do. Because I love you all, you know. Deep down inside, I do.

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You see what you want

February 21st, 2008 Roshan

I saw this research paper on Slashdot that claimed that you see what you want to believe and the first thought that crossed my mind was Rashomon, a brilliant film by Akira Kurosawa that I really enjoyed back when I saw it. I didn’t know it was based on a short story, but it’s really interesting.

If you want to watch a couple of Kurosawa films and you don’t want to buy the DVD, you can rent them out from Cinema Paradiso or Ric Video. There are some real gems there.

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The Book Is Better

February 20th, 2008 Roshan

In any group of people discussing a film adapted from a book or theatre script, there will be at least one person who says that the book is better. If no one will else will step up to claim that, I will call it George’s Law and I’ve never seen it fail. Not once. There are other, similar, laws of human behaviour which are so common that one wonders whether its something hard-wired in the language centres of our brains. Take people who solve Rubik’s cubes, I’m pretty certain that each such Rubik’s Cube solver has been told the following at least once: How do you do it?! You know, when I was a kid I just took the stickers off each side of the cube and stuck all the same colours on the same side. Now, just in the interest of full disclosure, I did do that to a cube I had, and now half the stickers are missing because I didn’t stick them back on properly.

Why do people do stuff like that? You know, standard lines.

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