Month: October 2004

  • Before Baazigar

    a couple of days back, there were some VIPs in office, and all of us were asked to be on our best behaviour, and loud noises were met with cold glares that said ‘dont you know they are here?’…..
    it took me to a whole long time back , to a school which used to have school inspectors, who, like the mythological king mahabali (for whose visit we celebrate onam..grrr, i am digressing) used to come once a year to monitor the school’s standards.he used to visit all the classes, and sometimes, if he actually took his job seriously, visit some classes twice. now, all teachers had their ‘poster boys’ who were chosen to answer the questions posed by the inspector. (it reminds me of the first scene in troy, where, to avoid the losses of battle, the two kings let their best fighters take on each other, oh, but i am digressing again).
    once, the inspector refused to let the teacher choose, and insisted he would leave the question open,but little did he know that the wily teacher had anticipated this possibility too, and had forbidden anyone else but the chosen one to raise their hand. but the inspector was adamant, he posed the question to the girl next to the chosen one.
    a little history, the job of the chosen one wasnt as easy as it looks on the monitor. you should remember that he was the flagbearer of the entire class, and carried the expectations of the teacher and perhaps the school itself. it was not confidence that killed the butterflies in his stomach, it was ambivalent feelings – if he got the answer right, he would continue to recieve adulation as the chosen one, if he got it wrong, well, the wretched job would be taken off his shoulders.. and for the few butterflies that did remain, you can blame the ego…
    back to the story now, the girl didnt know the answer, she looked pleadingly at the chosen one,but with the inspector staring at him, he chickened and stared straight ahead….
    for the girl, the poster boy had transformed into the first anti hero of our generation.. it certainly wasn’t SRK !!
    and since we are on the subject, here are a couple of toons..um, not exactly for children, but..

    until next time, know your role….

  • Game Theory Revisited

    1978 : rattles (educated guess)
    1980 : assorted dolls, building blocks
    1982 : wooden ksrtc (kerala govt transport) bus,lorry,plastic cars
    1984 : plastic/metal robots, Lego (thanks to dad’s US trip), guns (toy, that is), snakes and ladders
    1986 : Rambo stuff (bow & arrow, guns..the works), cricket, ludo
    1988 : scrabbles, hockey
    1990 : monopoly, indoor cricket
    1992 : mortal combat, steet fighter, memory!!
    1994 : cricket, dumb charades, walkman
    1996 : roadrash, Life
    1998 : claw, mario
    2000 : need for speed, duke
    2002 : snake, mpeg downloads 😉
    2004 : monopoly, claw, colony, discman……

    once upon a long time ago, hours could be spent playing any of these games..over time, the sheer joy the toys used to give, has given way to faster bouts of fatigue/boredom and the quest for an elusive ‘something’… growing up or growing down, who’s to say? ….ironical that more the choices, more the intensity of the quest……
    the toys have changed, the child remains…

  • Freaky Friday

    i had promised myself that i wouldnt give this blog a ‘my diary’ feel, but have to chronicle this, so it can serve as a benchmark for later days –
    it all started with D preponing the weekend laziness and saying that she would go to office late . me having built a system of timelines, even this tiny aberration was enough to cause a bug in my system, due to which i got delayed too, a marginal 15 minutes, but delayed nevertheless. during travel time to office, i cajoled my system into a feel good mood.
    less than a kilometer from the office, the kiney decides to prepone the weekend laziness and refuses to respond to auto start, kick start or any bludy start, all this only 4 days after a full servicing.i started dragging it (hate leaving it) , saw a closed workshop on the way, and finally reached an open one a kilometre later (in a direction away from the office). Got the kiney repaired in one hour, and gotto watch a Sony Playstation go through a cleaning session with an equipment they usually use to check tyre pressure…i swear!!
    cajoled my system into feeling good again, only to promptly crash into an auto that turned without a signal… the traffic policeman also supported me, but couldnt get the auto guy to pay for the broken helmet visor, rear view mirror and the mental trauma…only solace was that i changed his relationship with his mom, sister (if he has one) etc…. forever, hopefully..grrrr
    got to office, the comp system hung twice before realising it was only a friday and not the weekend… had almost brought my system into normal mode when a colleague literally marched by and insisted he wouldnt stop till i marched with him, the excuse being that i would forget marching (the last time i marched was in std xii).. the logic that there was no reason for me to remember it anyways, did not appeal to him…..that is the last thing i remember on friday, my system hung!!
    P.S just in case you though it was over, i got a message at 10 pm on saturday to let me know that i’d have to grace the office with my presence on sunday.
    until next time, drive safe….

  • The Practice

    Amazing – was the only word they could use to describe his practice. he had a medicine for every ailment under the sky. his critics would argue that almost all doctors did, but his patients swore that he would consider the worst of the diseases they had as common ailments that everyone got, and therefore the cure also came from simple medicines (not that they knew simple from complex ones)- gelusil/milk of magnesia for the stomach, incidal/actifed for the cold, brufen for body pain and his personal favourite – crocin for , well, almost everything else.sometimes he even used alternative treatment measures like homeopathy or ayurveda. and he insisted on giving all the medicines himself, so his patients were spared the costs. oh, they loved him !!
    the critics were also skeptical about whether all these treatments were according to accepted practices, coz no one had seen anything that suggested that he was indeed qualified,and well, he was so young!! they hesitated to go to the authorities because his popularity was immense, and besides, there was no reason to be afraid because none of the medicines he gave could be fatal or even produce any side effects, coz well, the beauty of his treatments lay in their simplicity. what was even more confounding was that almost all his patients were his peers, and it was only rarely that he gave medicines to older folk, in fact that was only when he knew that they had no other sources for treatment……
    meanwhile, he had his own reasons for his ‘strange’ practice – the primary reason was that he loved the adulation, the way his peers looked upto him and relied on him to treat them. and to be fair to him, he also didnt like to see anyone suffering.
    he would have loved to continue this forever, but he had his share of problems, mainly two- one was that his sources were secret,and couldnt be expected to last forever and two, his parents didnt approve of this. in fact he had been severely reprimanded at least a couple of times. he was told that he was dealing with human life here, and if something happened to his patients, he would be held responsible, but he was confident.
    he had already understood it took a lot to become a great doctor, and judging from his patients’ reaction, he was already on the way.
    this went on for two years, and then unfortunately, he had to move on to a different place, a place where he couldnt practice.
    Amazing was the only way i could describe the practice, because the critics were right- i was only in primary school and still had more than a decade to go before i could make a career choice on whether to become a doctor or not.
    until next time, practise ……

  • A Shark’s Tale

    Disclaimer : For those expecting a children’s movie review, uh uh!!

    For years and years he had roamed the high seas, though his movements were restricted to only the ones near to this subcontinent. he had migrated from an ocean elsewhere, he could only remember that it was westwards. well, he could also remember that survival was much easier there, and then.. and that he had left the place because there were too many like him there.
    around the time, he got here, times were good, because there were thousands of poor people who were forced to come to sea to feed themselves and take of other needs, theirs and their families’. also, the seas were extremely useful for trade.thus, for various reasons, people slowly got used to being at sea, they then ventured farther out, and the more they ventured, the more they got used, and the cycle continued. all the better for him, because the more they ventured out, the brighter his chances became.
    then suddenly, times started to change. an old, bald man with a stick came on the scene, taught them to weave and be self sufficient, slowly people stopped venturing out to sea.
    there were still some who did, but then the factories started coming up, industries blossomed and the people could feed themselves without going out to the sea. people were satisfied with the choices they had, and those who werent always found ways to smuggle things in.
    times got so bad that he had considered going back westwards where (he had heard) things were much better, but then some new phenomena started coming to this land, and suddenly things started getting better, because these phenomena brought with them a whole lot of choices, and suddenly the people found they no longer could be self sufficient. they started contemplating the sea again, and just when he thought it couldnt get better, he suddenly found a new and a much more subtle but shrewd ally..they called it a credit card..
    a major portion of people who used it ended up venturing into the sea, enjoying it momentarily before reaching a stage, when they were totally at sea…..
    a smile found its way back to his face, for you see, he was no ordinary shark, he was a loan shark!!
    until next time, take the credit !!