Measure of a Man

Defining moments are few and far between during a single lifetime. It’s nice to have them because they do exactly what they say: define you at a point in your life. They give you a sense of security, an important thing in a world which is becoming increasingly insecure. And I’m not talking about security in the sense of safety; I mean security in the sense of self.

I’m 23. One would say I’m not that old. But I feel it and I don’t know why. Although, I don’t recall an event that defined the metamorphosis from adolescent to adult, the moment when I became a man. It can neither be planned nor created, it just happens and you know right then. Of course, circumstances are such that I hardly remember much anyway, but I think this would be one thing I’d remember not to forget. Becoming a man is about taking charge of your world and accepting the responsibilities that come with it. It comes in different forms for different people: the first big investment, a fishing trip with dad, marriage, seeing someone close in deep shit and realizing it could have been you, your new baby, or wanting one and planning for it. Some would prefer less complex experiences like a virginal sexual experience or lighting up/downing one for the first time.
I think I’m a man, but I have no proof for myself. The shaving, the backaches, the hair loss, the evolving view of women, none of these is a certifiable indicator of a degree of manliness.

Many people probably get through their life without having had such a defining moment and never feeling the need for one. But I need it. It’s not a matter of insecurity; I just want to know that when the time comes for me to take up something big, I will not hesitate. I have had very few challenges in my life up to now and this has left me devoid of crunch-time-performance experience.

On the other hand, there’s this.

Childhood is on the other side of the coin. I look back over 20 odd years and there’s not very much that stands out. There was no adventure, there was no journey of self discovery, there was no innocence lost and there were no surprises. It often makes me wonder what I missed out on. Of course I will never know and there’s no way of ever finding out.
This is made even more depressing by the fact that we are living in the age of the undo. No matter how bad you muck up, you can always undo, re-format, or simply use the backup disk. Having got used to that you tend to expect the same out of life, which only leaves you disappointed.

George Bernard Shaw hit it on the head: Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Stupid kids.


Watch The Goonies!

Green Day – When I Come Around
Eric Carmen – Hungry Eyes

Avenging Avengers

It’s late in the afternoon
I’m wondering what clothes to wear
I don’t need no make up
I like my unkempt hair

Saturday and I realize a bit too late that I'm too late for work.
That darn Lily Allen.
So here I am, at my desk, not working, in my bedroom slippers. Not that I mind too much. And they’re cool, nay, sexy slippers too. They’re Ralph Lauren slippers! I don’t know if Ralph has ever launched a line of bedroom slippers, but if he ever did, they’d look exactly like mine.
They’re sleek and black and fit me perfectly and I’ve had them for around two years now. No, that’s not too long to keep a pair of slippers, especially when Ralph Lauren is wanting them. And they’re shiny too, with that hand gesture popularized by Churchill and Nixon, right on the top for all the world to see.

You say you want a pair just like these? Well you can’t have them. ‘Cos I have the one and only. The others were all destroyed in a fire at a Polish warehouse and the production firm has since decided to stop manufacturing this model in commemoration of the highly skilled immigrant workers who didn’t survive the blaze.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s a Schindler out there somewhere…

So there. These are lucky survivors and you can’t have them. Good Day, Sir.
I said Good Day!



I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger… Ooh la la, ooh la la, la la yeah.


Wyclef Jean ft. Claudette Ortiz – Dance Like This
Fallout Boy – Dance, Dance

And in case you were thinking it, NO, these picks were not VMA influenced.

Criminally Crimson

Indian advertising campaigns have lately reached a new low. As if girls making randy sounds at a watch or tittering over an unremarkably average small car wasn’t inane enough, Pepsi, yes, none of the [insert giant cola brand name here] crap this time around, have come up with a new ad slogan that just hit everything else out of the park. The blue billion is coming. Detestable cretins.
As if it isn’t bad enough that this country has more than a billion mouths to feed… imbeciles want to publicize it. I’m pretty sure dysenteric circus elephants could have painted patterns more sensible than making light of your own country’s population crisis for commercial purposes on national television.

Try and imagine the blue billion… coming. One thousand thousand thousand sweaty, belching, swearing, mostly blue collar South Asians moving as one. Almost brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it? Run Forrest, ruuun!

Now, I’m not ashamed of my country. I am however, ashamed of the way its people are fond of behaving. For example, too many Indians think they ought not to be Indian, which is a great loss to the nation. If they put the same determination into making a living in the land which fed them at birth as they do in trying to escape to foreign shores, my head would hang much less lower and not without good reason. India will forever be tagged a “Developing Nation”, as long as the majority of its population doesn’t realize that it needs to be contributing something to the country instead of feeling cheated out of a birthright. This is why we continue to advance at the speed of dark, while the rest of the “Developed” world surges forward with every passing day. Congratulations. Blue billion my ass.

Hold on there Free Willy, don’t look at me just yet. I’m presently counted among the thinking-but-not-acting slobs who have too much to say but not enough to show for it. Wait till I’m good and dying and if I haven’t done anything worth a mention by then, you can point those curvy index digits at me and loudly proclaim “Hypocrite”. But for now, I’m proud to work for a company founded by smart, enterprising Indians, in India, that has graduated to an international base and Market Leader status.

I don’t remember who it was, but I once heard someone say (I’m honestly hoping it wasn’t just David Blaine) that life isn’t worth living if you haven’t found something worth dying for. It’s a cool thought but simultaneously scary because not everyone has identified their worthy goal by the time they first read this weighty statement. And that’s depressing.

I’ve actually always been searching but can’t admit to having found it. Close sometimes, but never right there and definitely not worth dying for. It’s unfair really, that supposedly, unless your life is centered on one particularly spectacular goal, you could be deemed a waste of perfectly potent sperm. The altruists would tell you they’d devote themselves to family or friends or some other unwarranted sentimental crap like that. The social screamers would always claim to have something worth dying over… some human/animal rights cause, environmental cause, political cause or some other bullshit that the average shmuck doesn’t give a flying fuck about. So let’s tone it down a bit. Maybe you don’t quite have to die. How about moderate-to-severe wounding? (Hospital time means time away from work!) No?

But really, I would like to have that thing which involves me completely while drawing on my talents, however imperceptible they may be; my refuge from the asphyxiation of enforced conformity and a hidden fountain of indulgent intoxication. I’ll have to write that one up as a knight’s quest, to be undertaken when I’ve grown woefully weary of worldly endeavours.

People have many opinions about the force that turns the earth, but I haven’t yet heard this one and I’m pretty sure it has been largely ignored. Penis envy. Yup.

Penis envy doesn’t necessarily have to about a penis, but it is still about the size. Money makes the world go round, love makes the world go round… yeah ok, but take this into consideration too. If penises were never envied, so many millions of men wouldn’t suffer from low self esteem, leaving psychiatrists virtually jobless. Unemployment is better than listening to women whine the entire day.

I remember my school days; the time when I would be insecure about guys who were taller than me or who had bigger feet than me, meaning almost everyone. To top it off, family genes gifted me with unusually small palms, so I really had no physical field on which to compete with those bastards. Pretty sucky times, sizewise.

Competition has got to be one of the strongest factors driving every single human being. The biggest package always wins. How else would you be motivated enough to work at getting better? If there was no penis envy, you wouldn’t have the skyscrapers and super towers that bejewel the skylines of the world’s richest cities, each of which was built in an effort to out-do a similar effort by somebody else. You wouldn’t have limousines and you wouldn’t have Big Macs. And you wouldn’t have the slimmest cell phones or the tiniest palmtop computers. Works both ways, this size thing.

You gotta face it eventually, things don’t quite work the way Tex Avery made them out to be; Droopy doesn’t really slay the dragon and ride off with the hot dame while the Big Bad Wolf sulks in the corner.

So the next time someone has to tell you “Don’t worry, size doesn’t matter!” be ashamed. Be very ashamed.

For over a year now, I’ve been talking about virtually everything, with the exception of religion, politics and my family; three topics I’ve been careful not to stray into because they are respectively A: too vast to cover and might just involve more mindless drivel than actual sense, 2: uninteresting, leaving me under-opinionated because of said disinterest and 3: unfair to the folks at home.

Although I have actually written stuff which did pertain to one or more of these subjects, they never got past my pre-posting review and were thus dropped. They’re still lying around somewhere, so maybe if I change my mind I’ll take a shot at putting them up. Possible, but not probable.

Take a walk on the wild side, baby

but don’t forget to pack your raincoat, trekking boots, insect repellant, Swiss army knife, vitamin pills…

Green Day – Jesus of Suburbia

Justin Timberlake – Sexy Back (I know it’s cheap to jump onto the popularity bandwagon, but in my defense, I didn’t really jump onto it, more like I booked an early ticket)

Nevermind The Bollocks!

Sometimes I don’t have witty things to say (surprising, isn’t it?) and these are the times when I like to say random things. And that’s funny! No? It’s gotta be! The randomness of a statement contributes heavily to its humour quotient. Vectoresque, the two components of any statement are first, its intelligence and second, its relevance to the current subject. Simply adding the two together does not give you the funnitude of the quote. It’s a much more complex relationship between the two and each is worthless without the other. And yes, I already know “funnitude” is not a word, but I have the right. Or “rights”, whatever. Deal with it.

“This morning I found the longest hair on my body!” Insert this as a follow up to anything anyone has ever said to you and then imagine their next words. Very low intelligence component and unless you’re in the habit of having interesting conversations with your barber, the statement does not even possess relevance.
And for those taking notes on icebreakers for their next party, Get Out, this is not a class.
Sheer absurdity is stimulating. Intellectually, that is. It’s not all that easy to be absurd. Words don’t jump out of your mouth unless there has been thought behind them, so the depth of absurdity that you scrape is inversely proportional to the thought that contributed to its creation. It’s easy to ask a question or give an answer or pass your opinion, but not easy to suddenly change direction to a tangent. There are always three directions to any response: the right one, the wrong one (which is the opposite of the right one; and now don’t tell me the opposite of right is actually left) and the irrelevant one.

Before you go any further, a word of caution. The things you have read here so far and everything you will continue to read for the next two or so minutes, will test your ability to explore how far you will let yourself go before walking hurriedly back to what is generally accepted as normal/not-crazy, while looking over your shoulder at the strange place you almost stepped into. And if you already think this is just some try-too-hard, pseudo-intellectual crap, then I must shake your hand. Exit this way. (Insert here: some sort of text symbol for a raised finger that comes after the index one)

By irrelevant I don’t mean answering a request to know the time with “Red”. That’s just stupid and/or insane. By irrelevant, I’m referring to a point that lies as far as possible from an expected response and at the same time, not totally opposite to it. The locus of these irrelevant points would form the circumference of a circle which is perpendicular to the circular plane on whose outer edges the best acceptable response and its opposite lie, with the centers of the two circular shapes coinciding at the exact same point. Thus, every irrelevant point is always equidistant from the two known extremes.

Having just read all that you may think that I’ve really spent some time thinking about the whole thing. On the other hand, you may think that I’ve either dropped anchor at the line between genius and insanity or allowed someone less talented than myself to do a post for me. But I will not consider the other hand. The truth is that it was all on the fly. In the time that it took me to type these last few sentences, I had the whole geometric view mapped out in my head. Exactly how absurd? This is the right kind of absurdity, not talking about goldfish bobbing for apples. Spouting randomly incoherent shit just because your brain is running dry doesn’t qualify.
Anyway, if you’ve understood one iota of what I’ve been going on about, many congratulations to you. It’s hard to find someone who will appreciate or even accept the creatively abnormal (creatively abnormal != lunatic pissing on his neighbour’s front door) without scoffing at its non-conformity with easily-understandable rules.

All through this post, I’ve pranced about in the realm of strange and not-normally-thought-about, uneasy abnormality, leaping through varying degrees of the awkward and absurd and now we’re back where we started from, shuffling into line behind that other guy who also lost his shoe while trying to fish his keys out of an overflowing storm drain.

Most people tend to dismiss any and all straying from the norm as incorrectness. If only they would take a little time to appreciate what they do not understand or at least try to understand what they cannot appreciate, I’d feel a whole lot better. And that’s bound to make all of you just so damn happy!



Michael Bublé – Home
Crowded House – Fall At Your Feet

Smoky Breakfast Cereal

The more I listen to music, the more I diversify my tastes, digging deeper through the strata of time and tunes and the more I try and take it everywhere with me, the more I realize my dependence on the thing. I’m sure it’s not normal in some way that is properly abnormal. I don’t know if it’s still just me enjoying the entertainment or if it’s reached a level where it has become my protective cocoon, god and crystal ball all in one.

I see ordinary people everyday, doing ordinary things and going about their ordinary business. What drives them? Is it the work? Friends? Lovers? Family? Money? Or is there something else that can drive you to go about your life without feeling the crushing weight of monotony and habit on your shoulders? I have no idea about this. Maybe it’s the same with everybody and maybe it isn’t. During school years, studies were the only thing that mattered. Anyway, those were small years and I was still a small person, so they can be neglected. The next few years were only about friends and losing them, before the tryst with song began. Now I can hardly remember what my life was like without music on my mind. One would think I’m some sort of musician by the way that I’m going on about all this, but I must urge you to believe that I can no more play a musical instrument than Vin Diesel can do a quarter mile in 10 seconds. And he can’t!

It’s more than frightening to think that although I often speak about how free I am, not tied down by the normal social restrictions that seem to bind most, I am being manipulated. By the music. My very attitude, my rules to live by, the kind of people that I’m attracted to; I would like to think that these have all been choices born of a free mind, but they haven’t. It’s like a vivid, never ending advertisement in my head with plenty of booze and a blonde in a bikini licking whipped cream off herself… in a boat. Buy the friggin’ boat!!! And I’m constantly buying it.

Without music, what have I got left? Blank, white, black… whatever you want to call the endless void. Life is pretty darn empty when the only things that take up your un-sleeping time are work and computer games (Women? Hah! Unreliable notion). But I do see a lot of people who live with that… and less. Which brings me back to my original point: How do they do it? How do you live through your days with your only driving force being the will to get along in the world?
There comes a time when you simply have to grow up and you need to get your kicks from everyday life, instead of depending on drink and heavy metal.
I haven’t reached that time yet, I think, so for now I will just have to be content knowing that I’m secretly not as much in control as I’d like to be.


I’ve watched E! interviews just like anybody reading this post may have too, where every interviewee tries to be cute and/or witty and sometimes both. I don’t mind that people want to interview them, that’s forgivable, heck you can come and interview me and I wouldn’t complain much. But then they have to go and say something asinine like “I had a blast right through the filming!” Now why would they do that?! Are they trying to rub in the fact that they’re getting paid in wagons for nothing more than controlling their facial contortions? I didn’t buy a ticket to see you have fun asshole! That’s what I’m here for! Now let’s see some good old fashioned, hard acting… injuries on the set, strenuous workouts to get in shape, doing your own stunts. That’s what I paid to see, not some pussified bastard cavorting and giggling with the leading lady who by the way used a body double in scenes which required her to stand up on the back of a speeding motorcycle.
If you’re not going to inspire us with a show of dedication to your work, who else will we look to?
Earning merely a fraction of what you get isn’t nearly enough motivation y’know.

Three unwritten laws of the Indian road:
1. If there is a one way street, traffic will go the wrong way.
2. No matter how broken, no matter how choked, no matter how narrow a road is, it can always get worse.
3. If you give way to a lady, you’ll have to give way to the three men who squeeze in after her too.

There are many who will read this and go, “Well, duh!” To them I say, “Yes, but I posted it on my site first, so you just keep walking, bitch!”

Zooey Deschanel is my new favourite cute thing. More than my new mp3 player even.