I am
Bereft of Beauty in the house of hundred
Powerless peon in the office of ornate
Crippled cricket in the land of lions
Desolate destitute in the atrium of affluent.

Trifle triviality of inconsequential being
You could have had been me.

I know I am very late. But with a fat belly like yours u must know wht it’s 2 b lazy. Pls don’t b angry. I’ve enuff reason 2 b so myself. U hav nt yet sent me da ponie I askd u last chrix-mas.

( You know where I live)

Note: Comic Sans sucks.

There is a toned down, simpler version of  this story. In case you found this hard to grasp. Click Here.

The pitch black sky was interspersed with flickering stars. On one side the neon lights of Tokyo reminded him of the crass cacophony of a materialistic milieu. The other was an endless abyss where the ocean lashed angry waves on elevated protruding rocks which dared to taunt it.

Akrit lay on one such rock. Drinking as much as, of the sour cheap local whiskey, as he could in a go . He gazed at the sky above with great deliberation. Yet the heavy dark clouds never dispersed to reveal the full moon.

The water splashed against those black rocks on that black night. Muffled voices of children fighting, stereos blaring and dogs brewing a foul menagerie.  Akrit was thinking of a sunny day in Yale. The day he had first seen her in the park. To expect the trees to not miss their leaves in the Autumn is delinquency.

He stood up, shaking and tumbling from the cold. He jumped from one rock to another. A tattered clothed drunkard from a Shakespearean tragedy. Left arm swaying ungracefully, without direction, in defiance of the unknown. The right holding the bottle in a firm caress. There was no fair maiden for an audience. He addressed a malnourished dog.

“She was wearing a plain navy blue T-Shirt and Jeans. Having this air of nonchalance around herself which eerily silenced everything. Yet it raged a hurricane within me.  She wore studs, the turquoise color of which, teleported me deep into a labyrinth of questions so subtle and sweet, that they were best left unanswered. Lest someone destroy its grace by coming near it. I could not help but notice how her blue eyes became smaller when she smiled. When she smiled her parched lips revealed her crooked teeth. Yet I wished she would never stop smiling. You wouldn’t have called her beautiful. I shouldn’t have either.”

His eyes sparkled with enough admiration and honesty to melt diamonds with its nascent irreproachable self.

“Yet those were my words, O’ grateful and loyal canine, when she clumsily dropped coffee over her faded jeans. Jumping up and down shouting- ‘ Hibbie Jibbie fuckitty coffee is fucking hot E Ee E Ouch Ouchie  E’. It seemed the cutest song I’ve heard. I should have been there helping her. I should have fashioned myself as a knight in shining armor, riding through treacherous terrain, to save this princess from the scourge of hot Large Starbucks Extra Large Latte. But I was afraid and shy. My dirty handkerchief was undeserving of the touch of her skin.

I watched her hair, tightly wrapped with a mint-green hairband, dance in a perfect wavelike symphony. No language would have done justice for there is neither enough ink nor paper. No record could play her voice for nothing can could reproduce her laugh.

In her hopping and swearing and clumsiness I saw elegance. I knew neither her name nor occupation. Yet I did not care. She might as well have been the Devil herself and all I would have seen is sunshine blowing from her orifices.

I realized that the moon is not white and beautiful because it reflects the sun’s light. It is so  because it cannot do anything else when it sees her breathe at night. Those dark spots signify her shyness, crooked teeth, parched lips, ruffled hair and misshapen nose. Yet without them she would be incomplete. Like the way the moon without the dark spots. Like the Monalisa with eyebrows and a different smile”

The bottle was finished. So was the act. He vomited stale sushi. The dog was no longer interested.

The clouds burst into drops of rain which hurt the skin. The moon was clear. Pale and braided in dark smudges. Ugly.

The rain was loud. The ocean’s anger louder. Stifled ,though, by the melancholy of the dog’s lament. The stereos were mute. The children absent.

It was time he thought. He was crying with such vehemence that his wet body quivered. It didn’t matter anymore. Death is over-rated. Misery is not. He opened the case. Flipped the clean stainless steel cover, and noticed the sparks turning to flame. It felt so natural. He had done it. The intoxicating smoke gripped and shackled him. Spiraling higher than where the cheap whiskey would have ever take him. It was a poor crutch which guided only to deeper quicksand. Everyone knew it. Some fought it. A few denied it. After six years of being clean he accepted it.

An attempt to substitute an addiction for another. It was the wrong answer to a question which did not exist.

Only if tears, wine or nicotine were the answers. Only if.

The rain seemed feeble. The ocean calmer. The dog’s lament replaced by the quiet tears of human gloom. Yet from certain frames some variables are always constant.

Where he lay- the moon still looked pale and braided in dark smudges. Ugly.

NOTE: This is kind of a prequel to my other story Colours IMO a must read if you liked this.

The ‘blow sunshine from your ass reference from Juno’ was just too cool to not use. Consider Diablo Cody in the leagues of Twain and Dickens where she is ‘quoted’ without reference and not palgiarised. I have serious respect for her. Feedback always encouraged cherished

This took me an embarassingly long time to write. I was writing a different story and had a few paragraphs written. That paragraph was too good (As per my own standards IMHO) and I kept writing and re-writing the the rest of the story to complement (not compliment) , if not grace, that paragraph. It originally was an introduction to how Akrit met Samantha (whose name I am thinking of changing)

There will be a day when Allah and Jesus finally come to a decision and decide who is going to chair their version of the Supreme Court. The books tell us it will be called either al-Qiyamah or the Day of the Lord depending on which of the two wins. I sincerely hope the winner forgives me for quite a few things.

I tell you there is nothing worse than having a guilty conscience. It just drags you down to an abyss of something really really gooey and horrible. Ever heard about the phrase ‘weigh you down’ ? Conscience does not simply weigh you down like most things do. You know like- your weak stomach, your receding hairline or plain-jane bad luck. Your conscience is just always on a different plane, nay- a planet. A planet which pulls you down so hard that you wonder what’s the effing value of gravity there. A gravity so strong that it took three pages of digits in hexadecimal to actually put it down. I’ve heard reports that Chuck Norris lost an arm while trying to calculate the same.

I wish I had done something simpler. Maybe it would have been better if I were a fascist ruler or something. At least I could have taken a dip in some Holy River, stopped eating meat, chanted a thousand meaningful Vedic Shlokas and if I were regretful enough; all my sins would have had been cleansed by those beautiful atoms of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Alas, I doubt I will ever be the benefactor of such miracles.

It was a very interesting set of events that got me into blogging. I wish I could talk about that, but excuse me if I can’t do so now. My blogging enthusiasm since then has take the road much reviled. A road that follows an exponential decay path. Yet driving on this road has always been fun whenever I’ve actually taken upon the steering-wheel.

This blog which started as an attempt to actually test my skills in the open sea ended up being the treatment plant where all my garbage got processed, to just expunge out shite which insults the English language in such ways, that it probably got Jesus to send a messenger down here to order that all the Bible be translated to any language but English. Check out the previous sentence for example. I have left that unedited. Look at its length. If I go at this rate my words would be circumambulating this earth thrice before they finally find a period. Forget runny stringy sentences spliced the fuck with tense incongruity and subject-verb disagreements. I even stopped doing a second read. Punctuation mistakes and butchering of whole fragments in those long sentences is inexcusable. I hate to admit that I might have sacrificed diligence and sincerity to honor the innumerable Deities of Laziness I worship. For that I am sorry. Also for having lost interest in this blog.

So I beg for pity from the lords above without whom mankind would never have had invented the concept of blogging. I promise that I shall be regular and never ever ever ever write sentences that are painful to read.

The universe writhes in agony
With my constructs. Yes! I know.
The feeling is likewise. I assure you so.
How I beg your pardon
You, the omniscient, sure do see.
So do relieve my sins on your scales
For who the fuck likes misery?

Though how I don’t give a damn
I carry alternate plans.
Not all things your crystals perceive.
Convert to Scientology like Katie & Tom I will

Scientologists say that Aliens
With spaceships will end the world
Unlike those vindictive ones
Aliens prefer not to judge.
Let the them control the world
They haven’t read my writing

So who dareth stop me?
I like what I do
Learn, Oh good friend!
To live with it
Seeing more of me. That is.

EDIT: Those who are new here might want to take a look at my Favorites page in case they are too lazy to go through the archives.

Dear Web Designers of the Indian Government

I write this, not because I am a frequent visitor of your website. In fact I never visit your website, knowing fully well that the only reason it exists is because it should. The only governmental websites I ever access have been CBSE and the IRTC.  Both of them pale in comparison to the rape of the internet that is your ‘national informatics portal‘. You have not only eaten the d or e or s from design but you seem to have chewed it, spitted it, then drank it only to excrete and paste it on your website. Not the first three alphabets. But the whole W.O.R.D.

While most countries work hard to build an image better than the existing reality, you dear Sirs, seem to have worked meticulously hard to ensure that India- contrary to all the Microsoft and Google offices here, contrary to all the customer support jobs that we steal,  has as much technological talent as the Sahara desert has water.

This letter has been excruciatingly frustrating for me to write. I have written another draft which frustrated the hell out of me because I kept on writing and it seemed it would stretch all the way from my my laptop to the end of the milky way. I have now decided I would put in points why your portal, if you can call it that, puts many of us concerned citizens and geeks under significant cardiac stress.

We believe that the whole of humanity is at stake here. Forget WMDs or Oil or Taliban or asteroids. Hitler wouldn’t have needed concentration camps had he been able to access nic.gov.in in his time.

**Begin rant**

(1) You seem to be using a version of Front Page 304BC which was invented when Bill Gates first learn how to shag. The next time you go to Palika to buy School Girls become Naughty Nurses 3, please also buy a copy of Dreamweaver for Rs 50. I would have sent you a torrent link myself, but I am afraid that Azureus may prove too advanced for you.

(2) It pains me to recommend you to use one of the readymade templates. It is unfortunate that you have been inspired by Ramsay and his horror movies for your color schemes.

(3) Try not to have broken links. At least on your front page cad.delhi.nic.in denies me access to your highly confidential data about Computer Aided Design. Are you sure that CAD expands to Computer Aided Death

(4) People stopped using Lynx and  Mosaic many many years ago and it is possible to do many things with a language called HTML. If LTTE and the State-Jail in Bihar the only organisations offering me work, I still wouldn’t like to work with you after seeing your recruitment page. I wonder if your dresscode asks people to wear animal skin  and there are two stones and twigs in place of your coffee maker.

(4) A search for India on the search form, returns the same page. If you want to get the same thing done, you can use something called the Refresh button on your browser. The ‘software‘ that you use to display things that you call website are called browsers. The blue ‘E’ thing that you click, you know.

(5) The website is ‘optimised’ for IE only and I noticed there is a Hindi version of the site. Next time take the following fact into consideration- Number of Non IE users is 30%.  Number of people in India who have a computer, use the internet (in particular your site) and do not know English but know what Prayogiki means- Tends to zero.

(6) I have for a minute thought that you may have created this page only to add security to the pages. Which geek worth his mp3 player would like to hack your website? The idea was soon dismissed when I took your collective IQ into consideration.

(7) If a link on your homepage redirects to another website, link to that directly and not give another page saying ‘Please go to Crap.MoreCrap.gov.in’ If I suffered from OCD and liked clicking on things I would go and play Bubble Wrap online.

(8) I think you should sue IBM for copying your logo. How dare they copy your logo?

(9) There is a link to ‘Evolution’ of the NIC. It actually means the process by which things develop and diversify into better forms. How one could evolve before history was the future am sure you can tell.

(10) Your ‘History’ page sadly does not talk about how the pages that you host, are the remains of the First great Internet disaster of the fourth century. I actually cleared my browser cache just to make sure that the page that I was viewing was actually a page and not some unloaded junk. Junk, Dear Sirs, is not something that you should intend to create when creating anything.

(11) Using blinking images is not the same as using Flash in a website.

(12) To supplement your income from all the embezzlement of the millions the government provides for maintenance you should also place Ads selling Cyanide on all the pages.

(13) I really cannot go any further. I doubt if I have ever used these many phrases in italics to stress a point. For assistance contact any sixth grade student in any computer club in any school in Mozambique.
Please burn the servers buildings which contain your data. Then throw the rubble in the holy ganges which would then be unholy forever. Then never let any human come in contact within a light year radius of your perimeter or human race will not evolve.

We will have a future where the creative faculties of our genetic offsprings would be such that even the greatest poets would not be able to compose ‘Roses are red, Violets are blue, dear mom and dad I love you’ and the Rainbow that I created in second grade would be a masterpiece no one would ever be able to reproduce.

Hoping aliens who are uglier than you would eat you alive

Yours sincerely

Aditya Anand

This post would have looked much better if I used screen shots and many images that I planned to. But I am too lazy and tired at 4:30 in the morning. Further I am yet to change the permissions for my upload folder. Hence this whole image keeda would be a real bitch

Thing(s) of the Day: Don’t mess with Mommy.

In keeping with the theme of the post, I thought I should also give you this

Went grocery shopping this weekend. Let’s see what I bought, and forget about the things that I should have bought. I can stare and use  gadgets at showrooms for hours doing nothing but admire human creation the same way I would for Cobie Smulders (except, quite unfortunatey, for the using part). Standing in lines, trying hard not to crash the trolley into the forty-five year old women who race against a snail and do surprisingly well in coming last. Dealing with thirty year old executives who consult programming models and astrological charts to place their carts at exactly the places which would irritate the bejesus out of me as they they take their own sweet time on their cell-phones as if the world were was their effing toilet seat would make tragedies Shakespeare would die twice to take credit for.

Of-course he would have tried to shorten the above sentences and not make them seem like I ate the stop out of Full-Stop. Well, I just gave a test  for my Technical Report Writing course where one is supposed to shorten to One-Third the given composition. The course purpots to see to the heinous obliteration of enriching cliches alongwith flamboyantly ostentatious words and phrases barring the blatantly obvious mundane while ostensibly setting higher standards of report writing about which no one gives an iota of an iota. I on the other hand am striving my best in destituting the English language of an sin of gargantuan proportions and Satanic intentions. One long sentence at a time. Short and meaningful equals things like say e=mc^2 or Schrodinger’s equation. The last time I checked; they gave a Nobel for that piece of crap, while ink in tons, was wasted utilised to explain all that anyway.

Let this not be a rant against against forty five year old pregnant aunties, thirty year old rich businessmen, mentally retarded Hypermarket planners. Or even the simplicity of Quantum Mechanics.  I rather flabbergast by providing crucial insight to the ways of a hostel student.

Knorr Instant Soup: 12 Cream of Chicken Sachets. 12 Tomato Soup Sachets. Easy to make. Cheap. The buy one get one free offer was a steal.

Americana Double Chocolate Chip Cookies: 16 Packs. Yummy. Great when you are hungry at four in the morning. Recommended eat 3 packs if not had Dinner. Eat none in front of others, lest you like them to magically disappear. David Blaine’s magical powers pale in comparison to the collective appetites of even four college students.

Koka Instant Noodles: The cost as compared to Maggie Curry Flavor? Double. The taste as compared to Maggie Curry Flavour? One Fourth. Not going down a couple of floors to use the microwave and cook Maggie but rather use the hot/cold water system in your corridor to cook Koka? Priceless.

Gingerale: Six Cans. No comments on the value of Fizz in life.

Tang: Because drinking gingerale all the time in place of water means you either got your priorities wrong, or got more money than I do.

Chocolate Sticks: Bought only because they were cheap and it looked great. The power of Marketing. Funny, I got a course in Marketing Principles and this is a classic example of employment of Projective Technique as per Freud’s Motivation Theory. It basically involves me lazily getting up to get my book, looking up the index for Freud, quoting terms, italicising them to tell you what it is simply means that packaging, advertisements, hot blondes endorsing products help. 

Graph Sheets: Hail the force which asks nerds to buy many more sheets than they require. Oh My academically oriented friends! I meant not what I wrote. I didn’t even write that. Without Thy grace I would be calling fifty-five other people who am sure don’t have graph sheets or A4 papers to ask if they have graph sheets or A4 papers. I have a lot of phone balance, my grades, notes, knowledge of syllabi- hours before a paper thanks only to the divine aura that thy radiate.

Lunch at Chilli’s: Some ridiculously expensive Chicken exotic sounding name.

Ink for Pen: Seemed a trifle overpriced.

Healthy Food: Waiting to turn a richer thirty year old hypertense, diabetic. Innit? Oh, but I am not the only one.

Hoping that you all are living the good times, the instant way.

To provide me company in the gym twenty years later.

Thing of the Day: What 207 Million Dollars looks like.

Ahh does blogging after a long time feel good. Especially when the last time you checked the blog read  pwned By Mor-r0ver gr33tz to all. Excuse me if it seemed that I had intended this blog to be a historic artifact bearing a testament to the might of human laziness. Hey, but you are not gonna blame me for security exploits in earlier versions of Wordpress, access to port 2083 being blocked by my college (hence not being able to bring the blog back). College life is pretty hectic with all the assignments, projects, terabytes of- movies, sitcoms, documentaries on your network, and hours of DOTA you know. This semester has been the most eventful for me yet. Only about a month left before I finally give my finals and this rugged semester will finally come to an end.

Life in college, especially engineering ( and I think in medical ones too) colleges is much different than what you expect it to be. For one, time sits on a crow which flies faster than light. All that masti that they show in Rang De Basanti and Main Hoon Na, does not exist. There is no going around singing and dancing Masti Ki Paathshala roaming around in bikes. Oh but don’t get me wrong, college life is fun. Staying up all night, playing Counter Strike or watching Juno with friends ( which is one of the best movies I have seen) hours before a test gives a rush of adrenalin which is unique in its own way.

Horn, OK Tata Then

Thing of the Day: Did you know that hell was exothermic?

It’s been quite long since I last updated. What has this blog missed? Ex-Prime-Ministers killed, laptops as thin as air invented and India winning in Perth among other things?

A quick update here, not that you probably care; but I still need to write stuff so that I get in the flow or be in the zone and I write more stuff later. I haven’t blogged much this last semester. Poor blog had to be neglected in the grander divine scheme of things including but not limited to the pursuit of attaining a higher GPA- I would have loved to say that. But whom am I kidding here? I mean excusing yourself with studying is the universally accepted fool-proof method of chickening out. Remember telling your parents that you cannot go to the marriage of the fifth cousin of yours because you had to study  three days after your exams finished? Then playing NFS, UT, AOE or any of those popular computer games with initials till your parents came back? Or when  the teacher asks why most of the class was absent the previous day and students say ‘I was not well‘, almost in unison -like saying ‘Good Morning, Teacher‘ in third grade. The thing to be honest is that I simply didn’t feel like blogging. Period. Never saw any point in posting You Tube videos or lyrics or one link posts just for the heck of it.

Nonetheless I am back to blogging, or something like that. Of course wish you all a happy new year and all that jazz. My winter break started on the 10th January and ah well, I am bored here  and all man like last time. Oh and what is it with reading your own old posts and cursing yourself for writing juvenile stuff. They all look OK some months back. Oh and why am I too lazy not to edit them?

I have written this post over a course of twelve hours. Still publishing it, because otherwise  this would have been the cliched millionth time I would have discarded something in this fashion. Also simply because this blog receives less visitors than Ram Gopal Verma ki Aag did in the theaters.

All said and done- I expected drumroll and the like, probably a couple of Supernovae thrown in too for my reception back.

Damn the dumb me. Most stars are millions of light years too far away distance. So not cool. It means that by the time we can actually observe it, the human race would be too busy having sex with their favorite super model clone to actually give a flying frick about me. So not cool.

Thing of the Day: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge  -Charles Darwin

Leaving for Bombay day after tomorow. What will I be doing for the couple of days before I finally leave for Dubai? Many things. The most significant of which being- Clubbing, my dear. Clubing. Bombay is the place to party. A place where you can even get a Taxi or Auto at 4 am when the only words you have to mutter are – Powai, Hiranandani. In Delhi it would be the luckiest day of the year if you find any transport at that time. Then starts what looks like an Auction house at Christie’s.

“Vasant Kunj.”

“Baitho.”

“Kitna?”

“300 de dena”

“@!#!@#!@#!@# Kya???”

“Bhai raat ka time hai”

“@#!@ 70 !@#!@#”

“!@#!@”

“!@#”

…..

When you ultimately settle for something like 135 Rs you realise that students are going to school, DTC buses are up and the auto stand is full. You go back, haggle a bit ‘Bhaiya, ab toh din ho gaya’ lots of exclamation marks and others symbol follow and a finally new rate is agreed upon.

I hate digressing. Brevity though, was never my forté.

Dubai, here I come again. Life is gonna be all in High Definition Format on 30″ screens. It was getting boring with all that static in the All India Radio version.

Thing of the Day: R0535 4R3 R3D v10le75 4R3 81U3, 1337 P037ry 5uck5, if you don’t get this you suck too. ( Roses are red, violets are blue. Leet poetry sucks, if….)- A friend’s status message.

If all your life you walked with only one leg, how would you feel if you had to walk with two legs? You will probably hate the idea of it, you will be faster with your single leg; even though you know that it would be better if you used both your legs.

I type fast, fast enough by standards of many people around me, things like not looking at your keyboard became trivial long back. All these years I knew that one day I would have to change the way I type though. Denial they say is not a river in Egypt, it is a freaking ocean. So how do you save yourself from drowning in it? By finally starting to  touch type using all your fingers when your fears were brought into prominence again on Karan’s blog. But old habits, die hard. Muscle memory dies harder. It takes a lot of self restraint to stop your ring finger from not encroaching upon the territory of the z button which is rightfully the little finger’s.

That my dear friends is not all. Misery they say comes in more flavors than any ice-cream parlor offers and lady luck, the bitch that she is, likes giving me sundaes for free.

My last post was actually meant to be in Hindi and written using all my fingers. Trust me, doing wither of them is hard enough on its own. With both of them together, you would rather think of drowning in the Bihar floods (I can swim) or smell your stinking socks ( Ok, but not more time than I can hold my breath ).

I don’t know where did I develop this penchant for embarking on grand projects that fail so pathetically that they put things like Microsoft and their voice recognition technology to shame.

Thing of the day: God got Virgin Mary pregnant by magic, he doesn’t play by the rules- Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens, Grey’s Anatomy).