Hear n’ There

Well, you all know my views on Patriotism, the less said the better.

Fifty seven years, it has been since this country has been a republic. A country, constitutionally headed by its own people, people who chose this nation to be a republic. A long time indeed. National days are events of retrospection and reflection.

When we are supposed to look back and cogitate what is going wrong and why so. Celebrating it with marches and displays of power are all fine (that too with French Tanks and Russian Planes), but it is imperative that we grasp the essence of our Republic Day. Be it thinking about children about whom no one cares when they disappear to never come back, or be it standing up against corruption which we ourselves foster. Be it not littering the roads, or be it helping the aged cross the road. India may be shining, but all of it is not and our conscience should not rest till then. Think about it, for you are free; you shall be free only till you think.

Because, the Republic Day is not just another holiday.

A friend of mine wanted a ‘write-up’ for her school notice-board, which she was supposed to write. I helped her by completely writing the above article. The fact that I wrote something and saved it, being the sole reason why I posted this up.

Because, honestly, I just don’t give a crap.

My vacations, as I mentioned earlier, are going jobless though not purposeless it seems now. I am now sufficiently equipped to complete my thesis - ‘How to laze around in the internet ‘. Since yours, unhopefully and yet expectantly, is a less mundane life; you would be least bothered about it. I am just being an ass, here’s some interesting stuff.

Questionable Content: Check this comic out, the humor is just my type. (Self: Ouch, forgot to look at today’s update.)

XKCD: A lifetime, Ehakespears award for anyone who can pronounce this. The Author says that it should be ” Pronounced as- duck reversed with an X”. Below, is a one from the site.

Function is not defined for sure, though matters are much complicated if the domain itself is a null-set.

What is the thing that matters to you the most?
Being happy.

Do you believe in any purpose in life?
Yeah, to be happy. Whatever that makes you happy should be your purpose. Don’t you think so? Ain’t it that most of the things that you do ultimately depend on what makes you happy more (or in some cases less sad. I am talking of happiness in a relative sense), even if it be a choice between two things that you detest. Say you are cleaning your dogs poo, but then this is because you prefer to live in a more hygienic environment (ie. Something which you like more, which makes you happier). Same goes for philanthropy. It makes you happy.

Can that mean murdering people?
Technically speaking yes, but I wonder if this is going to really make you so. For you may have a conscience to haunt you for the rest of your life, if you don’t there will always be the police and common folk. Me included.

It is said that being under the influence of ‘recreational drugs; such as Cocaine can produce a sense of euphoria, something that you may term as happiness. So shouldn’t one be on dope all the time?
I would definitely love to be in that sense of euphoria all my life. But, alas the fact that ‘I live long’ shall be more important to me and hence more crucial for my ‘happiness’ in the longer run.

Assuming that there be some Euphoric pill without say any of the medical side-effects, would you be on it permanently?
As long as it does not make me do something silly, say killing or even abusing someone. As in, anything that may disturb my conscience (my more important ‘happiness’). Say, I have to live in an isolated island all my life, and that pill keeps me ecstatic all day long. Then what is the harm? But then, that feeling of euphoria, may no longer mean anything to you. You may feel that say flying an aeroplane is a greater joy. Such as you may get used to it and it may no longer produce ‘happiness’.

Is there life after death? Is there really Heaven & Hell?
Sadly, most people are not really left in a state to talk, at least not in a frequency audible to humans, to reply once they are dead. If you read something about this in any book, then please tell me where did you get it from. It seemed that the all of Diagon Alley was out of stock and Gandalf stole my gifted copy, given by Lady Galadriel herself, when he had come to my vacation-home in Rohan for dinner.

State one reason why you are not a Christian.
Hmmm say, the Pope does not like homosexuality.

One reason for Hinduism.
You just don’t know what to believe and what not to. I would be fasting all seven days of the week if I follow all the Gods, perhaps fast five times daily and I sorta don’t know how to do that.

One reason for Islam.
Dude, do you have any idea how many religions are there in this world? I would rather just be a follower of Sun Myung Moon, because I really do like his name. Now that I have finally adopted a religion, I know you will not ask me any more questions.

Correct as you are, why do you think so?
Zerothly, because God told me so. Firstly, because you don’t really care as long as I am not an atheist. Secondly, you know most believers would argue this way: Please go kill yourself. Everyone who does not follow my religion is delusional. Thirdly, if you ask or say anything derogatory against my religion will mean that everyone following my religion will hate you, give a million dollar reward for your head and what not.

Oh lord please save me for I have sinned! I know thou are benevolent and kind. I know that if I go to Church and confess my sins sincerely, if I go to the Ganga bathe myself there everything shall be fine back again.

Hey, Adeel though I did get your point let me at least describe Kandla before my posts on our travails to Rolla and descriptions of Ijaza Inc. and Hot Breads. I also wish this could have included Mr. Panda and co. but you know why it cannot be so. Back to english, as spoken by common people.

Nonetheless, let me try my best to describe Kandla in as glowing context as possible.

Ha ha ha. I am so happy, my dad’s been transferred to a new place called Kandla. This place is very famous. Do you remember your class tenth when you had to mark a port called Kandla? Did you know it is one of India’s largest ports,in fact the second largest in terms of Break Bulk Seaport in terms of quantity handled yearly! Shouldn’t that just make my day, and make you so jealous that you spontaneously start burning like Sodium? This place is a some big number’s size of Delhi (0.00235422345249534542, go figure!). Look, wikipedia even has an article on this place. Though I don’t really know why the population of this place mentioned to be zero in that!

This place is so quiet and serene that you would hardly find any activity after 9 pm. Though the people of this place are filthily rich, thanks to this being such a trade hub, they probably have no time for anything other than counting the money in their banks. Perhaps that is the reason why they do not have any of the fast-food chains here. The gujratis here are all exceptionally sweet, they even eat their Dals with sugar in it.
So there are gymnasiums of course built, because too much good or gud is not good for anyone. I daily even work out in one of the gyms. It is sad that the gym here is made like the cool gyms of Mumbai and Delhi. A sad deviation from the normal way of things being done here, ah the corrupt influence of money on people. The typical Kandlaish gym should probably have been an empty room with some poles and some things to hang on. Close to mother-nature as they call it these days; bapu ishtyle. I daresay they will make for world class body builders given that the average Gujrati is either too thin or too fat. Have you ever heard of exercises for the ears? These people have, they were playing Vengaboys and Aqua at such loud volumes that my eardrums were doing work equivalent to my biceps lifiting 50 Kgs with 20 repetitions and 12 sets of it. Alas, my hearing tastes have changed since I was in third grade. The gujratis have a ’strong sense of pride’ towards the Indian culture. You seldom find English movies here, they ensure that the pirated DVDs available here are all dubbed in Hindi. My brother had a lot of fun watching Chronicles of Narnia in Hindi. The gujratis also have waged a war against piracy, they discourage piracy in all and any form. This is done by selling a game CD for Rs. 150. I can go on and on about this place. It is just so much fun to live in.

Enough, all said and done Kandla as I tell my friends is a small rich village. This place has a lot of facilities for a place as small as this, be it hotels or nice gyms. All thanks to money constantly pouring in here, and hence this place is ridiculously expensive too. The people here are peace loving and quiet. I guess that is what my problem is, too much peace is just so not on! I miss the chaos, the disorder, seeing people in mass numbers, checking out that hot tattoo on those curvy chicks at Priya (Basant Lok), clubbing at all those places and hanging out anywhere you please. This place may have the Discotheques but not the people to be in there. On top of all this, I do not have any friends here. It indeed are only people who make a city, or take your boredom away. I have lived in far worse situations and places. It not that I will never like this place, I just need to turn eighty.

I was thinking about posting on Kandla, but a friend of mine Adeel Arif, told me that he that I post only on negative things. I thought about it, to the extent of even briefly going through all my posts and I thought that he was right. I then started analysing and making a blog entry out of it. Half-way realising that he was not really right, so deleted backspaced (geeez, this word sounds pretty cool) it and wrote this.

My First Post - The only way someone could make a post like that negative if he was Satan’s son and predicted acolypse tomorrow. Even loony depressed psychopaths shall be optimistic of something when they have just started a blog; though you may notice Satan always around me (only because he loves me a lot - iPhone to be released in Asia only in 2008), I am definitely not predicting apocalypse anywhere round, at least not till Bill Gates becomes the president of America.

Passport & Tatkal- Agreed that I did post a bad experience, but tell me who has not? Find me someone who likes to set foot on any Indian passport office. No the passport-officer does not count.

Patriotism, N-71… - Both objective posts I feel. Who can be sad when he gets phones as cool as mine (Though I won’t die happy if I don’t ever own the iPhone). Please, do not term my post on patriotism depressing just because it was so long.

Pensieve, Let me be- Both gloomish poems. Other than poems which talk of love and of nature, how many cheerful ones do you find? Plus half the love poems sing about the parting of lovers, not really something to lift hearts is it?

Give it a thought - A forward, though melancholy, posted since I found to be really touching.

Beginning…, Deserted… - Posts talking about me going to Dubai and apologising for not posting in a long time.

I Hate Dubai - I was feeling homesick, okay? It really ain’t that bad, though my dislike for those things I mentioned continues.

Things to do before I die - Other than the fact that someone is hypothetically dying, whats so cynical about it ?

Merry Christmas, R.I.P. - Anyone can vouch that people do not sing “He is a jolly good fellow” during your finals. ” I am going down down….” is more like it.

Happy New…, Vacations… - The first was a neutral post, in fact the smallest post I have written so far. Kandla- is a sad story of a guy with whom everyone including Adeel did sympathise with, if you can make a ‘happy’ post about it, then Adeel trust me I would call you so good with words that you can even get a hot girl whose husband has just died, to go to bed with you!

Except for my sarcasm, I don’t think I do write only ‘negative’ stuff, if you leave my - I hate Dubai , Exams and Vacation posts. I may not post cheery-cheery all the time, but nothing that great has really happened to me. We do take happiness for granted and why would anyone normally post about only about it? If I gave you an iPhone, the first thing that you would do is check out the phone or post an entry about it? Perhaps after a day or two write something like- “Hey, I m rily hapy cuz i jus gotta culest fone in d wrld. in fact i m writin dis frm my iPhone only! isn’t dis amazin ? ” I just hope that I am no cribber and that you guys like my posts! Everyone comment please, or I seriously need to rethink the things I write about and the way I write them. For, I am happy; happy for the very fact that I exist and I exist because I am happy.

PS: The titles of many of the posts are not in full and all the posts have not been included. I really want to cut down on my post lengths. Brevity is not something I was born with. When it concerns my question papers, it is a different thing ( English, again is an exception- I don’t know how many marks have I lost for writing more than I am supposed to. Ooops, there goes me being brief :-p )

Sometimes, things can go bad. But if something like this happens to you, then I’d rather term them to be very bad.

You have a Notebook, (which cannot be called a laptop); the primary Operating System installed on it is corrupt and hence it cannot boot.You have all your data on it and you have no other copy of it.The start-up DVDs are lying locked in a cupboard in a different country. No point, even considering Apple Customer Care here as an option. You know that you are the only person with an Apple computer in the place where you are living.

The other OS, goes by the name of Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. The very Operating System is raw ie. does not have anything installed on it other than the operating system itself.

Unlike raw Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2 cannot be consumed without grilling it for hours, adding lots of salt and god knows what. Mind you, I don’t know how many burns will one suffer when one has to cook this. As far as I know, I am in considerable pain. It has a characteristic property of getting decooked (whatever that means) at important occasions. Such as say talking to your oh-so-hot crush.

You install- Firefox, Messengers of all kinds, Limewire, Azureus, Acrobat Reader, Download Manager <I rather tell you when this finishes>. Then re-download all the ebooks you had downloaded on your other partition.

You download them using a internet connection which is barely 115.2 Kbps. What else you unlimited usage during the convienient hours of 10pm-6am. Downloading at morning comes at the rate of 40p per minute. That boils down to 24Rs per hour and 384 Rs per day.You don’t even have the heart to calculate it for the whole month you will be staying there.

Your father has been transferred to a small place called Kandla. Though, it is not a place worth describing either, let me leave it for another time. For you really don’t feel like going into depression anymore, recounting all this is can take a toll on anyone. Another reason probably is, that you doubt if even anti-depressants would be available in this place.

When you turned to the list you had compiled before coming here, a list which you thought makes you prepared for this place. On the list you see-

Watch all the movies you downloaded for the holidays. Hmm.. Could it be that the saved and unseen for long copy, of the movie Eurotrip corrupt the OS due to lack of use? So when people crib about compatibility, do they actually refer to A rated movies? High chance of corruption then I say to this horny OS.

Read ebooks. Oh or is the OS busy reading the collection which you so meticulously collected and downloaded. Surely, LOTR cannot corrupt it in the usual sense. Digression- What is a story without any love interest. Arwen does not coun. She was there just so that you know that Tolkiens can write poems. Was Tolkiens gay? Gawd, they keep snogging all the time even in Harry Potter.

Weren’t vacations supposed to be fun?

Well, I am late in wishing you guys. But better late than never, wishing you all a happy prosperspous blah blah blah new year. Unlike many I don’t really make new year resolutions. Er, that means that I do have a resolution of not making a resolution, dunno if that counts.

Life is good. Life is slow. Life is not good because it is slow, infact I fear it may get down to boring. Let us hope not, for it is not that easy to get bored if one has an internet connection. Internet can mean social networking and keeping up with chaps, a lots of new things and sites to catch up, movies and ebooks to download and ofcourse blogs to visit and finally update. Ebooks also mean that I am finally reading LOTR.