Postmodern Cynic

2009-07-03T13:33:00.002+05:30

God did make stuff on the 7th day. Then he looked at it and called in sick.

The world's ugliest dog show!!

In da house

2009-07-01T20:15:00.003+05:30

Plan of Action for mornings now that wife leaves early for work
1. Write that book
2. Read up on Comparative Mythology and Early Church History
3. Prepare write-up on Language and Media for PhD application to Columbia
4. Take MA in Public Administration
Reality
1. Sweep hall and bedroom (everyday)
2. Sweep guest bedroom (alternate days)
3. Mop house (every 3 days)
4. Heat breakfast
5. Eat breakfast
6. Heat lunch
7. Eat lunch
8. Sleep
9. Go to office and write blog on what a pathetic loser I am

The Story So Far..

2009-06-02T17:24:00.003+05:30

"I must post" said the rabbit
"Who u kiddin" said the wolf

Now that that has been dealt with... to more mundane matters
Marriage... check
Tranfer to new city... check
Find scary place in which somebody committed suicide to start life with new wife... check
Realise has been screwed over by real estate broker... check
Find another place to start life with new wife very fast... check
Ruin fifth-floor Tam Bram aunty's just-washed clothes with pigeon shit-mixed water... check
Forget to pay Rs.80 electricity bill and have fuse pulled out... check
Pay sneeky little watchman Rs.200 to have fuse put back in... check
Take revenge on real estate broker by sealing suicide place with fake lawyer's notice (Hindi-movie villains laugh here)... check
Deal with PMS tantrums... check
Deal with non-PMS tantrums... check
Realise loving wife is way more than you deserve... check
And here we are...

It cant get funnier..

2008-08-19T02:08:00.000+05:30

more cat pictures

Walking out to good health

2008-07-31T01:13:00.008+05:30

There are all kinds of walks that one can take to keep in shape. There is the evening walk, the morning walk, the treadmill walk, the brisk walk and so on and so forth. But all these are for the middle class pansies.
Now, what the Real men are into these days is the mother of all walks...the Walk Out.
Yesterday, the entire opposition in the Malappuram Panchayat walked out because the ruling guys were seriously enthused about the nuclear deal and passed a resolution on it. (The long-term implications of the resolution on the national and international front is expected to be cataclysmic.) After about five minutes (the normal time period for which the moral outrage of a healthy Kerala politician lasts), our troopers walked back in...only to walk out few minutes later because the ruling boys went into resolution overdrive and passed one against Jeevan and his now-famous quest for a Secular education. Now, that is some quality exercise.
I am sure that the day is not far when Jai Hind TV (quality entertainment by Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee)will have an exercise segment with our venerable Opposition Leader extolling the positive effects of the Walk Out on cholesterol and blood pressure. Of course, the other half of the programme will be taken up by Mr. Hybi Eden (the Young Turk that leads the not so Youth Congress)demonstrating more rigorous exercises for the youth,including the right way to exercise that back muscle by pushing hard against the barricade in front of Secretariat and developing those biceps with some quality stone pelting. Kairali TV (CPM + Mammootty = bad entertainment) had an idea for a similiar programme on the health benefits of the Party's mode of operation. But apparently somebody at the Information and Broadcasting Ministry told a puzzled Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan that a man is not very healthy after he is dead.

Bridal Care Unit to the rescue

2008-07-22T16:48:00.025+05:30

Parked on the roadside at the turning from the Vanchiyoor overbridge to West Fort in Trivandrum is a red van (the kind used as ambulances)with Red Rose Beauty Care written in huge letters on it and the picture of a caucasian female with a post-orgasmic smile having her lips painted bright red. It is the capital city's one and only..wait for it...Bridal Care Unit.
That van gives me palpitations every time I pass by it. It gives you the feeling that some herbal disaster could happen at anytime in some corner of the city. What if that van doesn't get there in time? What if some hapless lass overdosed on the wrong shade of mascara and is too depressed to dial the emergency number?
I have heart attacks on the days I don't see the van there. Which near-nuptial dame choked under the strain of incorrectly organised gold chains around her neck? Were they able to resuscitate her in time? Did some home remedy go horribly horribly wrong leaving the would-be bride bleached for life?
I was reassured only after I saw the ER team behind the whole thing in a pre-movie ad. There it was..the ubiquitous red van screeching in after the bride's friends called in a case of pre-marital low-self esteem. Out jumped four dames in uniform sarees with a serious Air India hangover. The ensuing slow-motion walk with determined faces and loaded make-up kits sort of redefined goose bumps for me.
The rest of the ad was Quentin Tarantino on a high-intensity diet of warm milk and boiled rice;disturbing scenes of pouting lips and fluttering eyelids being given the once over. The most graphic scene was the groom having a stroke when the bride walks in and one half of his face slips into a coma.(In what can only assumed to be a Hitchcockian touch, the babes face is never shown in its entirety...she is all red lips and plucked eyebrows.) Frozen grimace marries red lips and perfectly lined eyebrows.
There it was ladies and gentlemen, your perfect happily ever after. The Bridal Care Unit had saved the day once again. Thank you Bridal Care Unit... I will remember you the next time someone tells me that it is a progressive society.

This is the end...my beautiful friend

2008-07-21T01:06:00.004+05:30

I screwed up.
(That is a a beautiful sentence. I like that sentence for the same reason i like Oceans 11 or You’ve Got Mail...functionality. You see..it sets out with a purpose and accomplishes just that. No frills, no bullhorns on the sides going all out, no small bells and little pink ribbons all over it. It doesnt latch on to some cute phrase that happens to be around and make a fool of itself. It means to convey something and does just that ¬- some amount of self-debasement, a sense of irony and a sort of coming-to-terms with a few cosmic constants.)

So..I screwed up.The how, when and where of it will probably be known only to some middle-aged uptight prick poring over his paper knowing for certain that his alimentary canal will rise to the occasion only when he has tortured himself enough with it to satisfy his sadomasochistic outlook of life. But the limited impact zone of the error is little compensation to the narrator who is looking over his shoulder at small mushroom cloud spreading over his personal past. The shock waves have shredded the cloak of invincibility that used to reach from the bloated ego to the unsure feet. The gaping holes have exposed rotten green flesh. No longer the dirty past of cocksureness to fall back on. Mortality, that dirty little bastard, is sitting on the roadside with a smug face as I pass on.
(A long drag. A tunnel of smoke. poooofff)
Fuck.

Not my balls honey..

2008-04-02T16:41:00.016+05:30

Why is rape Rape? A question that i had been trying to resolve for quite some time, but the solution to which seemed quite elusive to the kind of reasoning i was following. No, It was not a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario. I was not trying to find some reason to implicate someone whom the public has already lynched. I was willing to accept rape as natural turn of events if my reasoning took me to that end. But then it came to me, a clarity of vison. And the verdict is...'guilty as charged'. String him up from the nearest tree. Die you cretin Die!
I started...as always..from the absence of rape in the animal kingdom. No lion forces himself on a lioness because he knows for sure that his balls would be strung across the nearest bush. On the other hand when the strongest dude with the richest mane walks down and sniffs the nether side of his choice she is one welcoming bitch...why? survival of the fittest silly!!
This is the concept that turns on its head once we get into human 'society.' In what can only be termed as a gendercide or gender cleansing, the female of the species was wiped out and replaced by..women.
Now..all ye people out there who have grown used to understanding themselves as women dont get me wrong here...I am only saying that there is much more to you than you have been allowed think of yourselves as. You have been deceived by the male populace and brain-washed members of your own species into thinking that you dont have the one thing that makes life worth living...choice. Oh well...yes, the bra-burning lot created the modern-age woman who makes her own 'choice.' The woman who 'chooses' to work hard so that she can drive a car instead of travelling by bus and get pinched in the ass. The woman who 'chooses' divorce cos her husband went and screwed her best friend (lucky bastard!). That is not choice my dears...that is just a higher level of deception. The same deception that makes you live a life-style that deteriorates you physically and makes you mentally sub-serviant. One and a half times the muscular strength, my ass. Say that to a bull-elephant trying to get on top of an uninviting female... there will be blood my dear friends; high chance it will be the fore-skin rather than the hymen. Real choice is when a male knows that it is not worth loosing his balls trying to screw a female who is not exactly looking for sex, rather than any fancy notion of "gentlemen respecting a womans integrity and her personal space."
Disclaimer - This is no grand attempt to change the system. No way there is going to be a grand 'back to nature' revolution saving the femaler gender. Just letting everybody know that this is the way things are and we are pretty much screwed till the giant people-eating cockroaches come from Ursula Minor and eat all the people.

At the age of 25

2008-03-10T18:35:00.005+05:30

At the age of 25, driven men and women around the world are pursuing academic goals, working for a cause, contributing to the economy, holding up social values, obeying the moral code, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. But, if asked what is it that drives them, most of them are suddenly faced with an immense vacuum which they try to fill up with words like academic pursuits, the cause, economy, social values, moral code etc.
On the other hand, there is another breed of men, such as yours truly…
He knows exactly what drives him… What gives him focus and clarity of vision…What motivates him to wake up each day…And what makes hard work appear tolerable…
Caffeine, Nicotine and Alcohol

Ode to the Baby Boomers

2008-02-06T18:04:00.001+05:30

The generation that produced hippies, made pot sound cool and gave the world Pink Floyd...oh, the world was a different place in the 60's! Baby Boomers rock!!
(Note: These are the musings of a post-Liberalisation Indian who chose a diet of Joseph Heller and Cold War literature over Cable-fed Micheal Jackson in the 90's. Any notion of the author as being a white American male in his 30's is quite understandable)

Gods Apprentice (Or How A Superhero Was Not Born)

2007-08-31T15:24:00.001+05:30

Late 1982 or early 1983 (Converting Earth years to the Celestial Calendar is not an exact science)

Being an apprentice doesn’t work out all that great for the ego but he was not complaining. He had a neat package waiting for him; a God given job, a Heavenly salary and a Hell of a stock option. He just had to get this one little thing right.

bip…bip…bip…bip…BLEEEP…damn busy signal…the multi-dimensional network thingy was starting to get on his nerves.

The rumour was out that he would be put in charge of the whole western spiral end of the Milkyway galaxy…the area he has worked on the most. A bit down market but it was a good start. It came with some troubles though.
The one populated planet in the area was so far down the drain that the Boss was thinking of burning it up and claiming insurance… the Apocalypse strategy. Boss had always been pissed with the place after His effort in the previous quarter to resurrect the place by sending in his best Man didn’t show the results he had hoped for.

“System ready… please load programme,” said the tinny voice out of nowhere…finally… he hit the buttons.

Oh well, he was also partly to blame for the fiasco. He had thought that the Pillar of cloud by day - Ball of fire by night was a neat thing to do, and that too on his first job. How was he to know that his final coordinates for the Chosen Ones were over the one place in the Middle East with no oil? There was a hell to pay. The whole balance of power thingy was affected and there was an immediate take over bid from the Devil. Then somebody had to sit up through the millennia and come up with the Renaissance plan with that brilliant Capitalism spin off. A whole new continent had to be put in place and a strategic relocation initiated but it was serious fun.

“Programme loaded… please specify deliver parameters,” he checked the calendar and typed in the date and time of delivery.

Things were going fine till the Finance Guys screwed up and went ahead with that George Bush Jr. project. They said it had something to do with the Accumulated Wisdom of the Ages having to be balanced with an equal amount of stupidity or something like that. It was very complicated. The Future Affairs cell immediately reported a failure in the system. They suggested Total Recall, but the Finance guys said it was too late for a Miracle. That was when God got serious about that Apocalypse strategy of His.

God…! He suddenly remembered that’s what he forgot… the Divine Intervention!! It was too late to use the Angel service… The only way out was the Emergency Prayer Hotline, but God just didn’t get along well with that after all those prank calls started coming over the direct line from Vatican…Damn!!

Oh, what the hell…this one was clean…after all this was not the first time he is handling the delivery of a Genius to Save Humanity package. He had handled Einstein… he even got an award for that. This was supposed to be bigger though, the first one in the newly created Pre-Apocalypse World Saviours series. It was pretty much the same as the old Knights series, but with a jacked-up Brain – Brawn configuration. “This is my last attempt on that miserable place,” God had said, “If this one doesn’t work I am withdrawing the budget and going in for Apocalypse.”

He rechecked the checklist; all seemed fine. “Alright, here goes nothing,” he pressed the delivery button. The green loading bar appeared on the screen. With the heavy configuration, this one was going to take some time, even over broadband. He leaned back and relaxed. The manual for the series was lying on the table; he glanced over it.

SHIT!! ABORT!! ABORT!!

“Package Delivered…System ready to reboot…” said the tinny voice.
DAMN… Those buggers in Design had changed the whole things around…!! The jacked-up Brain-Brawn configuration was a separate file. It had to be cut and paste to the original programme before sending. The only thing inbuilt in the programme was the Super Inflated Ego code…!! A whole lot of good that’s gonna do…!!
He had managed to bungle it up. He lifted the Hotline set and dialled extension 42.

“Heaven…We have a problem.”

10 months later

The English professor looked down at the bundle that lay on the hospital bed in an unfashionable area on the doomed planet on the western spiral end of the Milkyway galaxy. “God… I could do without this one,” he said in an almost Hamletian soliloquy. “Alright,” he said, turning to his wife and the three kids hanging around her bed, “I know just what to call this one…”

THE END

The Idiots Guide to Travelling Postures On Trains

2007-08-23T16:04:00.000+05:30

The Intelligent Type – This is a slightly expensive stance to adopt because it means purchasing at least a magazine (Frontline is overkill, Outlook is good enough) or at the bare-minimum level, a newspaper (The Hindu puts you in a ridiculous minority but the appearance is what we are going for). It also means funds for a regular flow of watery Railway coffee to keep you from nodding off over the magazine/paper and totally blowing your cover.
The Poetic Type – This is a very physically demanding position since it calls for maintaining a silly smile on your face and craning out of the window for the entire length of the journey. You should be passably good at acting to appear sufficiently moved by the cow shitting on the grass.
The Business Type – Must keep constantly fiddling with your mobile phone. Send random messages and make imaginary phone calls. Make agonised expressions while scanning through official looking papers. Wear leather shoes and stiff shirt even if it is 35° C outside.
Fast Asleep – This is unquestionably the safest and the most desirable position to adopt. Whether it be lavishly spread out on the top berth of a sleeper compartment, or in a semi-foetal position on a seat in a passenger, or the simple yet effective open mouthed-upright-ass based stance near the bathroom door in un-reserved, the Fast Asleep stance gives you immunity from all unwanted interferences from over-social elements and the Aunty-Uncle phenomena. It does — particularly the open-mouthed stance — put you in the lower strata of the intelligence quotient in the compartment, but the advantages definitely outweigh the temporary lowering of your Mensa status.

South Indian Idle and Sombre

2007-08-18T19:02:00.000+05:30

The side-effects of an idle life..

Starts to believe that the answer to life the universe and everything is indeed 42
Is revered by the secret society of intelligent mobile phones for being the only human to be crowned grandmaster in their ritualistic cyber-world chess matches.
Is known as Taksjangka (‘The big evil squashing hand’ in insect speak) in the ant kingdom and has currently replaced Yavalkaqwa (‘Crushing black rubber boot’) as the greatest natural disaster to befall the ant community of Room No. 28.
Becomes reigning international champion in blindfolded television remote operation, which was subsequently banned by the IOC for being a blood sport.
Gets invited by the CIA for being the only known human immune to the smell of burnt mosquito coil concentrated with tobacco smoke, which precedes most of their WMDs on the toxic scale.

Chip of the old block

2007-02-06T14:46:00.000+05:30

It came as quite a surprise when I found that I had to look seven years into my past to find someone who is of some influence in my life. In the event of such an exercise one expects to find some larger than life image from the past looming over your present with every intention of being there in your future. But the face I came up with was that of my father, a person to whom I hadn’t given much thought recently.
He was a hard man (I am letting the past tense deal with matters of life, death and timelines), with the remnants of a harder father ingrained in him. He drove a hard bargain with life by bringing up four children when he couldn’t afford one. He pushed his children in positively draconian ways which left deep scars in the form of ‘Dr’ tags and voracious reading habits.
He was born in a small village near kottayam in kerala called Aymanam (The life and times of which better minds than me have described). From there the family of eight migrated to the coastal town of Alappuzha where I believe the Conrad in him was born. His father was boiler engineer in a British coir factory who came home with the remaining steam and vented it on three teenage boys. One ran away and joined the navy, one joined the Naxal movement and one started reading T.S.Eliot.
Ironically he was also a professor of English. I say ironic because hardness doesn’t fit in with the traditional notions of an English Professor. But here was a man who was both, with either of these characters appearing at various times and in various shades with no sense of occasion. He literature was orthodox, that is to say he was a modern in a post-modern age. He used to read out to me poems he wrote which had me thinking of inconsequentialities before I learnt to spell that word. It was only after I read Wasteland that I began to see definite parallels.
I remember one instance when he took his youngest, a boy of thirteen, to see his first James Bond movie. The combination of Walther PPK’s and semi naked white women sent the first drops of testosterone coursing through the adolescent veins and on the late night walk back home anything was possible, all the villains of this world could be thrashed and all the beautiful women won. He said something to that effect to his father and the English professor with a very existential tone asked “so?.” I have been very critical of Mr. Bond ever since and went on to take an MA in English Literature.

The tiny voive speaks..

2006-07-10T17:32:00.000+05:30

For all who have had their ingrained servility to social institutions shaken by the below entry..It is a view on relegion not on Faith..on Church not on Jesus..on church doctrines not on the teachings of Christ..I am a guy who is learning the ropes of faith..but who has this little thing against established relegion

The Church & Associates Ltd™

2006-07-09T23:48:00.000+05:30

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen..
Let me welcome u all to a presentation on the largest business conglomerate in the world, a corporation that has been successfully trading in the established religion business since 544 AD.. A production chain that has brought into the market such successful products as Jesus Christ© and The Bible©.. An institution that has a higher gross turnover than most mid-sized nations in the world.. Ladies and Gentlemen.. I give you.. The Church & Associates Ltd™..!!
Many of you may not know the role played by the great founder of this enterprise, Sir Constantine, in laying the solid foundations on which this great institution still stands.. It was he and his team of brilliant market analysts, campaign managers and marketing experts who turned the life of a simple carpenter,and that too of Jewish descent,into such a marketable product.. a product that the market at that time was waiting for.. It was literally..A saviour..!!
From then on there has been no turning back.. It was a wave that was to create ripples in the farthest islands of the Pacific.. A storm that would shake the leaves in the deepest jungles of Africa..The blessing that would shower upon the parched lands of the Indian subcontinent. It acquired a brand equity that is unparalleled and a brand loyalty unto death.
The company continued undeterred even when faced with stiff competition in the Middle East market from Islam™ and when the Marketing dept split in the 1500’s owing to a difference in opinion on strategy. It currently runs numerous divisions and formulates specific products to reach specific age groups, time periods and mindsets. It is this versatility that has guaranteed its survival over the centuries.. An ability to spin out newer versions and yet retain the market value of the old..
And it is to this sheer grit and power of survival that we shall all now all raise our chalices and say Amen..

Scribe in the making

2006-07-05T23:26:00.000+05:30

How the world will react to the poison that’s to flow from the tips of this cynics fingers remains to be seen..but as of now this unsuspecting world has chosen to take the risk and has sent this demented mind to be trained for the profession of men who are either cynical, perverted or stoned, and of women who are inevitably hyperventilating activists.
Cold calculating ambition notwithstanding (Technicolor dreams of Reuters and 30K) I think I am going to fit right in..

My role model

2006-07-03T12:19:00.000+05:30

Picture Perfect

2006-06-28T14:52:00.000+05:30

All hail the Gods of Olympus(TM)..!! (Photography..the latest craze..or rather heights of joblessness)

Closet case

2006-06-28T14:29:00.000+05:30

Sitting in a room filled with designer shit pots is a scary ordeal..and that’s exactly the situation in which I found myself today as I went shopping for a bathroom makeover. To be outnumbered by shitpots that cost more than your gross self worth is rather stressful for the ego. It gives one the feeling of being stuck in the Freudian anal phase and retaining more than one can hold.
To turn the spot-light on to the protagonists themselves, there were all sorts of them, Desis, Phirangis, Upper class, Middle class, Lower class.. literally a gold mine for the postcolonial Marxist thinker. The colonial hangover is what struck me the most. The European avatar of the critical object seem to have the clear upper hand in the market, with its Indian counterpart relegated to the dark recesses of the shop. It is brought out shamefully when the cringing NRI son, building in bricks that desert induced nightmare of his, whispers the order as a result of his ageing mothers last stand against progress; the sovereignty of her bum.

The Rainman

2006-06-28T00:04:00.000+05:30

(Forgive me for waxing romantic a bit here... it’s inevitable.. even the KTDC is waxing romantic, they have pics of semi nudes bathing in the falling rain all over the place.. that’s beaurocratic romance in Kerala).

Cold..Dark...The incessant sound of the unseen rain pattering patterns on the roof. Nostalgia sprouts on a mind left wet by memories of a distant childhood shower..and the heart finds peace knowing its home..

Fate & Me

2006-06-27T23:53:00.000+05:30

Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony.. I mean why is it that the inherent sense of irony and that ‘ I have seen it all and I don’t care’ attitude comes to the one guy in the family who cant afford it?.. it was not as if our father in heaven didn’t have a choice.. Our father here (god rest his soul) in all his wisdom (sense of humour rather) gave the almighty plenty of choice, Why not the big brother? He is the real McCoy, The man with the brains and the bank account.. Nope, He had to be the hallelujah guy…why? ‘Cos his tithe itself could buy heaven in all its glory? Cant blame the almighty though.. Its boom town and everyone’s looking for a profit.. But the bro would rather be the prophet.. Why not the sisters? With the Dr’s attached to their respective names they could pretty much afford it.. Nope, the medical Dr cant afford to have it... how apt is it going to be if she were to feel that bloated liver and give that ironic smirk that affects me in similar situations or look at that scalpel and say I have seen it all (a tendency to which I am so given) we have to give it to our man in heaven for keeping it from her.. Nor can the agri Dr be it.. There has to be the other extreme in somebody right, helps keep the gene thingys from biting their own tails.. So she had to be the one with the ‘I care a lot and I do give a damn’ attitude.. So it had to be me.. The one to be the lonely bearer of the family cross.. Cant say god didn’t equip me though.. With an MA in English I am the master of rhetoric.. Not that it lessens the load but it lets me in inflict it a bit on others.. A sort of sadistic relief .

The Simple Sadistic Pleasures of Life

2006-06-27T23:46:00.000+05:30

I don’t have anything in particular against spiders..or against ants or against any of those creepy crawlies that inevitably find their way into my domain as the rain spreads its watery wings outside..but still I kill’em..every one of ‘em. Maybe its the mere orgasmic pleasure of getting ones gun off (in this case a sleek black bottle of ‘Hit’).. But I would like to believe that it’s just one of them simple sadistic pleasures in life.. The mere cold enjoyment of spraying a lethal dose of toxic vapours on an unsuspecting spider and watching it slowly squirm and die..No..i did not have a disturbed childhood..Nor do I have suppressed desires and fetishes..Am a very very normal guy… Maybe I do have a slight suicidal tendency knowing how much that stuff is getting me too and this killing spree is just an excuse to take as many with me as I go down with guns(eh..aereosol..) blazing..or maybe its just a simple sadistic pleasure in life..

not procrastinating..

2005-11-23T12:38:00.000+05:30

i know i know..no postings..no write ups..what a dull guy..i just want to let all ye people know that i aint missing in action..just too caught up with the affairs of the world..presently singing..or rather preparing to sing gloria to celebrate the birthday of a dude born 2000 years ago..strange occupation for a post modern cynic i know..but what to do..strange are the ways of this world..and stranger the people..reading Fyodor Dostoyveskys Karamazov Brothers now(again..) for anyone who is interested to know..will update on thwe critical opinion soon

terminal effect

2005-11-12T20:25:00.000+05:30

Dont be taken in completely by the "cynic" tag.. you got a bit of a roimantic here too..for starters Iwas watching this movie Terminal the other day..one of the most touching movies i have seen. Tom Hanks at his hysterical best and Spielberg in his most sensitive avatar (for those of you who thought he could put feelinng only into lost aliens a giant t rex's here is one movie to watch)..you get to see this side of him in Schindlers List but there the context generates most of the sentiment but here it is the camera that speaks...!! i mean to put so much philosophy (yup there is a lot of that if you didnt realize..) into the single idea of a man waiting. and Tom Hanks..all hail..!! a single man holding on to a can of jazz in a mad rush airport.. a picture of contrasts.. a study of priorities..his single statement "i wait" speaks volumes