The three mistakes of my life by Chetan Bhagat

After my last Chetan Bhagat read (2 States – The story of my marriage), I had sworn off his books for sometime. Okay, sworn off buying them inspite of not being as heavily priced as some of the other non-authors. Quite coincidentally, I got an e-copy of the 3 mistakes of my life last week.

A thin plot around the true story of a state coming of age, the trademark masala mix of love, hate, religion, girls, egos, ambitions and Chetan has managed to produce 150 pages of it.Sometimes I wonder if many authors are languishing in us without being published, as we fail to see the obvious in making a best seller.

Post reading this, I am sure this and the next is not the last we will see of him. The business mind in him has realized it is not tough writing half baked storylines, mish mashing it with whatever is the flavour of the season (maybe swine flu or terrorism this time) to have a reasonably good seller of a book in his hands.

No wonder, he “gave up” working to write.

In awe,
Me

The Orissan Odyssey

A week’s holiday in Orissa confirmed that India is the best tourist country in the whole world, which can boast of natural beauty, superior man made architecture, and untouched simplicity of the folks out there.

 

Our trip began at Bhubaneshwar, the capital city of the state, over the Good Friday weekend. Bhubaneshwar is such a planned city that one began wondering that is Orissa a developed state already, and the media only shows us places of diametrically the opposite type to evoke sympathy. The stay at Ginger hotel was memorable – clean, efficient though a tad overpriced for the meals that are on offer.

We had hired a car earlier, to take us to the sights of Orissa. The OTDC (Orissa Tourism and Development Corporation) is helpful, and reasonable. The prices on offer are the best. We came to this conclusion after having scoured several tourism agencies, and asked acquaintances from that part of the country.

 So off we went first to the Dauli caves, the Lingaraja temple, …I am not going to describe what is there in these places. You will find a dozen other sites explaining this. But what I should mention is the magnificient structures leaves you spell bound for atleast the first 5 minutes. The lack of proper maintenance, and the argument by the local agents that you will be blessed only if you pay what they demand as parking charge for the car was daylight fleecing. It brought out in me the urge to argue with them in an unknown tongue about how the same Gods will curse them for charging dishonestly, but then I am not that adventurous either  Inspite of all this, if you keep your ears and eyes open, you are not likely to be taken for a ride in this place.

 

Any trip is incomplete without some shopping. And just to annoy my folks, I embarked on one the very first day. The sambalpur prints, and the handicrafts are way too expensive and did not particularly appeal to me. Nevertheless, bought some for fond memories.

 

The next morning was a relaxed morning at Ginger. Then we set out to Satpur, around 10 am to the Chilka lake. The heat roasted us until we melted, but what greeted us on arrival requires a poet’s description. The beautiful lake was nested amidst mountains, and one doesn’t get to see it, until one reaches the far end of the road. The stay at the OTDC resort here was not a pleasant one though, but then this seemed to be the best resort on display. The people here are scrupulously honest, and they believe in earning their living through devoted hard physical labour. Our boat ride towards the mouth of the sea is one I would cherish, amd I would not be doing justice in describing the serene waters, the sunrise, the dolphins ducking away from the boats, the sea gulls, and then vast stretches of sand suddenly out of nowhere, before we could catch sight of the blissfully clean, untouched sea waves. At that moment, God’s magnificence strikes you in all its glory. Thoughts go back to how tsunami would have raged havoc here, and thankfully how nobody was there to talk about it.

 

From there to Puri was a relaxing drive. The abode of Lord Jagannath is the quintessential tourist hub. More than once people tried to con us, and what miffed me more was that even the sacred place(temple) is not free of these conmen. To get a good glimpse of the God, you need to stuff them with money like a Christmas turkey. It left me feeling that God is much more beautiful and sacred in one’s own heart and mind, than at his worldly home. Somebody had remarked before we left on this trip, that we should be prepared to lose all the money on us when we enter the temple. And the naïve me had thought that it would be the pick pocketeers that are ubiquitous in crowded places, and I need to hold on to my valuables. It was only later that I realized this:- inside the shrine, the locals  demanded money and persisted until you parted with it for fear of them ganging up and manhandling you. No wonder the God there needs to die every 12 years and be accorded with a funeral..to relieve himself of the sins people around him commit. If you are not really religious, skip this.

 

The Chandrabagha beach and the Konark temple are different delights…one natural and the other historically engaging.

 

The entire trip lasted only a week, but left me proud on several fronts :- that I managed to plan this trip, that it was a good family holiday, that I belong to this rich, diverse country.

Sudukobese

I recently read somewhere that playing sudoko makes you fat. It further reasons that playing such mind boggling games uses will power and that will power is no longer available to do any other form of exercise. Weird logic! By this, everybody who is intelligent or for that matter, uses their mind should be fat. I seem to like the obese club better now.

Family Matters by Rohington Mistry

Read this book a while ago. It is quite an engaging family drama, engaging because the happenings are so pedestrian. The voluminous book captures quite well the varied hues of family emotion, that ever so ethereal family bonding, and the constant cribbing over money. It gets a little too boring somewhere halfway due to the unending misery, and how life revolves around just one character in the plot. But then isn’t real life by itself a glorification of how man overcomes misery. I don’t think I will pick up the book again for a second read, however I liked the ease with which the author has moved from 1 chapter to another, and kept 2 sets of stories interwined, with all the human drama intact. It also introduced me to another set of interesting characters besides the Bengalis..the Parsis. Henceforth, I shall watch out for them.

Pigs can’t fly.

Is this scare about the swine flu for real? Somehow my mind fails to comprehend the enormity and the reality of the scare, especially when only a handful of people have lost their lives to it. There are so many other burning issues, like droughts, famine, floods and AIDS, and we lose people by more than a dozen here, yet they have not created the sense of urgency as done by the H1N1.

I coaxed out the following reasons from my mind as to why I should continue to believe that all this paraphernalia about the swine flu is only a scare!

1. The manufacturers of Tamiflu, and the indigenous research organizations is to benefit from this.

2. How else can you make people flock to the doctors for a simple cold/cough or flu?

3. Get throat swabs etc. of people at airports, city entry exit points etc. and profile them to identify terrorist behavioral patterns.

4. Divert attention from the GDP decline, increase in prices and such  issues.

5. Discourage tourist income to other countries, and instead force people to enjoy vacations in their own country.

6. Even if the above reasons are not convincing..it is only a scare!!

General Nonsense

There are some people who can write absolute nonsense, day after day. But at the same time, this nonsense also sets you thinking, and leaves you amazed at the power of articulation this writer posesses.

One such writer I have admired is Scott Adams of the Dilbert fame. I was a fan of his daily strips long before his blog came into existence. Now, I am beginning to feel that his blog was the reason for many of the comic strips. He would have written a paragraph of nonsense, and then the idea in the nonsense crystallized into a doodle, which was later enhanced, or copy pasted by some great animation software.

There is one other Indian blogger who comes close to this. I am talking about krishashok. (http:// krishashok.wordpress.com) I am not yet elevating him to the status of Scott Adams, but how can somebody think up of so much delightful nonsense day in day out.

Most of time, these people are talking about everyday things. It is just the tangent at which they are thinking which makes you wonder that this alternative line of thought has a more constructive use than the original intended use.

Archie marries Veronica

There is news everywhere that Archie pops the question to Veronica (at Tate’s ??) instead of the goody gal Betty. There has been a huge outcry in the fan community about this. Are we all jumping the gun?

I would never like to see Archie comics end. Marrying Veronica will do precisely this …put an end to the delightful snobbery and romance here. So has the author a twist in store for us?

1.Like Veronica says no..being the haughty richie rich she can well afford to.
2.Like Archie pops the question and then in his characteristic manner does quite the opposite..of marrying Betty
3.Like Moose murdering Archie when he is made a pawn by Ronnie’s dad and converting the comic into a murder mystery, coz noone will suspect Moose of such cruelty
4.Like Veronica rejecting Archie and confessing that it was Reggie all along.

I can see Archie running behind Nancy Woods already. Please don’t call for Pack up as yet.

A hundred to a Zero

Would it not be nice to live life in reverse? Imagine instead of being born, you started off from the dead. It would be nice to wake up positively from the dead, and be an oldie, maybe on crutches, with no teeth, yet salivating for the best foods on earth. And then as each day progresses, you get younger, your limbs get stronger, crutches discarded, and you enjoy a fat pension post retirement phase. Move ahead to the first day at work ( actually the last day)..people celebrate your joining, you actually know many of them, they welcome you with a gift and maybe flowers. Commit more mistakes at work as you grow in experience backwards, and younger by age. (Okay, I hate the salary growing lesser part here). Exit the work life phase, enter college, live youth. Progress to school and kindergarten, kick friends around, laugh over an ice cream, chase bubbles and butterflies. Become a toddler, enjoy everybody’s attention (And this time you actually experience it), drool on them, make a mess of yours and their clothes. Retire into momma’s womb. Degenerate into an egg. And get passed out.

Wonderful.

Edited to Add on 30 Apr 09:
I swear I had not seen Benjamin Button, and was surprised to see all the controversy about a new Amitabh Bacchan movie being inspired by this one. And no, I had not heard about the Bacchchan movie either until I read it in the papers after I had written about this post.

Okay..I am not a genius.

The Police brush

It was a big white canvas.

Not a spot of guilt.

The first encounter was within their borders.

Documentation and I was in order.

But they dipped their brush in a pot of grease.

Wanted it coloured gold.

Cause the pages had a little crease.

Painted it with a silver speck.

So that it won’t show on the white deck.

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Still, the canvas was now jaundiced.

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But they say the cure could only be more plush,

Not just a stroke of the paint brush.

Greed overcame the Lord of this prey.

I tore my canvas and walked away.

Not a spot of guilt (on them)
Not a spot of guilt.(on ahem)

Of what use is an engineering degree in electrical sciences if you did not know that you have to put the plug in the socket for an electrical appliance to work?

I am not going to write here about this very obvious oversight on the part of a haughty engineer I know. This post is about more complicated things.

With half the family of the above mentioned engineer in la-la land, it was high time a web cam was bought and monkey faces sent over the high seas, like Hanuman’s lanka trips. So are web cams sold by any Spider branded companies? Wish they were. .I digress.

After what seemed like Vanavasa, a web cam was bought for a little less than a grand, and positioned as delicately as stacking eggs in the fridge, over the monitor of the desktop computer.

Before this, it was debated, for a good half hour, how good is a soundless movie to one’s kith and kin, especially with a face that does not hold the interest of even the neighbourhood dog.The microphone had completely slipped the engineer’s mind and it was not bought. You ought to overlook that, for the engineer is not a sound engineer but an electrical sciences engineer.

Then, it was noticed a tail hung from near the USB connector of the web cam, and it fitted well into the microphone socket of the computer. Whoa..this definitely ought to be capable of carrying a few decibels of sound atleast. (see see..the engineer knows all about decibels and is not a fake one)

Having got this far, the rest was easy or so the engineer thought. Plug the cable into the USB port, and wait for the lights to flicker on, and surprisingly not, the engineer sees a hazy but the famous silhouette of self. (Yeah yeah..the engineer knows all about putting in the disc, and installing drivers for the computer to recognize the new hardware as a web cam) With a pat on the back, the lens focus is adjusted to reveal a more interesting portrait of self. Grinnn.

Skype was then inaugurated in the house with as much fanfare, as the superstar’s Friday release. Mustard spluttering et al. (Cooking in the kitchen simultaneously pa) to remove evil eye.

Then came the test…ENGINEER..ARE YOU TRUE BLOODED?

The microphone carried the voice through perfectly over the web messanger. Alas, if only it was a more melodious voice, the world on the other side would have been content.

Show us your face, they demanded.

The haughty engineer shyed away at first..no, its ok, it is late in the night..it is dark here…were the pleas.

Out you come, they cried hoarse.

But how????

The camera was showing off the perfect face to self, but refused to transmit over the web as though it did not want to inflict the same on others.

Off and on the web cam, camera test, works fine.

No transmission on the web.

Plug it out and plug it in, camera test, works fine.

No transmission on the web.

Plug out the microphone, camera test, works fine.

No transmission on the web.

After several hours of the Indian standard time, and Greenwich mean time having elapsed, the bulb flickered. In the mind of the engineer, silly. (FYI, the camera lights were flickering alright)

One mighty pull and push of the USB wire into the slot again, skype on, no camera test.

EUREKA…it went through.

The famous face was splashed across the globe, making it more famous. (Loud applause like in Oscar’s)

The problem was that the web cam did not know how to function in two places, 1) over the local machine and 2) the internet. Was this the engineer’s fault?

Everyone else thinks so.

You tell me.