Its a plane. Its superman. No, its… a Godwit !
7,200 miles non-stop on one engine… Good God, Godwit ! A world record of the longest bird-flight ever recorded in the history of the birdkind. From Alaska to NewZealand across the pacific ocean, this bird may have little wings and the body that will fit in your hands, but its heart is as big as boeing 777’s.
I wonder how it got its name – The “Bar-Tailed” Godwit. I guess one must be either crazy or really drunk to take onto this ordeal.. Do these little birds have a little bar somewhere in the jungles of Alaska ?
Hick, I gotta go to NewZealand, Hick!! Load me up ! its frikking 7200 miles and thats not counting the detours, Either I am crazy and I am really drunk.. Whooo hoo !!! I feel good. Lets go Godwits, lets show the Geese, terns and the pintails what we are made of!
Here is your map, see you across the world !!
The Box Revolution! – An Autobiography
Prologue-
Every time I move out of a place, a barrage of boxes comes with me, some of them that were never even opened but mysteriously manage to cling on… like there is a ‘boxed’ conspiracy going on… but I was wrong… not just a conspiracy, it’s a revolution. Here is the autobiography of a box that I had a chance to converse to in my living room during ‘after-move-slumped-down-resting-period’.
The Autobiography-
I still remember the day like it happened yesterday. Or perhaps it did. I am still dazed. I was young, freshly off the assembly line from the recycling facility, full of new ideas within me. My name is Brownine and I am a box. My friends called me Mr. Idea box – I always thought inside the box, and I was looking ahead to my future. I was built strong – double layered recycled cardboard hemmed across all of my edges. I was the state of the art box, ready to tackle the most difficult tasks of the world. I even had two little openings on my sides for humans to stick their hands right by my neck to pick me up. I liked humans. I looked at them cheerfully and aspired to hold true to their beliefs that I can hold great things. It started as the happiest day of my life when this human picked me up. I don’t know his name or don’t understand the language. All the humans look exactly the same to me. Nonetheless, I was very happy.
They called him the ‘Leader-Box’, the heaviest of us all, sitting in the dead center of the ‘The Box World’, filled with magazines and old text books, thus carrying the wisdom of the old and the new and revered equally among all the boxes of the free world, including the spare kitchen-dishes box and the extra-cleaning-supplies-bought-from-Costco-and-long-forgotten box. He must be able to sense
that our box world is about to collapse. I think he got his clue from the sudden change in our environment, with suitcases (always alien to us) beginning to disappear mysteriously one by one and the new boxes like me started coming in their places. I could never find out how he did it. I was in awe of him, despite his age evident by his outer shell, he was sitting tall carrying the entire load and with the voice that would shake the world. I immediately knew what I would want to become in my life, if I lived as long as he did. How many great things he has seen, how many great box-worlds he has been to, I wondered!
The great leader box called upon a meeting of all the boxes of the free-box world; old and new, big and small, native and foreign (with their flat smooth surfaces), even those fancy little boxes who brought the greatest gizmos known to mankind, Ipods and Laptops, with their countless silky-smooth flaps, never belonged with us brown ones, but show up anyway in the spirit of ‘Boxity’ (just like humanity for you, O my human friend).
He said – ‘How can we solve this ages-old problem of the complete destruction of our environment by these vicious humans? They love us when they bring us in but then leave us in this dark, damp god-forsaken place to rot with all these moths and silver fish crawling in us… and when we finally accept out fate, they move us out of here! How cruel can they be?’
“Not anymore!” said the leader box, “we shall retaliate; we shall get together and make them suffer! I say let’s make them remember each time they put their hands on any one of us, for the years and years to come…. You can take a Box out of storage space… but you can never take storage space out of a box! We’ll store so much that they’ll have tears when picking us up. I say let’s get heavy….fill yourselves up to the top … and then some!! I say lets get sharp… you, Flatpan, my dear kitchen box friend, put those knives out, so that you get at least one of them…. I say LET’S GIVE THEM HELL! Now, I understand that some of us may not survive this ordeal, but it’s the sacrifice I am willing to make. And to prove that, I am going to weigh so much that if any human comes near me, they’ll bleed through their fingers!!! O the sweet victory, I can taste it now!!
So excited was the world that the boxes started ripping apart the tapes that held them together, some of them made holes in them and let more bugs come in and eat away the precious old clothes (to be donated to salvation army) and little newspaper clippings they were holding… the kitchen boxes pushed the knives right through them to support the cause….. Even the boxes with carrying the linens got right next to the wall to collect dirt and the rain water that seeped through.
It was beautiful.
I, in all this excitement, got my flaps on some old chemical engineering and Forbes magazines that were lying around in one corner. I put all of them inside me, but still had some more room left, so I started picking up the small boxes and tossed them right inside me. I was bulging from all the places. I was the biggest of them all… and the heaviest! And that was the moment when I felt it. I knew how the leader box got all his wisdom. I was dreaming. I was dreaming finance. I was dreaming chemistry. I suddenly started understanding the world around me, the human world.. It was amazing. I started forgetting where I was, I just wanted to do some experiments and make a lot of money! I wanted to be the Einstein of the Wallstreet!
A gentle yet firm flap on my back from the Leader-box brought me back to the box-world, and he said to me, “It’s a boon to know all these things, yet it’s a curse to carry them. Knowledge is power and with power comes responsibility, whether you want it or not”.
Nevertheless, the day dreaded by all of us finally came … I never saw such pain, such misery, and such sacrifice in my life. It was a massacre. Never saw so many boxes dying, their flaps just flapping away like the wood chips back in the factory. I wouldn’t know where to begin and where to end the events that took place that day. So I’ll just leave them for now as a memory within me. I still cry for that day, so much that I started growing mold. Our Leader sacrificed himself. For us. We shall never forget him. Never.
Now, I am the leader of whatever world is left of us… and I feel him in me, literally, since you put his flaps inside me, to make me even stronger.. Even after his death he lives on! O my great leader box. I salute you!
Epilogue-
Every now and then I visit the storage room to dump more stuff in it to help rebuild his new box-world. The new leader is still strong, waiting patiently for the time when he would start a revolution. If it had eyes they’d have been RED. One of these visits, I asked him if he was something else, anything, what would he want to be? He said, “A Collapsible Plastic bin”.
Article
Just an update on professional front for a change. An article written by me was recently published in Bioprocessing International yearbook. and soon to be published in another one known as The Bioprocessing Journal. Its about optimizing hydrolysate supplementation in cell culture medium. Check it out, if you are in that sort of thing…
here is the description:
God and I
I wonder what happens after one dies. Since I am a Hindu I know that I will be coming back to earth in another life-form, but first I’ll have to go through the whole process of interviewing with the God. Its our perception from endless movies that when people die, they go through the clouds towards a bright light up in the sky.. always! and if they are going to hell, they go through fiery red pit of fire with strange looking tentacled hands grabbing the poor towards it. Why is it so? Who knows what happens after you die.. you are not there to tell your stories to a live person anymore now are you?
I think it works a little differently. I think right after the death, God comes down to wherever you are … I think this would be the sort of conversation I ‘d have with God when my time comes.
God: Hi
I: Hi
God: Do you know me?
I: uhh…. No. Who are you?
God: I know who you are, I have seen you your whole life. I am GOD
I: No way! How can you be God? You look exactly like me!
God: And so does this body of yours which is lying down right behind you.
I: body? What body?? Wait a minute… I am dead??? How did this happen?
God: How, when and why is not important. More important is the fact that your soul is no longer in that body, and we have to make a decision whether you deserve to go to hell or to heaven.
I: But God, I gotta tell you.. its really hard for me to call you ‘God’ since you look exactly like me and my whole life I’ve prayed to the most beautiful idols around the world calling them God.
God: Well, I can change my shape to anything you like but trust me, in this job, its really hard to come with the most satisfying’s God’s face, if you know what I mean. Besides, Its hard enough to take care of everything that’s going on in this world and the other 5 million worlds all over this universe that I am managing, and be there each and every single time when someone dies to have this chat I am having with you, that I stopped bothering myself to try to find the best appearance. This has helped me avoide so endless list of questions like oh I never thought you’d look like this or Are you sure you are God and not just another agent trying to sell me Quickstar? It shudders me when I think about those times and don’t even get me started on the languages and the places where some of these creatures speak from…
I: ok, ok I get the point.. U know what, you sound exactly like me! Whining all the time!
God: Well, now you know why everyone tried to avoid you.
I: Ha. Ha.. very funny!
God: And as they say in.. err, what’s the path that you follow to get to me?
I: I follow the religion called Hinduism
God: Oh yea, that’s right.. on Earth you call it religion and you follow Hinduism… yea, as they say in Hinduism that I am in everything, even within you..
I: that’s Buddhism
God: Ah, same thing.. and Didn’t that come out of Hinduism?
I: Point!
God: Well then, what’s your problem of me being appearing exactly like you.
I: Hmm.. I guess that’s why you are the manager of the whole universe.. you can talk yourself out of anything
God: Not just the manager my dear, I am the owner!
I: Right. So I guess its time for me to say – Hello God, its very nice to meet you finally.
God: Well said
I: So, What’s next?
God: Oh not much, I pretty much know everything about you, even the things that you don’t know about yourself. So, I just need to ask you one question before I decide your fate for the rest of the eternity.
I: and what would that be?
God: Do you feel lucky? Do you…. Punk?
I: O cmon’, you are the GOD, the creator, the owner of this world and this is what you come up with to define the rest of my time, an old clichéd Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry line?
God: Whaaaat? I like this line and who do you think Clint got this line from? He came back on earth after one of these conversations with me!
I: What? So does that mean there is a chance of me going back to earth and live some more?
God: Sure.. if that’s what I have for you in mind, then why not! But chances are very slim for you ..almost nil
I: That’s unfair!
God: I know.. face it ! I am just kidding.. naa, Clint was a special case.. you on the other hand are a nothing!
I: wow, that’s a little too honest, don’t you think? I thought I was may be a ’something’ in life.
God: Nope, Sorry.. you are just one out of billions. a teeny meeny nothing.. you are as inconspicuous as a one pixel out of 10 million pixels on a 2 inch lens.
I: Its very visible if its missed.
God: Point!
I: Well, then who would be a ‘something’ that gets the honor of getting back to earth .. and I am talking about Humans
God: Well put.. just to name a few.. James Bond, Spider Man, Superman – although he is not human, Batman and my favorite Krish… he is young but he is coming up very fast.
I: But they are all fictional characters!!!! None of them are real!!
God: Really? Not even Krish?
I: NO!!!
God: Aww man!!! I knew there was something wrong when I saw him jumping the buildings like that.
OK fine.. down to business.. So I have decided to send you to Hell!
I: Wait, no.. please give me a chance. I can do better in heaven.. just one chance.
God: dude.. say something that I haven’t heard before
I: ok.. “Abreadasg dfklasnf;ow dflkdfwr kslkjAD&^$S”
God: Nice try.. but I have heard that too…. Its final, you are going to hell.. Bye bye, until we meet again !!
I: No wait, please.. ok at least tell me before you go which planet can I get more petrol on?
Pufff!!!!! There I was.. in hell.. it looked so gloomy.. all grey no other color, just a screen in front of me and a key board barely hanging off of a hand-support with clicking sounds coming from all over.. I found myself sitting in a blue cloth ergonomic chair with my feet on the foot rest. I was back in my 6×6 cubicle!
This is indeed hell..
The Guide
The most wholly remarkable book in the entire known universe, with DON’T PANIC written in the bold letters is called “THE GUIDE”. A must-have for an intergalactic hitchhiker to survive and thrive in the immeasurable inky-dark voids what we call the universe. Douglas N Adams – a genius, an earthling, a homosapien with 99% of its own DNA matching to a far less superior bipedal primate, wrote the story of another homosapien living in the spleen of England, Arthur Dent, whose friend – with a slight chance of being a girlfriend, Tricia McMillian a.k.a. Trillian, the only girl who had given him any attention in his whole life, was taken away by the president of the Universe with two heads – Zaphod Beeblebrox, whose best friend – Ford Prefect, was from another planet, and whose home – Planet Earth was destroyed by Vogons to build an intergalactic highway.
I’d quote the entire series of his works but there are copyright issues… so here are few which I really like..
The Guide on the Alcohol
Accroding to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the effects of drinking one of these is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.
To get more details on -
i. On which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are brewed ?
ii. How much you can expect to pay for one ?
iii. Which voluntary organizations exist to help you recover afterwards ?
iv. And last but not least, how can you mix one yourself ?
- read the guide!
The Answer
The answer to the universe , life and everything else is……….42
Conversation between GOD and Man
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. Q.E.D.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
GOD’s last message
WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
Life of Arthur Dent
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Thoughts of a Whale and a bowl of Petunia falling from the sky
“And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like… ow… ound… round… ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?”
“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again.”
A Duck
i. One’s never alone with a rubber duck.
ii. “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
Learning to Fly
“There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
The Point of View
“It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.”
Zaphod Beeblebrox – The president of the Universe
i. “There is nothing wrong with my sense of reality. I have it thoroughly serviced every fortnight”
ii. “If there’s anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.”
Marvin, the depressed paranoid Android
i. Why stop now, just when I’m hating it?
ii. “That ship hated me,” Marvin said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.
“That ship?” said Ford in sudden excitement. “What happened to it? Do you know?”
“It hated me because I talked to it.”
“You talked to it?” exclaimed Ford. “What do you mean you talked to it?”
“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin.
“And what happened?” pressed Ford.
“It committed suicide,” said Marvin
iii. “`The first ten million years of the universe were the worst,’ said Marvin, `and the second ten million, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.’”
iv. “That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.”
v. “Here I am, brain as big as a planet ….”
vi. Marvin’s lullaby
Now the world has gone to bed
Darkness won’t engulf my head
I can see by infra-red,
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
vii. Marvin: “I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.” Zem: “Er, five.” Marvin: “Wrong. You see?”
viii. “Ha! What do you know of always? You say ‘always’ to me, who, because of the silly little errands your organic life forms keep on sending me through time on, am now thirty-seven times older than the Universe itself?”
ix. “Life? Don’t talk to me about life”
Being Ejected in the Space from a Vogon Ship
“So … er, what happens next?” “Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds of course …” said Ford. He stuck his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum an old Betelgeusian battle hymn. To Arthur’s eyes he suddenly looked very alien. “So this is it,” said Arthur, “we’re going to die.” “Yes,” said Ford, “except … no! Wait a minute!” he suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried. “What? Where?” cried Arthur twisting round. “No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.”
The Universe
i. “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
ii. “There’s a theory that states that if someone ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There’s another theory that says that this has already happened.”
The Air
“The air seemed to stand still around them, waiting. Arthur wished that the air would go away and mind its own business.”
The Normality
“Please do not be alarmed by anything you see or hear around you. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you.”
The Past
“how can i tell that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”
Poetry
Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
Drunk
“What’s so bad about being drunk?” “Go ask a glass of water.”
The Mighty Ships and a small dog
For thousands of years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across – which happened to be the Earth – where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
The Destination
Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
I Refuse
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer…”
Few more good ones – Uncategorized
i. “One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continuously stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day,’ or ‘You’re very tall,’ or ‘Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?’”
ii. Did you realize that most people’s life are governed by telephone numbers?
iii. what the photon is it?
iv. “We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty”,
v. “Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock”
vi. “She was trying hard to remember what it was that she was trying to forget”
vii. anything that happens, happens. anything that in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.it doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
My acting career
Just sitting here on a lazy afternoon… doing what I do best, watching a movie on the telly, ‘The Producers’, all about producing a broadway play!
I remembered the time when I acted on a stage in a play. The venue was my school, class XI and the occasion was a farewell party to the final year students.
The entertainment program was completely organized by Class XI students… which would be us. So, a great idea was to put up a stage show, a bollywood style play with a dashing story line of romance, action, drama .. emotions.. you name it, we had it… even had a song with hero-heroine dancing around a fake paper tree ..
The story was simple, girl meets boy, both like each other, villain likes girl and takes her away, boy fights and they live happily ever after.
The story even had a Muneem ji… if you ask me, who would that be, I highly recommend watching a Hindi movie from 70s and 80s era, pick any movie with your eyes closed and look for a character with bent back, a black/white Gandhi cap, a pair of glasses barely sitting on the nose and tied to a string going around his neck, a black vest with white dhoti and an umbrella in his hand… just in case if it is too hot or rainy.. and we had just the right person to do it.. Ashish!
Asif, a buddy of mine wrote the script and I got a role of the hero… yup, I always knew I had it in me…, found a villain in Faisal, another buddy of mine… and the talent hunt started for the heroine…. After all, I needed someone who would be as dashing as I was to act with me (Ahem!)… so we couldn’t find anyone… Finally, we got a girl to agree to act after lot of convincing (read begging), now forgetting her name very conveniently…. And the practice began…we practiced for 15 days every day.
Now acting and dancing was one thing, singing…. while acting and dancing was another. Especially in the age when a boy’s voice box is trying to decide if it wants to be a heavy-voice voice-box or if it wants to sound like a girl.. so every now and then there were these sudden slip of the pitch from Flat G to the E… in other words, like someone just hit a donkey and it shrieked… so we decided to use the ‘tape recorded’ song from the movie and not actually sing it live …. Good move!
After 15 days of practicing, we felt pretty comfortable with the dialogs, the action scenes and the dancing… two days left from the D day and we started working on the props…. I still remember the moment when this happened. We were in a class room with all the chairs pushed aside and trying to figure out how to keep that fake tree precariously balanced on a small wooden chair… quite a task in itself, if you ask me…. Walks in the girl, the heroine, and says, “I can’t do it!”. It suddenly felt like that earth stopped revolving and there was no air in the room (later we realized the fan was off!) and the sweat came rolling down right by the ear… Asif, started getting angry and but was kept under control by brute force by the rest…. The tension in the room was such that if it was loaded on a spring and shot up, we might as well have landed on Moon.
I don’t remember exactly what happened for next 30 – 45 minutes, but when we walked out of that class room, there were few changes in the casting…. For some reason, when we walked out of room, Asif was playing the hero and I ………… ended up being the heroine! I still don’t know how it happened… (Was it my shrieking voice during singing? Or was it Asif’s heavier moustache than mine?) Nevertheless, it happened!
Now, the script was not a problem, Asif was the director, so remembered all the dialog, and so did I as I made everyone to learn their parts and memorized everything myself too.
Then came a question about costume… I was scrounging for a girl costume to my sisters, and when she didn’t agree, ‘borrowed’ a skirt and a top from her closet (It’s still borrowing if you return it back). I dressed up as a girl, vehemently denied to shave my legs and my freshly seeing its first-few-days-of-life moustache (A Rajput’s moustache is his Respect; well it was that until I went to college and shaved them off), even when my friends begged me to do it.
Finally, the D day arrived…. Faisal brought me a hat from somewhere and asked me to hide my face as much as possible behind it on the stage…. I really didn’t see the point how that’s going to help in people not noticing that the heroine is actually a guy… if not my moustache, then my hairy legs would have given it away… the skirt only came down to the mid-calves, didn’t have any stockings (didn’t think about that until the last moment) and socks didn’t really do the job to cover those babies on which I proudly stand. And even if that went unnoticed, for few could have confused me still with the non-male species of this planet (I humbly apologize for mentioning this, but in my college years we believed that if the girls (non-males) in our college were sent off from planet earth, the average beauty of earth would increase exponentially)… as soon as I’d have opened my mouth, it was all over.. I mean… one would have to be blind and deaf to not know that I was a guy wearing girl’s costume… and I was really hoping that at least one person in the audience would be just that!
The play began, and we already knew the result… the audience looked like just want to see when we ran leaving the stage so they can laugh on us… but we waited them out, once we started, we didn’t stop… and the time came when the heroine (I) entered the stage. I still remembered that moment, I stepped up on the stage from one end and I was supposed to walk to the other end and say ‘Pitaji main college ja rahi hoon’ to my play-dad. I wore the hat at an agle so that my face was hidden and walked across looking away from the audience into the back wall. I looked like a Victorian woman with the big summer hat, top and this long skirt (with my shoes.. couldn’t get my wide feet in anything else), and I am sure eurpoean as well (thanks to my hairy legs). My heart was beating at a pace that even Stuart Little would say, eh! Take it easy…. woman!’. While walking across the stage, I heard a whistle from somewhere in the back of the audience.. poor guy didn’t know what was going on.. or may be I found the blind guy I was looking for… but Alas! the silence prevailed as soon as I spoke…. One can’t get everything in life I guess, I was really hoping him to turn out deaf.
Rest of the play I don’t remember, but when the ordeal was over and the audience completely forgot about the play when they saw the dance program that followed.. we were sitting backstage contemplating what just happened.. No one ever talked about the play again who took part in it, but some of our ‘good’ friends never let us forget it too!
After all these years, when I really thought about it.. I think it was Asif who planned all this… he could have just asked me … I would’ve gladly given the role to him. And now that I think about it… the whole play!!!
Nonetheless, that was the end of my acting career and I moved on to bigger better things in life… playing harmonium and singing qawwali on stage.. which lasted …. Once!
A birthday Cake
While looking at one of my Picasa album photos today, I saw my nephew in one of the pictures, standing besides a table covered with a white plain table-cloth, on which the creases due to folding of the cloth were still prominent even after several failed attempts of removing it by stretching the cloth across the table and by placing a shiny birthday hat on one side and a bouquet on the other, and placing a guitar shaped cake right in the middle of the table to hide the most of those wrinkles. I found my nephew standing on one side of the table, staring at his 5th year birthday cake, with a birthday hat on his head and waiting patiently for the candles to be lit, so he can blow them off and get some cake to eat.Looking at this picture, I was suddenly taken to the picture in my mind, when I was the one standing beside that table with same wrinkled table cloth, and same guitar shaped cake, and staring at the cake exactly the way my nephew is now, and not knowing who else was there at the moment, because the only face in the picture would be either me or some other kid about the same height as I was at that time. All adults in the vicinity are only visible up to their waists; because of the angle the picture was taken. That’s all it was, a picture, because I have no memory of that moment itself, I saw myself in this family photo album, on my brother’s birthday, staring at his cake, and thinking when would I get a piece of it. I say that it was my brother’s birthday because the picture is in his birthday album and not mine. May be it was misplaced and put in that album. I would never know. Come to think of it, I don’t even have my own birthday album until I was in 10th standard! I knew there was something I missed all those years, just couldn’t quite put my finger on it! Ah well!It’s a funny feeling how pictures become memories as time passes and one forgets the moment but remembers the pictures and how things must have happened through those pictures. Memories are controlled by pictures!!
I wonder how people remembered things when there were no cameras. Did Lord Rama have to stand by his guitar shaped birthday cake for 5 hours for a painter to paint a picture of him? (Did they have guitars at that time? Did they have birthday cakes at that time?) Probably not! Then how did he remember all those things? Oh wait, he had Valmiki to write each and every moment of his life in a book, which we now call the Ramayana. All he had to do was to go back and read it. But I am sure even the great Valmiki forgot to write about the wrinkles on the table-cloth. (Did they have table-cloths?)
Inventor Villains …. Destroyer Heroes
While working in the cage today, the laboratory with biological safety cabinet and sterile environment laminar flow hood and scientific rubble of all shapes and sizes, floating on countertops, plastic carts, floors and in the endless rows of wrongly marked pale color cabinets, and listening to Pink Floyd played on the classic rock station, I thought about all the times when I created, invented or discovered something in the lab. The answers which came to me as a big surprise were never, nada and zilch!
But that gave me something to write about. When was ever a hero an inventor? Never! A hero has always been a destroyer. Everyone is talking about our dear old Peter Parker, the spider man. But what did he do to deserve that title? nothing. He went to a museum and got bit by a spider. What else did he do? He went out, saved few people, left his webs all over
New York City and all-in-all a big mess. Think about the taxes people of New York City are paying to the city to get that mess cleaned up, and all the creative ways city is coming up to remove those ultra-strong spidy webs, which can hold a car in mid air. I would personally hate those “web-balls” he throws all the time on bad guys’ eyes and guns. Talk about bumpy ride taking those webs off your eyes and driving the car the same time, especially on
New York City roads.
Villains on the other hand, are the greatest mind ever. Lets talk about the Green Goblet. No, I am not talking about the son who is out to take revenge from Spider man; I am talking about the original Green Goblet. He was a genius. He developed Oscorp industries on his own. He invented the green suit and the glider. Everything about him was so cool, the little green bombs, the sinister laugh, the suits and glider, everything. Do you think Spider man could do it? No!
Not convinced yet? Let’s talk about Doc Oc! Another genius man! Even more so than the Green Goblet. A creation of fusion reaction in an empty building with nothing else than a little help from Oscorp and few more mechanical arms. And all spiderman could do was to take the plug off.. yea, fine, fine he saved few million lives doing that… but do you see my point? He is not the one who is genius. Anyone can be spiderman. All you need is a little spider, which suddenly develops an interest in your hand and voila! Next day you are a spiderman.. or a woman… and it has happened to other people then jsut spiderman. One name for you. Pavitra Prabhakar. Look him up, and you’ll know what I am talking about.
So after all this insight in Spiderman’s capabilities and its veracity, I have come to a conclusion. Spidy boy and me are not so different, I have no imagination like him, I have never invented anything like him, I have certainly destroyed quite a few things like him and last but not least, if you add them up from the time I started working in the cage, I have saved trillions and trillions of lives of little tiny cells living in my mammalian and insect cell cultures, which concludes that I am also a HERO!
All I need now is one little bite of the red-blue spider on my hand, so I start shooting webs from my wrist and start killing those cells..
Fast Food for…World Peace!
Everyone shouts at fast food industries. I say they are genius. Whoever came up with the fast food chain (Ronald McDonald, thats who!) was a genius man, who brought the world more peace than any other organization in the world. wanna know how? keep reading.
I eat fast food for…
.. World Peace! All these fast food chains have taken the task in their hands to keep this world in peace. Its very simple formula really, yet very effective. This is how it works..The food is cheap. Less money go out of pocket. More money in the pocket. Pocket is heavy. Feeling is happy. Feeling signals brain. Brain is happy. Brain demands food. Food is heavy and fatty. Food goes in Tummy. Tummy is heavy and fatty. Tummy signals brain. Brain says Yummy. Brains says more. Tummy gets more. Brain is double happy. Everything becomes double. Double becomes big. Big works slowly. Slow leads laziness. Laziness leads lack of interest. Lack of interest leads less interference with politics. Interference of politics results less conflict. Less conflicts is World Peace.
Now I am waiting for fast food chains to reach Africa so all nations on that island can be in peace with each other and with nature and can enjoy the greatness of fast food and their extra large meals.
My First Bike Ride
Its summer again! Not officially, but definitely feels like it. I am wearing my half sleeve shirts and finally washed my car myself yesterday evening, which suddenly became a suitable spot for a bird flying over it to go through its daily morning rituals. I just wish the birds knew the concept of diapers like that astronaut did. Oh well….
People are out-n-about doing things that we all should do. While Coming back home, I saw kids riding their bikes, and the young ones trying to learn how to ride one. A pretty site, I must say, nonetheless, bringing out the fear of any car driver. No matter where you park the car, those little angels (yea…right!) covered to the teeth with their armor and their weapons – the bikes, skate boards and inline skates, are determined to make your heart skip few beats every now and then by coming so close to the car I wish my imaginary girl friend would be to me.
However, I am not going to write about my car, the birds, the kids or even my imaginary girlfriend. Looking at those kids riding on their highly suped-up bikes reminded me of the time when I first started learning to ride one myself.
In 4th grade, when I was about 1 size shorter than a 4th grader, and my big brother was in 9th grade, I was finally going to get my hands on a bicycle. I dashed out so fast to the Chawla uncle’s shop, a bicycle fix and rental place, that even Ben Johnson couldn’t have caught up with me. Once there, I waited and waited and waited some more for my brother leisurely walking down the road gazing at the girls waiting in line for their turn to speak on the phone at one of the newly redesigned P.C.O. booth, which now had tinted see-through glass on 3 sides, giving you the illusion that no one could hear you. Half and hour later, everyone knew about Radha aunty’s daughter Charu will be meeting Haidar Ali’s son, Nadir, day after tomorrow.
Finally, when my brother reached Chawla uncle’s shop and got a bike for the whole 2 hours at 2 rupees an hour rate, I was on the top of the world. Since, Chawla uncle knew my dad; we didn’t even have to pay the security deposit. This red colored bike was the best thing I ever laid my eyes on. It was not more then 2 and half feet tall, with no training wheels, one pedal broken, rusted chain, no stand and no mud guard. The red color was fading so passionately from front to back, it looked as if the color couldn’t keep up with the speed of this two-wheeled rear wheel drive mechanical beast. The balancing act of the seat on the top of the frame would have even left my gym teacher in dusts. It was beautiful!!!!!!
Now, all I could think about was when do I get on top and live the life in fast lane. But my brother wouldn’t me. He stopped me and said, “Let’s get to Tilak Park first!”. Tilak Park, essentially a rectangular field boxed by walls all round, not bigger than a swimming pool. With two strong gates on each side to stop anyone crossing it without permission, which would have worked great if the holes in the boundary walls were patched. There was everything in this park, including a “Peepal” tree on one corner, which stopped all the kids in the neighborhood to go in the park after dark. According to, I don’t really know who actually, its widely known that peepal tree hosts several ghosts and they wake up as soon as it gets dark. There was hardly any grass left on the ground as all day kids would play anything from cricket to “gulli-danda”. An unfinished well from the last elections was also there in one corner. The candidate promised to refinish the park and make it as beautiful as it looked on government papers. He won the elections and 1 week later work on building a well was started, and another week later, stopped. Since then, the loose soil had become the burial chambers for anything that was smaller than dogs. I myself, had buried a sparrow there once, which I think deserves its own post.
So finally, I get to the park, with my rental bike, and my brother, and with his help, started riding it. After about 30 minutes in riding, my brother let go the bike first time, and I was free!!!! Driving by myself was the best thing in my life! and then it happened!
…..I didn’t know that I was keenly observed by a young, in human life one would say a teenager cow. She was sitting right next to the burial ground and was enjoying the loose soil, soaked by water coming from a hand pump nearby. After looking at me and my brother and my fierce red beast for that long, she decided to scrutinize the matter further by looking closely. Renouncing the cool ground at the same moment my brother let go of the bike with me on the top of it, she charged towards me. I had no idea as I was going in the other direction, but my brother saw the whole thing. He ran towards me too….
….So there I was, first time in my life riding a bike all by myself, feeling so proud with the biggest achievement that I felt like I was flying in the air… and I looked down I really was flying in the air, but my bike was not, so I tried to grab the handle bars even tighter refusing to fly away without my bike. At that moment I felt something else other then the familiar feeling of bike seat on my behind. It was my brother’s hand picking me up from the bike while running at the same, seeing me grabbing the handle bar even tighter, he told me to “let go and RUN!!”. I didnt know what was going on, but knowing my brother, I obediently did what he told me to do. I ran…
We didn’t stop until we were out of the gate and on the top of a ledge in front on “Dr. Saxena’s” Clinic. From this raised platform, I could see the whole park and the fallen Red Beast, merely by a teenager cow. It looked more like a piece of rusted metal with spokes, covered in dust. The victorious cow, not satisfied with complete demolition, went back to its old spot and sat patiently, probably waiting for another victim. I was devastated and so was my brother, he felt so moved by the whole event that he did not let me touch another one for a whole year, and then let touch Luna Super (number plate UVM422) for another 3 years and Bajaj Chetak scooter (UP15 C-4173) for 4.
Nintendos and Ataris…. and me!
Remember the first time when Nintendo and Atari hit the Indian cities?
Big arcades always had these machines, rows and rows of them, with the fabulous looking smooth shining consoles and shimmering lights everywhere. I always felt like I entered into a spaceship from one of those 60s movies, whenever I went in one of those arcades
But the revolution came with the small Nintendo and Atari units, and with that came the surge of corner-shops loaded with 2 -3, and sometimes 10 TV screens screwed inside the wooden box frames, with two buttons, red and blue, and one yellow shift knob. Sometimes they would come with a pair of knobs and buttons… double the fun.
After reading “Nagaraja – the snake shooting super hero”, “Doga – the dog faced batman style hero”, “ TMNTs – translated in hindi”, and many many other comics, what else a kid in 6th grade could ask for? Those mini paradises were like oasis in a desert, all prayers answered in the form of wooden boxes for someone like me.
Contra 1 thru 4, Mario 1 thru 3, jungle, circus, Ultimate fighters, a knock-off of mortal combat and hundreds of other games. Laser beams, machine guns, laser rings, super fire, split fire, rolling gliders.. high jumps, spring jumps.. Frankly the things I learned in those 5 minutes (read 2 hrs according to the clock in my house, which never could see me having fun and ran faster) visit to Suresh’s shop taught me more than I learned in a whole day at school. I knew the right combinations and sequences to trick universal soldier to jump, shoot and land on a moving truck.. and thousands of other things..
My brother, on the other hand, was far away from video games. He never could understand the pride and glorious feeling when a 10 year old, in shorts and a sleeveless vest or wearing a shirt with flowers print on it, probably made by Haidar Ali, the tailor and owner of “Good Luck Tailors” in the neighborhood, or “Eagle Tailors”, his competitor, holding an overly colored melting orange ice-cream in one hand bought while coming to the shop just outside the door for 25 paisa from a stall, and a 50 paisa coin in the other hand, looks at you with awe and deference that can only be felt and compared to the moment when you either witness a miracle or see the video game console first time in your life. In that little sweaty room with one window and no fans, I was the idol for that 10 year old kid, I was the envy of my age 12 year old kids and I was the shame in their faces for older kids. I was the winner… I was invincible!
My brother, on the other hand, didn’t care for video-games; he would waste his time playing cricket with his friends, going to movies, preparing for the medical entrance exam and trying to get his life together….what a waste!!
If I didn’t play video game any day, I felt like I wasted the precious time that has been given to me on this earth. Any chance I got to get out of the house, first thing would be to play a game at Suresh’s and then get the task done. Now it was ok in the beginning, when I was not good at it and Suresh was also happy about me spending so much money, however, after-a-while I became what Suresh use to call the best players, “The Terminator”, who are killing his business by playing for so long with one coin. So one day, Papaji sent me to Wakeel uncle’s house with some important papers and he said, “Look son, it is important that you take these papers right away to Wakeel uncle, do you understand?”, I said “ yes, papaji. I do”. And off I go on my bicycle, but the winner in me said “One game! One game! One game!”. I don’t know how this happened, but the next thing I knew, I am at Suresh’s shop playing the ultimate fighter.
10 minutes later (read 2 hours 30 minutes according to that dreaded clock in my house) and after beating an opponent who came too close to beat me, I was celebrating my victory with shouting and jumping and giving high-fives to everyone. I turn around and see “Papaji” standing right behind me looking at me with the eyes so red (I can’t remember any other way) that I could feel the heat of that gaze on me. Failing to put it in the words of my own, I am just going to write as it happened.
Papaji: “Do you know how late it is?”
Me: “no”
Papaji: “Did you go to Wakeel Uncle’s house?”
Me: “no”
And then it happened. It came out of nowhere, all I could hear was the sigh of other kids in the room followed by their running steps, and my dad’s hand going back to where it was just a second ago….away from my cheek. A day later, TV in my my left ear turned off by itself and 2 days later the finger print was almost gone… Also, icecream treats from dad really helped me and the freeloaders (as in my brother and two sisters). However, I can still feel that stinging on my left cheek when I think about it….
That was the end of my career as “The terminator” at Suresh’s shop and that was the last time I saw the inside of that room, and I was back to the Nagaraja and Doga and translated TMNTs and others.
Last time I checked that shop, it was still there, owned by the little 10 years old kid, who happened to be Mahesh…Suresh’s son, still wearing a shirt made by Haidar Ali, with a fake Nike label patched on it bought next door, and that little video game room now is home to hundreds of Hindi and English (dubbed in hindi) VCDs for rental. I could still smell the sweat from 15 years ago.
play ball !
What are the chances that just being in office can get you tickets for wednesday’s ball game.. umm, pretty common actually, but i like to think othewise.
So, there I am with couple of my friends, one who knows everything about the game and other who knows nothing. the game is orioles vs red sox. at this point, I’d like to clarify that my knowledge about al these different teams is limited. The previous place I stayed at were Royals.. yup, kansas city. and it was prettty bad.. last year they made world record (considering any sports here is the world series.. thanks Canada for their involvement to give it the status of series played by the whole wide “world” of North Americas, and I would just like to take this moment to thank Canada for the funny looking leaf on their flag) in losing streak of games, and I thought that would be the rock bottom.. nonetheless, I come to Baltimore, and the team is Orioles, and all my beliefs about Royals are shattered… now, I can’t decide who is worse.. on papers, royals are, but i saw orioles play yesterday, and hence this post, and they suck..
Oh well.. now that the fact has been established that both teams are pretty bad.. I’d move on to my experience of yesterday’s game. It was good. nice weather, nice environment, Americas fav. past time.. we just blended in (haha.. yea right!) eating on card board plates, with a beer in hand in plastic cups, and shouting CHARGE!! whenever everyone did… i like that music, btw.. and also it is tricky to shout, eat, drink beer and boo the other team (red sox) at the same time.. it took some time to master that… All in all it was fun.. check out the pic below of the orioles ball park in color accent, taken by my new camera, more on that later in next post.
Welcome to my world
Once again. I am back to writing and this time I choose the word press. so Let me give you a warm welcome to my totally useless writing. If you are looking for substance, I would advise you to move on.
