Sunday, October 31, 2004

False

Here, take these words of yours.
No, no, with the right.
Grip them, with all your might
Now, plunge them deep into my flesh.

But wait! Let me turn around first.
I’d like you to feel right at home.

Here, let’s have a look at those shifty eyes.
Mirror you for what you are
Sly, furtive, wannabe, pseudo rock star
Then, hit me across my face with your falseness

But wait! Let me turn around first.
I’d like you to feel right at home.

How is it you can wait
years, with those seedlings of hate
now sprouting blooms of black
waiting to sting, blood taste
as soon as I turn my back...

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Morning after.

The fragrance of the night past still lingers on
the struggling silences bursting at the seams,
talking to lazy sunbeams
jealous of the painful beauty and my complete lack of attention

Ethereal wraith, you rise and my spirits follow
even before my first wave of emotion has been ridden
to the hilt, faced the bullets, senses forbidden
pleasures lying there, spent shells, though not forever hollow.

Memories, filtered and crystallized
reluctant drops of mercury register the latent heat
as my mind walks forgotten chemical streets
you return with fiery spheres of ice

Quench.

Monday, October 18, 2004

After ages, my office firewalling system didn’t block imdb.com. Man, that site is addictive! If you’re a movie/tv buff, that is THE place. It’s like Non-Sensei in friggin Wonderland when I go there… I’m just sorta wandering thru the pages, clicking on random links (bless my office for 100 Mbps net)…I LOVE that site.

Search for Saturday Night Live and you get links. Then, on the left, you get ‘memorable quotes’. I spent about 25 minutes looking at Chris Rock’s shows. My stummick started hurting with laughter after about 10. Then I made the ill-advised (but immensely enjoyable and totally not-regretted) trip over to Ali G. If you haven’t heard of him, or have never watched him in action, or don’t understand the Brit sense of humour and subcultures, you may not find it all that funny. But I had to keep stuffing my fist into my mouth to stop laughing out loud. People staring, me not caring – it was all good.

As it is, I’m a misfit here. I keep to my corner, look at strange sites...no, not those sites! (Those are all blocked, the damn things...) But sites with lot of ‘English’, and dark gothic sites, and sites of ‘English Rock Bands’, and ‘Blogs’... nobody has a friggin clue here, except one or two. Man, one day I will do a post on ‘My colleagues and other animals’. I have half of it done already.

But laughing is good. Very.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

My bike ad...and the howlarious responses.

I am planning to sell my bike. I put up an ad on another forum. This is my ad and the tale of what has happened so far...

" Bike for sale
I guess this is as good a forum as any.
I would like to sell my bike. The details are as follows.

Hero Honda Splendor, Black, 99 September model. 34000 km done. It is in excellent driving condition. All original parts, very regularly serviced. New battery, clutch plates and rear wheel tube. With accessories - saree guard and tail light guard. Believe me, these accessories are a must. I've seen people refuse to buy a tail light guard because it doesn't look 'cool' or something, but I think it makes the bike look coolER. And I've seen brand new bikes get tail lights broken because some moron behind in traffic didn't brake in time. I believe some of the newer bikes don't even have this facility - the guy in the Honda showroom (for the Unicorn) didn't even KNOW what a tail light guard was.

These two accessories alone cost more than 500 bucks now.

It's been single user throughout. It's difficult to know the value of that fact, but people who know how careful a rider I am will vouch for it. Even after 5 years, the bike gives a mileage of 60, at least, in city driving conditions and 70 on highways. The pickup is not too bad, and does really well with a single rider. Of course, the pickup drops with pillion, but hey, it's a 100 cc 4-stroke bike - it has its limitations!

Lastly, I believe the number means a lot to some people, so I'll put that here too. I'm told it's a 'fancy number' - AP10 M 7008.

The asking price is Rs 25,000 and I've reached this figure after checking out quite a few other Splendors on the second hand market. I honestly believe my bike is worth it.

If anyone is interested, they are most welcome to contact me and check out the bike. Please leave your phone number and/or email id in the comments section, or mail me at theprocrastinator@rediffmail.com
I am looking to sell within the next week or two - I will be putting an ad in the papers as well. So if you're interested, let me know asap! "

A simple ad, wouldn't you say? To the point and relevant. I honestly believed some halfway intelligent people would respond. I could not have imagined I would receive the kind of responses I did in the comments column. On Austra's suggestion, Im posting them here, for your general mirth and side-splitting pleasure.

"Can I have the bike redone in cornflour blue ?" [Posted by Richard]
Last I remember, cornflour was white...moron

"I want a number plate with ...786 in it. Can you help me ?" Posted by Wajid
Err..I dunno about that man. I can't just paint over the OFFICIAL LEGAL registration number now, can I?

"Hyderabad ka loga, yeh bike math khareedna. Main iska bike ka service karta hoon ( har saal ke baad ) aur iska cundeeshun bahuth kharaab hain. Mujhe kabhi aisa lagta hain ke isne bike ki Maa Behen Ek Kar Di." [Posted by Abdul Mechanic]

This is almost certainly from a guy I knew from college. We were never great friends, and he never quite had the balls to be upfront about it. Underhanded, backbiting, always looking to get an insult or snide remark in edgewise. I pity such people...I'm sorry your life went down the shithole 'mate', but there you go...what goes around comes around.

"I have old CDs of Pamela Andersen, as well as the entire series of Kkusum. I'm willing to trade them all for a set of the latest Pokemon 3D cards. [Posted by Nitin-bhai]

One Grey colour Philips iron, 1987 model. Excellent condition, used sparingly ( i hardly ever iron my clothes ), but mostly used upside down for frying eggs. ( i live in a hostel )Willing to trade it for a table fan, or Rs 500 cash. [Posted by Mahadevan]

FOR SALE : Kinetic Honda, sparingly used. Driven by Lady Doctor, 2001 model, new tires, music system, single owner, hyderabad showroom. Rs 21,000 ( negotiable.) Owner going abroad. Must sell today. [Posted by Srinu]

Do you have any old BCom text books ? I'd be willing to buy editions not earlier than 2000. [Posted by ShivaKumar]

Anyone have back issues of Tinkle ( 1985 and earlier ), and willing to trade for Chandamama ? [Posted by Varun] "

.........I have....no words. May God have mercy on your dumbass souls. How do ya make it out of the door in the mornings? Watch out for that 'walking' thing...oooh, tricky stuff...*rolling eyes* Maybe I'm being too mean here, but c'mon! It's a post. On a personal blog. I'm not inviting you to sell on this space, am I? And I don't seem to remember advertising ANYthing other than a bike...dayamn, some people...

"Sir, is the Procrastinator like another Bajaj model similar to Eliminator ? [Posted by Prasad]"
Ok, at a verrrry long shot, might be a genuine question, but Prasad saar, did u just happen to miss the '@' sign after the name, as it appears in the advertisement? Followed by the 'rediffmail.com'? Surely the '.com' MUST have given you SOME clue? No? Sheesh.

"Is it a ladies bike or a gents bike ? [Posted by Suzy the Suzuki]"
Again, just might be genuine, but with a name like that? Suzy the Suzuki?? Careful beta, dont hurt yourself getting onto your Suzuki. Did you put the coins into the slot in the machine that makes it go Vrrooooomm??

Holy Crapola. What the friggin hell was all that? Is today National Nincompoop day??
Fuck o la.
I really don't know what to think.

But there were some smartass comments as well. I can appreciate the sheer sense of humour though. I can always take a good joke, even if it's on me.

"Just hang on a sec, Let me work out the math here :

34000 km in 5 years is 6800 km a year, which works out to 566 km a month assuming you havent taken annual leave for the last 5 years - in which case it would be more.
That works out to 24 km a day ( you work a 5 day week ).
I checked with the RTA and they gave me an address of xxxxx, and I know you work in xxxx, which is like 2 km one way.
How on earth did you manage to clock the kind of distances you claim Mr Speedy Gonzalez ?
Therefore one of the following must be true :

1) You gave a fake address to the RTA.
2) You gave a fake office address to me.
3) You do not own a Splendor.
4) You forgot to put a decimal point somewhere.
5) You belong to a biker gang that cruises around the city all day long in leather jackets drinking Irani chai and smoking Charminar cigarettes.

And so mom says i mustnt buy anything that you try to sell me. ( Including that inflatable rubber doll you were trying to sell me last week ).
[Posted by Anik the Geek]"

LOL. Bravo. At least the sense of humour I like. Obviously someone who knows a lil something about me. Im not going to bother replying to the qtn here - if someone is really interested in clarifications about the faulty assumptions, I can discuss it

There were a couple of genuine enquiries, which I really appreciated, and have gotten in touch with them. None of the flamers had the balls to leave their real names, and I know the names they did leave dont exist on the forum where it was posted. This is because they probably know I can flame their asses to hells that they didnt even know existed. How sad man, how pathetic. No moral courage. I can't bring myself to waste even anger on you lot.

By the way, the advertisement at the beginning of this post still stands. If anyone is interested in the bike, please let me know.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Bonding

So we didn't do the show on Saturday...
...but some things are worth more than your first stage appearance...

I'd given up a fair bit of my time and other priorities to set apart time for practice, between Tuesday (when they told me about the show) and Friday. But, somehow, things didn't work out quite the way I would have liked them to. We never had the whole band together at any one time, the numbers weren't being done upto our standards. I was always uneasy about going on stage with this kind of preparation. But there were some silver linings.

I spent one evening with Bean alone. I'd always felt some little tension between us. I think she hit the nail on the head when she said Bean probably felt threatened by my presence in the band. Which would be weird because he was the one who asked me if I'd like to join in the first place! My being older and somewhat more experienced than the others must've made him feel like he was losing his earlier unquestioned authority in the band. Not that I imposed myself anywhere - I'd anticipated this and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible - but there was still some very palpable tension between him and me.

But I wanted to diffuse it, make him feel at ease, and just work on being the best band we could be. And when he said that evening that he really enjoyed the session, when it was just the two of us, it felt good. I've been having freaky, even eerie, coincidences for the past few months. My fascination for astrology and star sign stuff had faded away, but I just asked him out of the blue, looking for SOME sort of explanation. It turned out we shared the same birthday...

On Friday, the session was not going well at all. Tempers were flying and even I lost it towards the end. There was no focus, no sense of priority, and an utter lack of time management. Pretty soon, it became apparent to me that there was no way we could go on stage like this. I took the plunge and mentioned it. The guys agreed reluctantly, but they too saw the truth. Then I suggested that they go on without me. After all, they could do the songs they did before I joined, and they didn't need any practice for those. Without even considering for a moment, they said either I'm there, or there is no show. If we do it, we do it together, as a band - or we don't do it at all.

Many people spend significant portions of their lifetimes trying to belong. Anywhere. When I heard them say this, I was more touched than I'd been in a very long time. For four people, who I've known for about a month and met about 5 times, to feel the same way about me...

Some kinds of friendships are pure chemistry, like between Grinny and me. Some need to be worked at to find the latent bonds. I was actually laughed at by some of my 'hardcore rocker' friends when I decided to join this band. I'm sure I'll be sniggered at by some people who knew me by sight and had some sort of image of me that they respected in some way. I might even be shunned by the rocker people who thought I was 'cool'.

But I CHOOSE this band of four. They are young, but at least they are genuine. They may not be great talents yet, but at least they are creative. They may be naive and gauche about the rocker code (which I will teach them - that's what I'm there for), but at least they are true.And they prefer to make music, not noise.

I see a future for us. And I'm going to show it to them too.

"We who are not as others!" - Sepultura, Chaos A.D.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Disjointed.

...and then, there's 'Maakafite', or it may be 'Maakafight', or even 'Maakafyte' (nobody has clearly defined it, hence the spelling is open to interpretation and phonetics)

Wha..??

In Hyderabad, even 'Maaki kirkiri' makes sense. Go figure.

On Saturday, I will stand up and perform in front of a crowd again - after almost 3 years. The last time was pretty well received, as a solo performance on that stage at the Y. The people who knew me were surprised, and I'd like to think the goraas enjoyed it as well. This time, it's a band - group coordination. As long as I only had to depend on myself it was fine. Now, it gets a li'l more complicated. Oh well, I hope we do alright. At least the boys will be confident, since it will be an only AISEC crowd. Sigh. What am I going to do with this young lot?

Apparently, my office comp needs a 3D accelerator graphics card. It couldn't handle the brutality of the 70 consecutive games of 3D Pool I played yesterday, added to the 50 of the day before. So the screen was inverted when I turned on the comp this morning. Even the IT helpdesk guys had never seen anything like it. So let me get this straight - it's worth giving me a brand new comp worth some 60K, with a 100 Mbps net connection, but NOT worth giving me a graphics card? How am I ever going to completely experience the wonder that is Quake 3 or even NFS whichever version?? C'mon people! Let's get some perspective here!

My job rocks.

It's time to say goodbye to Monique. It's been 5 lovely years, with some really, really lovely memories. I was her first, she was mine. Fidelity, stamina, patience...she had it all. My friends had a saying about us, which they would tell newbies - 'you can ask him for his wife and you may get her, but don't ask for Monique' (translated from the original Telugu). But the time has come for a change. I believe I gave her a fair run, and I can only hope the next guy will treat her as well as I have.

I think I need a more powerful bike now.

Pulsar was the first idea. Now I've been asked to consider Honda's new Unicorn. I would do it too, because I think I can probably trust a Honda engine anywhere. Gotta do it soon though...I only have a year left (hopefully).

Adi needs a sendoff. Aloque's left me, and now Adi too. Damn. This sucks! It better be a BLOODY lot of alcohol tonite, maan!

Thank you for flying Disjointed Airways. Your captain was The Non-Sensei, who is about to lose it very soon. Wanna stick around? We is gonna keep flaaayin maan...where be dat spliff?

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

It ain't fun if it's easy...

...but does it have to be THIS much fun?

My luck is SO bad, it's not funny. No, really. All the heathen non-believers have been converted upon witnessing what can only be described as miraculous bad luck. And it's pretty much in all aspects. What constitutes good or bad luck is, of course, relative - obviously my luck cannot be worse than the guy who lost his house and everything he owned in a hurricane. Or some such thing.

Ha! That's only because it hasn't happened yet.

It's difficult to enumerate individual incidents, but let me try. I was sent some application forms on the 20th of Sept, with the last date it had to reach Delhi being Oct 7th. I needed two references. I wanted to send the stuff by 1st Oct because it's really important. I gave the first person the papers around 24th. Then he fell sick. Then a friend of his died. Then another friend's father died. Then he fell sick again. It's a 25 km drive through painful traffic to get to him. Anyway, finally, I had to go some 25 km in a completely unknown direction to some obscure research station at 9 am, bunking office, to get the reference. On the goddamn FOURTH of Oct.

The second reference was to be from my college prof. I took half day leave and went to college. There was some meeting, so I waited. For 3 hours. Doing abso-fuckin-lutely nothing, when I had tons to do. So I had to get copies of my marksheet attested. Then I find out the guy who was supposed to do it died. The previous day. Can you imagine my frustration? As it is, the way my college functions is if you want something done today, it MAY get done day after tomorrow. If you really, really NEED it, it MAY happen tomorrow.

Crap.

So I go back the next day. I find the prof has left for the day. About 10 minutes before I got there. Damn. And it goes on and on till I finally meet him and things get sorted out. On the 5th of Oct. I courier it to Delhi on the evening of the 5th. I can only PRAY the delivery guy didn't leave the truck door open and a rabid dog didn't pick just MY package out of the HUNDREDS, pee on it, then tear it to shreds. Amen.

But like I said, luck is relative. Obviously, it's worse luck that people passed away during this time (here, I would like to assure you that no animals or humans were harmed personally, by me, in person, during the posting of this application form). But in each person's own world, we have our own misfortunes. So it may not seem such a big deal to you, but it is to me. For some people, their vehicles not starting in the morning resulting in them getting to work late and getting shouted at by the boss is a bigger deal than the thousands of people on the streets they drive through not having food to eat.

Is it worth feeling guilty about thinking this way? I'm not so sure.

You know, reading the paragraphs about the references, I realise I just might be a harbinger of doom! The knock of the Grim Reaper. The Prince of Darkness!

Cooooool.

(am I twisted, or is it just me?)