Curb Your Ambition

A year back, I ventured into unchartered territories and made some bold predictions on how world events would be playing out in 2011. The seminal piece was completely ignored by the elitist western media which seemed to prefer ‘experts’ with a penchant for esoteric and speculative musings. Extremely disappointed with this rejection and appalled to see how PhDs and actual knowledge is being passed off as basis for expertise, I refrained from writing any more authoritative treatise on how the Arab Spring would play out. It turns out that was a very wise decision as I got most of my predictions wrong.

Last time when I commented on the Middle East, the Arab Spring had just been underway. Tunisia’s Ben Ali had flown the coop with all the gold he could lay his hand on and Egypt’s Mubarak was flirting with the idea of protesting the protests by unleashing deadly camels on the unsuspecting folks at Tahrir Square. It was business as usual in the rest of the region. Gaddafi was trolling Facebook looking for more pictures of Condoleeza Rice. The only promise Abdullah Saleh of Yemen was making was to his family that the next vacation would definitely not be in Socotra again. The only tanks Syria’s Assad was ordering were while playing Risk with his brother Maher. I had predicted that the Egyptian army would ease Mubarak out and control the country through a puppet president. As the consequent events proved, I was way off. In a stunning nod to the environmental lobby, the Egyptian army decided to take control on their own eliminating all the paperwork usually associated with installing puppet regimes. I had conjectured that Mubarak would be exiled. That almost happened except that it didn’t and he was jailed and made to stand trial while lying on a bed. I have to apologize for not having seen this coming. I come from a country where misuse of power usually makes you eligible to be the president of BCCI or the Congress Party or even the Indian Republic.

It’s a miracle I didn’t bet my money on Gadaffi’s survival. Given the opportunity, I surely would have. But apparently Libyans don’t share my enthusiasm for dictators with great bed-sheets which double up as commanding outfits for state visits. Tyranny and brutal repression is but a small price to pay if your dear leader has great taste in east European nurses. I think the UN played it beautifully by lulling Gadaffi into a false sense of security by being a mute observer to world events for 66 years and just when Brother Leader thought he could remodel Benghazi, down came the gavel on Resolution 1970 . A mandate so generous in its wording that NATO could use it to even block Bieber videos on YouTube saying it would save valuable Libyan lives. That was not the only bad decision he made in 2011. His recruitment policy of hiring half-emaciated mercenaries from Mali and Niger by telling them that all they had to do was gentle target practice on civilians back-fired when the new employees rose in protest pointing out that their contract didn’t include facing bunker busters which the NATO jets had started raining down on them. But all these tactical missteps could have been overlooked if only he had gracefully exited the stage at the appropriate time and spent the rest of his life in the care of his nurses and body-guards in any of the myriad tin pot African states whose dictators were willing to play host. The Greeks would have diverted the world’s attention like they always do every two months and the great dictator could have passed the rest of his days watching Seinfeld re-runs. Instead he chose fame in the viral videos circuit and decided to run into a sewer. Even in the best of times, experts have unanimously concluded that running into sewage has its disadvantages. However Gadaffi’s surprised look after being caught indicated that he perhaps didn’t account for any of them in his plans.

What Gaddafi lacked in luck and expediency, Saleh of Yemen made up for it in more ways than one. Every time it seemed that the game was up for Saleh, he managed to put up an elaborate show on how he would immediately leave only if the over eager mob gave him at least time to pack his essentials. And as soon as everything cooled down, he usually attempted to get back to business as usual as if the whole revolution business was just about a few people venting their disapproval about his dietary habits. Needless to say this incessant flip-flopping only made the population rebel with greater ferocity each time. Even when a bomb went off next to him in his palace and left him recuperating in Saudi Arabia for a few months, he managed to return to Sana’a undeterred and reclaimed power, also winning the Alec Baldwin 2011 Brass Balls Award in the process. However in spite of his swagger and aggressive posturing he knew if he didn’t let go, he too would meet his sewer maker. In politics, timing is everything and Saleh bid Yemen good bye when the state of affairs was just one straw away from inconveniencing the proverbial camel’s back.

That brings us to Syria, previously famous for inspiring the names for movies about fictitious Arab countries. Events in this country have finally answered the age old question, how much damage can someone who looks like a ventriloquist’s doll actually cause? A pertinent question which unfortunately President Assad has answered with vigor usually associated with Bond villains. He made his disdain for peaceful protests known by unleashing his tanks making Tiananmen Square look like Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. The doyens of the global liberal movement have written numerous editorials severely critiquing the double standards of the West for not being as proactive about stopping the Syrian government’s atrocities. Some have gone even so far as to pin down the reason on the fact that Libya received the special attention of Patriot missiles and Euro fighters just because of the abundance of some obscure commodity experts are calling crude oil. And as Syria doesn’t have much to offer to the world market apart from hummus and falafel, the West has allowed the Arab League to try and resolve the morally and ethically complex issue of one megalomaniac trying to hold on to power by killing a lot of people. When I first heard of an organization of Arab countries dedicated to regional peace, I mistakenly assumed it to be about some little known Monty Python sketch and spent a lot of futile hours on YouTube looking for it. But apparently it’s as real as the erstwhile League of Nations and reportedly almost as effective. Unfortunately in spite the League’s best efforts, the crises in Syria continued to take a heavy toll in terms of lives and property. Who knew that battering the Syrian landscape with laser-guided requests for restraint wouldn’t have much effect on the Assad regime. Even when the West tried to scare Assad with a deadly condemnation letter from the Security Council, they got cockblocked by the poster boys of democracy, the Chinese and the Russians. The obviously well-intentioned Chinese & Russians are convinced that Assad is just a misunderstood leader and as soon as he coaxes the disgruntled citizens into death, all will be fine.

Assad has given numerous indications that he has more of Gaddafi’s delusional streak in him rather than Saleh’s pragmatism. In all probability there is a sewer somewhere in Damascus receiving a fresh coat of paint and getting readied to welcome an esteemed guest. I guess it will start in the usual way where some of the influential behind-the-scene players will switch sides and before you know it, the great erstwhile dictator will be scrambling to keep his vital organs in place. This whole Arab spring has brought out a few important lessons for all those people despairing about what they want to do in life. Appearances may suggest that a career in tyranny and despotism is great. The hours are good and the perks usually involve a decent access to the better restaurants in town. But it’s better to aspire for the middle and near-the-top ranks in the regime rather than be a part of the inner circle of the dear leader or be the dear leader himself. Relinquishing the glamorous positions will afford you the opportunity to induce a moral epiphany at an ideal point in any future rebellion and help you choose the winning side before it is too late. If you don’t believe in this train of thought, just ask the poor souls in Egypt and Libya. They are still trying to understand how a post-tyrant life is so eerily more of the same, how the faces have changed but the diktats remain the same and how terribly fickle the attention span of the world is. So all aspiring tyrants who also want a secure career, curb your ambition. Just a little bit.

Houston, We have a problem.

There are just too many things going on around these days. Most of them wouldn’t be called pleasant. Berlusconi stopped getting invitations to his own Bunga Bunga parties. Gadaffi made a terrible error in judgement when he chose as a hiding place a sewer pipe over any where else in the world. Sharad Pawar discovered that walking briskly is always a good idea. But in the midst of all this I read this. It talks about a group of IIT Bombay students who have been working for the last 4 years on a satellite which should soon be ready for launch. Now that I am a bit more qualified to appreciate the complexities associated with such multi-disciplinary endeavours, I can only hope that the project ends successfully and spurs similar groups into action across the country.

However the aim of this post is not to indulge my pontificating self and pen a thunderous denunciation of all those engineering undergraduates who are not building satellites in their free time (that would be the entire day in most cases). The aim of this post is to indulge my exaggerating self and recall how I almost started building a satellite myself.

In circa 2008, a year defined by the brave manner in which my beloved alma mater was coming to terms with my tyrannical regime as the enforcer of all things co-curricular, a bizarre incident took place which few individuals in the institute were privy to. Now that the self imposed statute of limitations has expired, I shall spill the beans before Assange beats me to it. It all began when our director casually mentioned in an internal meeting that its time the students think about building a small satellite. The professors around the table concurred, agreed that it was completely feasible while mentioning that functional support could be obtained from their pals at ISRO. And then they looked at us students with the expression that they would be terribly disappointed if we didn’t have the satellite ready by the next meeting. Confronted by this unexpected directive, my team and I conferred and decided its best that this idea is thrown open to the students to find someone competent enough to pick it up and lead the project. So Shampoo, our head of events, declared in the coordinators meeting that a plan to build a satellite is on the table and all interested individuals should contact him. That’s where the matter rested till two weeks later when a phone call woke me up one late morning.

I answered the call, still very sleepy and blurry. A lady with a very polite tone said she is calling from the Bank (name withheld) She mentioned that she read about the satellite we are planning to build in the morning papers and her organization is very keen on sponsoring the project. She also talked about how inspiring this idea was and how excited her colleagues are about it. But I had lost her at ‘read in the morning papers’. In spite of my muddled state, I could sense something was seriously amiss. I asked in my best apologetic tone, usually reserved for my department faculty members, whether I could call her back as I was in the middle of a very important engagement.

I rushed out of my room and tried to get hold of all the different city papers I could find. Hindu, TOI, DC, all three of them.I started with TOI, the pallbearer of sensationalism but surprisingly found zilch. A rapid browse through the Hindu didn’t yield anything either. Finally the first page of the education supplement of DC revealed the entire extent of the crises. The title story with an overtly generous font size screamed, IIT Madras building a satellite, or something to that effect. I don’t recall the exact wording. It referred to my events head by name and how he had proudly announced in true JFK fashion that students at IITM would be putting a small satellite in space with assistance from ISRO. Though the obligatory references to beating the Russians and doing it within the decade were left out, the emotions were eerily similar. The only other person who would have been as perplexed about this whole affair as I was would have been the charge de affaires of the department of student satellite collaborations in ISRO. I am assuming that being a government sponsored organization, the resulting bureaucratic set-up in ISRO would allow the existence of such departments.

But now was not the time to fret over ISRO’s bureaucratic set-up. I had to immediately launch a three-pronged strategy to diffuse the situation. Firstly investigate how this leak took place. Secondly try to calm the excitement at the Bank. And thirdly build a satellite. It looked a bit daunting when put that way. The first part met an early end. All I could do was to call up my events head. I refrained from launching into my version of ‘Et tu Brute’ right at the beginning and asked him if he had spoken to the media.He replied in the negative and his tone betrayed his own bewilderment.Obviously it was going to be an impossible task. There were close to 100 people in the campus who had been aware of this and it could be any of them. So it was time to engage the Bank.

I called up the polite lady and we arranged a meeting at the campus CCD that evening. So I had a couple of hours to prepare for it. Back in those days, I hadn’t yet fully developed the skill of elaborating eloquently and confidently about work which hadn’t been done yet. Hence I was a bit apprehensive on how this meeting would progress. The primary aim was to avoid yet another headline announcing that IITM was shelving their satellite plans as they were not aware they were in the midst of building one. I decided to take no chances and called in the closest thing I had at my disposal which resembled Seal Team 6. The time was to have people at your side who were much better at pretending to know what they were talking about. A few discreet calls were made, the sensitive situation explained and assistance sought. The concerned individuals promised to be present at the meeting.

In spite of the preparations, the start to the meeting wasn’t a very smooth affair. The visible enthusiasm in our counterparts was disconcerting. It seemed the only thing more difficult than raising capital was refusing it. The phrases payload, geo-stationary, thermal control sub-systems and orbital stability were generously deployed to warm the audience. Once technical salvos effectively obfuscated the fact that this was the first meeting ever on the subject, we slowly slid into project planning jargon. We sighed that scheduling was a nightmare as it had to be balanced against competing priorities of the numerous stakeholders, to speak nothing of the endless red tape associated with any procurement of sensitive equipment from the US. Finally we moved in for the kill stating that while we are extremely grateful that the Bank was interested in our project, we were not ready with our cost estimations yet. We were still considering various vendors from both sides of the Atlantic and would of course have to have our final assessments reviewed by competent authorities. We couldn’t of course allow a situation where we are forced to keep revising our capital expenditure estimates midway through the project. That wouldn’t be professional at all. Hence it would be a prudent idea if we could get back to the Bank once we had progressed further and had a well-defined scope and execution plan in place. With that, we closed out the meeting. It had begun on an unsure footing but we had managed find our way in the middle and ended it confidently.When things go well, there is always a tendency to get carried away and it was to our credit that we kept our explanations restrained and realistic. Otherwise we could as well have ended up with yet another headline the next day, “IITian promises to land on Mars by next Diwali”. The day which begun so depressingly was finally looking up.This wasn’t a situation of our making and it was a relief to come out of it without ruffling feathers at the Bank or having a full- fledged PR disaster. All our statements and assertion in that meeting would have been eventual truths once the project actually got off. Procurement would indeed have been a drag and scheduling would undeniably have been a hostage to more conventional concerns during a semester, like classes and labs.

So finally as per my to-do list, there was only one thing that remained. Build the satellite. I was convinced that now that it was published on the news, we will have to go ahead and build this as soon as possible. There was no time to look for the right people. I would have to get it done myself. A fortunate by-product of the make-up-as-you-go meeting was that I had an overview of how we should progress from here on. Any observer of the events till now would have decided that now was the opportunity to intervene politely and mention that my intentions, though noble, were flirting dangerously with the realms of feasibility. The only thing I had built in my life was a cylinder out of bamboo sticks as a part of my ID110 course. That too was so poorly designed that it buckled under the slightest of loads. A jump from that to conceptualizing the shooting of an object into space would be pushing the definition of ambition. However I have never been known for ruminating on issues for too long. And I always wanted to have a positive answer to that frequently asked question “Who do you think you are? A rocket scientist?” So I set up a meeting with the dean to get the necessary administrative approvals.

One of the few good things about a bad idea is one usually realizes how bad it is within the first few seconds of the onset of the execution. As I passed the door of the dean’s office and took the few steps towards his desk, I began realizing at substantial speed the absurdity of what I was about to say. I couldn’t possibly be proposing that a hastily cobbled up scheme to build a satellite be approved immediately just because a reporter penned yet another ill-conceived article on IIT. I checked myself in time and just mentioned the unsolicited news article to him and how the Bank was very eager to sponsor the project. His response was short and crisp. Dismissing any possible implications of the news article, he asked me not to worry about the Bank’s overtures. Apparently the Bank had been trying to get permission to open an ATM inside the campus for years and this was yet another attempt by them to ingratiate themselves with the campus community. As far as the satellite plans went, I was advised to follow the initial approach of scouting for interested and capable people and have a structured plan in place. I left the room as my dashed rocket scientist career plans became a footnote in the annals of space exploration.

PS: Helpful souls have updated me that our humble beginnings in 2008 have matured into a full-fledged project. Details are here. We may actually beat IITB to this.

The History Channel

While having dinner with an Egyptian friend of mine two weeks back, the conversation veered round to the recent Tunisian crises. I remarked how Foreign Policy was already predicting that Egypt and Libya would be next to see their long-standing rulers fall. My friend Ahmed considered the possibility for a moment and then replied with a reassuring nod of the head that the west doesn’t understand Egypt well enough and Mubarak would continue to rule. We had a chat yet again last week, this time on Facebook. He had just had a talk with his family and they suggested that he withdraw all his money as the banks are being looted rampantly in Cairo. I concurred with this suggestion as the downside to doing that was just the transaction fee. But I refrained from pointing out how he had been wrong the last week. The poor guy was jittery and I assumed, wasn’t in a mood to be mocked for past lapses in judgment.

One of my regrets of living in the twenty first century is that as far as sweeping political events go, the current times pale into to insignificance compared to the heady days of the thirties and the forties. The modern world is all about keeping pace with the latest update to the latest Apple product or finding out why Bruno Mars wants to hold a grenade. My feeble mental capacity finds it difficult to keep up with the obsession for newer electronic gadgets or seemingly endless reality shows churning out super humans who then disappear without a trace. I yearn for less demanding and old fashioned global events like coup-de-tats and assassinations with an economic recession thrown in every now and then.

However every few years we have one of these milestone events where all history buffs can get their bag of popcorn and start flipping between BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera and watch old school reality television. The current imbroglio in Northern Africa is one such rare opportunity. The frustrating dilemma with historical events is that they usually follow a standard template which makes me look up the dictionary to check how déjà vu is spelt. Nevertheless my opinion is still divided about whether the Egypt/Tunisia story will eventually follow a script which will be vaguely familiar to the students of world events. So I have decided to indulge in some Glenn-Beckish speculation.

Anyone with an opinion on this issue is claiming hoarse how all this sudden burst of resentment among the people is so unexpected. No one apparently knew that Tunisia was ruled by an iron-fisted but benignly named dictator, Ben Ali. Selective and biased reporting, an inadvertent hallmark of the western media, means that any unconventional news from nations with west-leaning despots are met with shock and alarm. North Africa today presents us with an outstanding opportunity to see western diplomacy’s hypocrisy at its finest. While I am a firm believer in having an adaptable, self-serving and hypocritical foreign policy, if I take off my tight fitting nationalist cap for a moment, I find the whole charade of sympathy emanating from the foreign offices of all the western governments highly amusing. Till a month ago Ben Ali and Mubarak were the darlings of the western democracies with the Pentagon regularly outsourcing their illegal renditions and interrogations to Mubarak’s delightfully cooperative security agencies. UK and Switzerland never got conscience attacks when the Mubarak family hoarded an estimated 70 billion dollars in terms of real estate and Swiss Francs. The Bush administration invaded Iraq to “bring” democracy as they thought Saddam’s 98% majority election victories were phony. But Mubarak’s continuous electoral victories with over 90% votes polled in his favour hardly raised eyebrows. I am sure there is a US State Department paper somewhere stating 92% majority as the acceptable boundary between the-people-have-spoken elections and he-is-a-tyrant-who-rigs elections.

With the people on the streets for a couple of weeks, the sight of Hillary Clinton and Obama solemnly rebuking Mubarak to take the right decision and step down and give democracy a chance is perhaps a signature moment showcasing the delightful and highly effective duplicity of US foreign policy. Without doubt, while mouthing its commitment to the Egyptian people’s aspirations, the Americans will be working furiously in the background to keep status quo but minus Mubarak. The masses, gullible as always, will have their ego boosted at having removed a hated figure while their life slips back into the clutches of yet another repressive regime.

At this critical juncture where the situation is poised to turn in any direction, I am tempted to make some predictions. I will bet my money on the ex-spymaster and newly appointed Vice-president Omar Suleiman who should take over the reins and brings things under control with the help of the ever compliant army. Mubarak will be given an unceremonious farewell which will be painted as a “dignified exit for a patriot”. Gamal Mubarak will be making late night phone calls to his ex-es and bitch about how if only his dad had handed over power to him a few years earlier, he would have never allowed any of this protest nonsense. And then he would quietly wait for a comeback and turn the tables on Omer. Hosni himself will spend his days in exile, most probably in Europe, and write long letters to a kindred spirit Ben Ali about how the Yankees fucked them both over when the chips were down. El-Baradei will find himself back in Vienna, a city where he has spent almost all his life, agreeing that parachuting oneself into a volatile situation and exploitatively painting oneself as a mass leader is something only the Gandhis can do. He will also get rid of his designer I-am-a-revolutionary stubble. The Israelis will congratulate each other in private on having accomplished yet another clinical behind-the-scenes operation and the Swiss will mail brochures about their outstanding banking services to the new Egyptian president. The Indian government will obviously continue to monitor the situation till kingdom comes. The Chinese will exploit the confusion and try to buy the pyramids.

But then the above scenario happens only if everyone plays their part. What if the powers-that-be start fucking things up? The situation may tread uncharted waters if the Egyptian masses irresponsibly show continued self-respect and a complete lack of expected riot fatigue. What if the Americans misplace their standard operating procedure handbooks on democracy prevention? What if the Israelis just decide to take some time off from worrying about their existence? What if real change happens? Incredible and unconventional though it may sound, I would still like to hazard a few predictions here too. Mubarak and all his cronies would be thrown out. Some of them would be mysteriously found in dark alleys wrapped in white cloth, an old Egyptian tradition. Gamal Mubarak will send his resume to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and get recruited immediately.Elections would be held and El-Baradei will realize he cannot pull a Rahul Gandhi-ish con and then retire with a grumpy face to Vienna. The new government with a sizeable representation from the Muslim Brotherhood will show more kindness towards Gaza and indulge in a bit of saber-rattling about Palestinian rights. The Americans will promptly shut them up with military aid to the tune of a billion dollars. The Swiss will mail brochures about their outstanding banking services to the new Egyptian cabinet. The Egyptian people will begin to get used to the change from hating just one man to hating a house full of squabbling and corrupt parliamentarians. Obama will take credit for the victory for democracy and check with the Norwegians if another Nobel can be obtained. The Indian government will obviously continue to monitor the situation.

And I will then regretfully flip back from Al-Jazeera to AXN and get a gin and tonic.

The Proust Questionnaire

It is widely acknowledged that adding one’s mom on Facebook can bring nothing but gloom and anxiety. That axiom was momentarily proved wrong when my mother shared the Proust Questionnaire. Needless to say, I didn’t know who Proust was or why we should bother about some questionnaire bearing his name. A quick search on Wiki revealed that Marcel Proust was a French author of great renown who had filled a questionnaire twice in his lifetime (a common trend in those times) and the difference in his answers showed how his thought processes had changed with his life’s experiences.

A quick look at how Proust had answered made me cynically suspect that it was a clever attempt at impressing the ladies. However I have to grudgingly accept that as far as attempts at self-discovery go, there is a point in answering such questions and then look at them some time from now to see how things change. So I have boldly decided to pull a Proust. For some reason there is a mild difference in the two sets answered by Proust and I took the liberty of merging them.

While at first glance the questions seemed to border on the trivial, they were surprisingly difficult to answer. At the end I was left with a depressing feeling of a complete lack of depth on what I know about myself and the world. It’s obvious that more effort needs to be invested in the right pursuits.

It is highly advisable not to read Proust’s own elegant replies before one attempts the questionnaire as it is bound to influence how one may answer. So here are my own answers.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Inability to communicate.

Where would you like to live?
A country with no little guys.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Happiness is hypothetical.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Faults which make life more amusing.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Edmond Dantes, Howard Roark and Bertie Wooster. Anyone who knows exactly what he wants.

Who are your favorite characters in history?
Alexander for setting the benchmark so high on what one man can achieve.
Ashoka for symbolizing everything my country should be about.
Che for walking the talk.
Gandhi for his utterly brilliant and sometimes exceedingly cunning politics.
FDR for showing how anything is possible.

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
All single mothers.

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Any character which forces me to imagine in painstaking detail how they may have looked like.

Your favorite painter?
Rembrandt.

Your favorite musician?
Hans Zimmer and The Beatles

The quality you most admire in a man?
Loyalty, courage, zeal

The quality you most admire in a woman?
Patience, tenderness, spirited

Your favorite virtue?
Intelligence.

Your favorite occupation?
Pleasure

Who would you have liked to be?
Who but me again. But perhaps a bit leaner and more aware would be good.

What do you most value in your friends?
Loyalty and frankness

What is your principle defect?
Ignorance.

What is your favorite color?
Anything which occurs in nature.

What is your favorite flower?
Depends whom I am getting it for.

What is your favorite bird?
The eagle

Who are your favorite prose writers?
Wodehouse and Dickens

Who are your favorite poets?
I have read too little to decide but I always liked Tagore.

What are your favorite names?
The one which is whispered.

What is it you most dislike?
Arrogance and disloyalty.

What historical figures do you most despise?
Churchill, Mir Jafar and General Dwyer.

What event in military history do you most admire?
War of 1971.

What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Discipline and charisma

How would you like to die?
Without pain and with a smug look.

What is your present state of mind?
Lazy and disorganized.

What is your motto?
Failure is acceptable but not regrets.

2010 - The Year That Was.

January: Big boys don’t cry. I am not a big boy then. Wait, is this an apartment or is this The Apartment? A bath tub and well stocked fridge means all of life’s wishes are fulfilled. Shall I retire? The infamous trip to Hampi and all those things we can’t talk about.

February: A few good men sit down and try to define power. Chaos ensues . Crazy road trip in a crazier car. Sach ka Samna in the Wing of Fire. How to resign in a kick-ass manner? Watch and learn.

March: Luck strikes. Apparently naval architecture is yet another discipline I am not good at. Master Shifu makes a dramatic entry and changes everything forever. Is it possible that El Dorado actually exists? How do I become a member? Khrushchev makes a quiet entry. As a side note, finally a very cool office address.

April: F1. Wrote a treatise on how to make a fool of oneself. Wept.

May: Called back to the eastern front for the next sordid chapter of the long con. Started impersonating Ian Wright in my free time. The affair with Khrushchev gathers steam in more ways than one.

June: I love fishing. I would have loved it even more if I caught anything. Estonia needs to be quarantined. MBS is born and my career in international crime takes off. Master Shifu continues to destroy my ego with effortless ease. I consider conversion.

July: The con continues destroying all logic and reason in its path. Impersonating Wright yields great benefits. I propose marriage to travelling and she accepts. I swim with sharks. Literally. Khrushchev continues to mesmerize.

August: Conversations, deep introspection and a lot of food home delivered. The sales pitch is finally made. Subservience pays, the pitch is accepted. Exit Khrushchev.

September: (Disappointing) Road show at IITM. Deaths and good byes. Change of perspectives and promises to self. Leave for the much awaited magical mystery tour. Hate aircrafts. Realized how much I missed the classroom.

October: Questions, tests, ghosts, mild flirtations, humiliations, beaches, parties and pranks. Sign off from The Apartment. Solemn goodbyes. A pat on the back.

November: Madness. Sheer madness.I consciously decide to bite off more than I can chew. Chan marries and I miss the show.El Dorado comes closer. Camping is redefined. Do I know how to dance? No. Do I know how to dress? No. Do I know how to kiss? I used to. Not anymore. Do I know how to talk? No. Do I know how to give up? No.

December: Amarda gets hitched. I fly solo for the first time and ruffle feathers. The price of insubordination is paid. El Dorado is dangerously close. The wardrobe slowly begins to transform. The delight from Istanbul and the silly line about the hair. The clients arrive and Operation Vacation is launched with much fanfare. Busses, visas, resorts, shopping, crabs. Operation declared a success and clients leave. Master Shifu wishes me the best and exits.

January 1st, 2011, 11:59pm: A scratch on the bucket list. An incomplete draft of a thank you note. Jazz and Mr Daniels. What a difference a year can make.

Brunei for Dummies.

In 2007 I had written a highly acclaimed post for people who may want to travel to Germany and avoid rookie mistakes. It’s time for the much delayed next installment which will guide the ignorant traveler intending to visit the tiny Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam.

Quite a few on finding out that I spent a little over a month in Brunei, sheepishly asked where is Brunei? (Some used ‘what’ instead of ‘where’) I envy them. I believe that most of us are better off being unaware of the existence of a country where tax is just a word used on Scrabble boards and driving any car from the last century is considered taboo. But in keeping with the Lonely Planetish spirit of the post, I shall be kind with the trivia dispensing. Brunei is a monarchy, sultanate to be more precise, on the island of Borneo in South East Asia. The two hallmarks of the nation are its particularly loaded Sultan and its astounding luck with hydrocarbons. As far as what you can do as a tourist there kindly refer here. For the more adventurous who want a true ‘feel’ of the place read on.

1. The first thing which one observes in Brunei Darussalam is that people are happy. So obviously I was pissed off the moment I landed. I can make a leeway for lot of things but definitely not contentment.

2. There is just one major road in Brunei running from the east to west. The locals obsequiously refer to it as ‘The Highway’. The time to traverse the whole length of this 120km lifeline is what one would take to travel from Indira Nagar to Marathahalli in Bangalore at peak traffic hour. So unsurprisingly quite a few Bruneians commute daily from the capital Bandar in the eastern corner of the country to Seria in the western corner, where The Corporation which shall not be named has its premises.

3. Anyone living in the small towns in India is aware of the horrible practice of everyone knowing everything about everybody. I had a tough time growing up in a town where every move was noted and quietly reported back to the puppet masters. Brunei citizens experience the same misery but on a national scale. The rare upside to such a close knit country is that when one gets hauled up for speeding on ‘The Highway’ by the police, it is highly probable that the erring driver and the policeman may be distantly related. So the old Indian excuse of,’Sirjee, chota bhai samajhke isbaar ke liye chhor do’ will hold a lot of water in this part of the planet.

4. One of the most striking features of the country is the overwhelming presence of The Corporation at every corner. Never before have I seen just one company have such a remarkable role in a nation’s history and weave itself so firmly into the social fabric. It felt a bit surreal at times.

5. Brunei is a teetotaler’s wet dream. The restaurants bizarrely stay open late and yet after a long day, when one instinctively utters ‘A pint of Guinness please …’, the waitress clears her throat with a disapproving look. You may naively ask ‘But Sayan, you must be having some bootleggers around? Perfect dryness is just a Gandhian theory right?’ I will have to sadly shake my head and say no. Brunei is truly dry, just like the Mahatma intended. My fellow Malaysian brethren and I invested significant time and effort in searching for a ‘source’ including staking out the Army's canteen but all clues merely gave way to wild booze chases. However the problem was finally solved by hopping over the border every weekend. (One can bring in limited amount of alcohol to Brunei but they will need to register it at customs.)

6. This absence of spirits hasn’t dampened the night life of Brunei in any way. All bets are off in Gadong (pronounced emphatically as Gadooooonnnngggggggg) which happens to be where the young gather for phenomenally wild nights. Watching someone throw up in the late hours of Friday nights after having one water-melon juice too many or jostling with people crowding around a flaming carrot juice shots competition, one will be left gasping for breath trying to catch up with the madness all around. When one finally drives through the saucy green light districts in the wee hours, the only thought which resonates is how too much fruit juice can get someone as high as a few pegs of JD. (Disclaimer: I am not advocating fruit juice fuelled intoxication. I disapprove of the use of fruits for any form of self-gratification.)

Statutory Warning: The following statements may induce you to raise an army and invade Brunei. Conventional wisdom suggests it is advisable not to go beyond sabre-rattling as the Bruneian national security has been cunningly outsourced to the Gurkha Regiment of the British Army.


7. There are no taxes in Brunei. No income tax, no service tax, no sales tax, no deduction at any source whatsoever, no surcharges, no education cess, no infrastructure duty. Excise is just exercise spelt hurriedly and Tariff is the nickname of Haji Muhammed T Ariff. Everyone’s education is paid for and it will usually involve a fully supported scholarship to one of the top universities in UK. There are no JEE or AIEEE equivalents. Hospitals are cheap and the police efficient. I find all this unacceptable and a gross violation of my right to see other people crib about their country. In short, we need to raise an army and invade them and bring about some chaos. (Refer statutory warning)

8. If Brunei is about anything at the end of the day, it is about cars. The message was pretty clear on the first day when my recently graduated colleagues drove in on their VW Beetles, Honda Civics, BMWs, Mercs, Mini Coopers, Mazda and the range of SUVs which make you feel like turning into a Naxal and fight for justice. When asked what I used, to go to my office in Bangalore, I had to meekly say Volvo without daring to elaborate further on the make of the vehicle. But thank god for Bruneians and their love for sleek cars for I now know how it feels to be in a two-seater open hatch Honda S2000 flying at 225 km/hr. Divine.





My Volvo doesn't look too bad against their array of BMWs and VWs.

With their close knit society and fascination for cars , Brunei is easily one of the most marvelous places I have had a chance to visit. The people are very friendly and as already mentioned more happy than any community I have encountered. It was their sense of contentment which I found utterly fascinating and at the same time difficult to relate to.

Inquilab Zindabad!

Last week there was an all India strike at some parts of the country. Having grown up in a town which unfailingly saw a shutdown every fortnight, I have always missed the joy of unexpected holidays due to bandhs in the big cities. When these rare strikes do happen, I always get reminded of the only instance when I had participated in a full fledged industrial action.

This incident took place back when I was in DPS Rkpuram. The hostel food was terribly unexciting and monotonous. But it was the maddeningly drab breakfast which got everyone in a really rebellious mood. There was hardly anything to look forward to at the usual 9am breakfast apart from the fact that the girls dined on a mezzanine above where the guys had their meals. And if one looked up long enough, he would be rewarded with a glimpse of one of the prettier faces or more. Very Dachau-ish but without the killings and the labour. The dissatisfaction with the dull bread, butter and boiled egg menu usually got a voice through sudden pointless thumping of tables. But as protests involving sudden pointless thumping of tables go, it didn’t coerce the administration into corrective action.

One fine evening it was decided that each of us would boycott the next morning’s breakfast and hence by force the administration into making changes. The news of the fatwa spread among the rooms and a consensus was quickly achieved ratifying this decision. One individual however eked out a compromise from the Politburo, where he was permitted to go and have a glass of tea. The reason given was of a medical nature.

So the next morning we all went to the mess gate but refused to go any further. So while there was a crowd of students hovering resolutely around the mess entrance, the wardens and the kitchen staff stood inside with large mounds of boiled eggs and pakodas feeling very stupid with every passing minute. When the lone guy went in and just had a glass of tea, it seemed we inadvertently rubbed the message in pretty harshly. And so the strike was a complete success. Comrades from Bengal would have termed it spontaneous. We were ecstatic. Some of the more naive guys started drawing up prospective menus which we expected our united stand would force the administration to accept. Once the break was over we went back to our classes with a sense of pride and achievement. Some of us started contemplating a career in politics.

The wardens taken aback by this unexpected turn of events conferred among themselves and thought it best to report the matter to the vice-principal. This was our Stalingrad moment and the tide of the battle began moving irreversibly in the opposite direction from hence on. Our vice-principal was a straight talking Jat who had little patience for student uprisings due to culinary issues. What he lacked in way of communication skills, he failed to make up for it by having a sympathetic heart. He felt this act was completely unwarranted and as a penalty, issued clear orders to the wardens that no lunch and dinner should be served to us. This decision was summarily communicated to us by the wardens.

The Politburo discussed the limited options at hand and began to sense the sprouting of dissent among the masses. Whispers referring to the nutritional goodness of boiled eggs started doing the rounds. We also discovered that we were getting very hungry and the prospect of missing out on the otherwise dour rajma-chawal at lunch seemed heart wrenching. In view of the changed circumstances a tactical surrender was wisely recommended. Two hours later we submitted a written apology to the vice principal regretting our rashness and requesting a retraction of his order outlawing the other meals. The vice principal, magnanimous in his comprehensive and crushing victory, promised sweeping changes in the breakfast menu. He kept his promise in a way only he could. From the next day we started getting tomato ketchup with the boiled eggs and pakodas.

I haven’t been a part of a strike since.

Revenge is a dish best served in Vegas.

I will always regret fast-forwarding the parts in the Mahabharata where they discuss Karma. I do realize now that all the jazz about paying for one’s sins is quite true. Let me quote a recent incident where I learnt that smugness usually results in a diet of the proverbial humble pie.

The story goes back to March 2010. Muski had recently transferred to Chennai and most conversations on online threads revolved around on how he would cope with a lack of a life there. These conversations gave rise to a curious tradition where we used to call up Muski from Bangalore and tell him what we are up to and follow it up with an innocuous question, “What are you doing?” Usually that was the point when he hung up.

I always have had a terrible fault of going too far. So when I was off for a jaunt to KL and I was having an interesting weekend after another, I decided it would be a wonderfully friendly and chummy thing to keep Muski updated about my whereabouts. So throughout the month a number of phone calls were made to Chennai which usually involved me spouting lines like these

• Muski, I am at a Placebo concert. What are you doing?
• Muski, I am going camping to an equatorial forest this weekend? Where are you going? Bessie beach?
• Muski, are you watching F1 on TV now? See if you can spot me in the crowd. Hey wait, Schumacher just got down….bye…
• Muski, I am about to go to a Chuco Valdez concert. Hello, hello, can you hear me? * dial tone*

Of course anyone who knows Jatin Gupta, knows he is not the one to take things lying down. The man knows the value of patience and planning. So when I heard that both he and our good friend Debashish were going off to the US for a couple of months I was anxious. Not only was it an astounding coincidence that both their companies decided to send them at the send time, they also happened to be going to the same city, SFO. Everything seemed to be guided by some divine hand. I knew that time for retribution was near. I was soon proved right when I received a mail whose content conveyed in very clear terms that both of them were planning to spend a weekend at Las Vegas and they felt it would be kind to copy all their online discussions about the trip to me.

I knew it wouldn’t end there. I received a stream of assurances from them that they would keep me abreast of how their weekend went. They stuck to their promise and my inbox confirmed my worst fears today. To paraphrase Muski’s mail to me,

As you already know we were in Vegas this weekend. Nothing much. Stayed at the BELLAGIO(yes, the AAA five diamond award winning hotel and casino on the Strip shown in Oceans 11). Rented a CADILLAC, opened its sunroof and cruised down the famous Vegas strip shouting while drunk. Semi nude chicks roaming on the road waved back at us. Gambled a lot! And had the world’s largest buffet at the base of the Vegas Eiffel tower. How was your weekend?

Check mate. Karma I say.

Where's the DISCO?

Post Update:Corrigendum

Apparently I have been an ass. As Amrutash has very politely pointed out, my outrage got the better of me and I didn’t bother to dig deeper into the issue before ranting about it. For the benefit of others, I have pasted his comment which brings the matter into a more relevant perspective.

HT has worded it very nicely to make it sound sensational. I'll fill in what they left out / got wrong -- stuff you should've found out before writing a blogpost about it. 1) The quota is called Board of Governers (BOG) quota. 2) Its definitely not a "secret", pretty much everyone knows it in KGP (its definitely not hushed up -- I don't know why HT needed RTI to find out about it, they could've just asked around). 3) To be eligible for BOG quota, you need a faculty parent AND 4) need to QUALIFY in IIT-JEE with a rank (any rank) (unlike what HT has mentioned) (You need 60% to qualify for IIT -- that rule is for everyone). 5) You can apply only for MSc courses in Kharagpur (like geology, maths, etc) NOT for Btech or Dual or Mtech (In 2003, MSc math in KGP would've been ranks 4500+ -- these are seats which sometimes would anyway go empty because no one took it). 6) As far as I remember it was banned for many years, except for the years of 2003 and 2004 (where, 50 odd kids would have gotten through).
I know this as I was eligible.
I think the practice is on par with most schools having a quota for teacher's children (including schools which have a waiting queue for 2-3 years). Not that I am defending it, I am just saying that I don't think its on par with AICTE corruption. By comparing the two, you are doing a Qureshi. It was introduced, as far as I understand as an incentive for faculty with children in middle school to stay on with IIT KGP -- since school education faclities in Kharagpur used to be limited. We are talking about 80s here (Pre-factory era).
The simple reason why the news has received a swift burial is that its really old news. The practice was stopped in 2004. There is no BoG quota to protest now! Besides, there are way many more things worth protesting about in IIT Kharagpur.
A follow-up lies here.

Obviously my complaint about no one from the IIT community speaking up about this no longer stands. However the validity of the ‘rural argument’ can be debated. The discussion would be more nuanced but I agree its no longer a topic meriting much thought. Sigh. I will be more careful.


Original Post


When I read this article on the Hindustan Times about a secret quota for children of the faculty at IIT KGP, I was not unmoved. It existed till 2005 and was removed when the RTI Act was passed. The infallibility of the JEE process had always been one of those totems of a few things which still remained accountable in this country. Of course the process has been faulty at times as earlier events have shown. Stupid mistakes have been made many times before but they were invariably honest mistakes. This recent development is however a departure.

At the risk of sounding clichéd and derisive I don't expect systems to function in India and do understand that its ingrained in our Indian psyche to work around obstacles rather than remove the obstacles themselves. So news about corrupt administrators in AICTE or the MCI or even outrageous lapses in defence purchase or a zillion other scandals are so easily digested by our perversely permissive society, something I have failed to see in any other developed/developing nation. So it is kind of immature of me to share my indignation about this IITKGP affair which seem so insignificant compared to the daily barrage of thievery we hear about. But this ‘small’ matter is wonderfully indicative of the fact that the lack of integrity in public offices have nothing to do with the level of education the person may have received.

My five years at IITM did give me opportunities to look at behind-the-scenes activities of the administration. My initial assumptions that IITs are an oasis of committed and sincere professors, administrators and staff were admittedly naive. The administration did have elements which characterize any Indian bureaucracy anywhere. Ego-driven supervisors and dishonest individuals never failed to make their presence felt. But for every shifty character I could see two earnest ones. My eventual opinion was that the system while flawed usually worked to give positive progress. The guys actually running the institute had taken a pragmatic approach where they tolerated a few of the malevolent elements as long as that didn’t affect the running of the institution and its core objectives significantly. While it might not seem the best strategy to purists, I feel it's perhaps the only one which could perhaps work.

So this makes me extremely keen to see how the IITs respond to this admission of a criminal subversion of its admission process which in no way can be trivialized. This offence is impossible without tacit sanction from the rest of the IITs as JEE chairmanship rotates between the IITs every year. Left to the individual professors, I am sure a majority of them would denounce them in the strongest of terms. They have never hesitated to denounce the ‘quality’ of students which the newer JEE formats have supposedly resulted in. Dishonesty among students has always been efficiently investigated and resoundingly punished in the famous DISCOs (disciplinary committees) across all IITs. I hope I can safely assume that they will show a similar enthusiasm in demanding a more thorough investigation of all their colleagues who would have directly misused their position or indirectly facilitated it by remaining quiet.

Not surprisingly the news has already received a rapid and quiet burial. Apart from the downright stupid defence that ‘It wasn’t just me’ from one of the culprits which sounds more like Shaggy's next song title, no past or current IIT administrator has spoken a word. Some of the criminals remain at top administrative positions. Like anywhere else the heads have nodded and moved on. When I hear people sigh that if educated people were running the country and their institutions, we would see better days, I involuntarily start looking for baseball bats. No amount of education or degrees can change a human’s desire for status quo or self serving systems when in a position of influence.

Or to sum up in a typical IITM style with its love for succintness, " Kya fart hai!"

1-0

In the mid nineties, I was in middle school. Those were heady days with me trying to understand the relevance of logarithmic tables and whether I would ever get to date Ms Christina, the third standard class teacher. That was also the period in my roller-coaster athletic career when I used to play football. I know it’s difficult to visualize me on a football field but for around three years I was a member of my class soccer team.

My talent was first noticed in the sixth standard by my class captain while I played defence in the annual Students Vs Teachers match. Our school had a devilish custom where every year a faculty versus students football match took place. But the catch was that the student team would comprise not of the best footer players from each class but of people who had ranked first academically! The dastardly scheme was based on the presumption that top rankers were usually athletically challenged. As a result the mostly pot-bellied faculty members would end up looking good and a few of the teachers could then perhaps manage to impress the oh so gorgeous Ms Christina. I apologize for the repeated references. But she is the still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

Of course this plot came unstuck in 1996 when the top rankers curiously also happened to be a bunch of reasonably fit individuals with an acceptable flair for sporting events. Yes, I just described myself as reasonable fit with an acceptable flair for sports. I played defence and our team won. My class football captain and his advisors appreciated the fact that I didn’t wince in tripping the vice principal multiple times and pushed the principal into the mud. They agreed that what I lacked in experience in football, I made up in stupid courage of standing in the way of rampaging over-weight forwards and possessed a deft foot which could make a career out of tactical fouling. In short I would make a decent centre back.

My three year soccer career was not spectacular but it wasn’t a disaster either. I committed an average of three fouls per match and usually got substituted after a half. The highpoint of my career was my last match in standard eight where we were playing the other section in the finals. The match was sponsored by Milo and the members of the winning team would be getting free 500gms packets of Milo. The match was a humdinger with the score tied at 1-1 before our defender Srikanth Gupta let in an own goal. With that we lost the finals and the Milo packets. I decided it was time to move on to cricket. The move would have suited Srikanth better who unfortunately continued in football the next year where he scored yet another own goal in the very first match of the season. Till date he remains the only player in Don Bosco’s history to score two own goals in consecutive matches.

Since that fateful Milo sponsored afternoon, I never played competitive football again. Till a couple of weeks ago. With the world cup on, I was losing tremendous amount of money in the syndicate and beginning to feel that perhaps I have completely lost my feel for the game. The fact that the intra-office Futsal tournament was happening at the same time was a happy coincidence and I signed up immediately for the green team. A big indoor Futsal court in the basement of the twin towers was an impressive setting for my return to the game after eleven years. But the huge turnout from the various departments was unnerving as it meant that I stood a good chance of making a fool of myself in front of half of the organization’s staff in the East.

My team gathered around for a mild warm-up session before our match against the yellow team. We stood around in a circle and kicked the ball around without allowing it to hit the ground. Till it came to me, of course. Without getting into graphic details of my comic attempts at keeping the ball in the air, I will just mention that my team quickly developed a fair idea about my proficiency in soccer. My captain showed his tactical genius by not playing me in the starting five. The match begun and I have to mention that indoor footer with its relaxation of a few of the rules of regular soccer did have its thrill. Though the total game time of just fifteen minutes instead of ninety did seem a bit brief to me.

Our team started well. The defence was solid and the way the team was playing, one could see glimpses of Johan Cruyff’s Totaalvoetbal. But frankly with only four players on the field, every tactic would begin to look like total football at some point. A blistering counter-attack in the fifth minute took the opponents completely by surprise as our team put one pass the goalie. Two minutes later as the referee blew the whistle signalling half time, I began to sense that I may play an important role soon enough. We were two minutes into the second half when the inevitable happened. I was asked to go in.

In view of the really limited time, my tactic was to get into the thick of the things immediately. I was mentally prepared to play defence who often made attacking forays along the flanks. There was no strategic thinking behind that plan. I just thought the whole thing sounded cool. It didn’t take too long for the ball to come to me. After a futile attempt on the goal by our opponents, our goalie passed the ball to me. As the yellow team player charged towards me, I tripped over the ball and almost fell. But this inadvertent move managed to flummox the charging player giving me enough time to pass the ball. The spectators gasped at what they considered an intentionally brilliant fake move. Having had a narrow escape where a dreadful error was misconstrued as a skilful shuffle, I decided to take care as I wouldn’t be so lucky the next time. The best way to avoid messing up with the ball I assumed would be to avoid getting it in the first place. With only four minutes of the match to go I decided to keep marking all the yellow team players but stay out of the ball’s way at the same time. The ploy worked beautifully and I was seen doing a lot of running up and down the court without embarrassing myself. Unfortunately my team management noticed that I was actually not adding any value to the proceedings and I was summarily substituted with a minute to go till the final whistle. I spent a staggering four minutes on court and was proud as hell that I didn’t do anything to squander my team’s slender one goal lead. To cut a short story shorter, we won.

The Beautiful Game

Every four years there comes one month when I wake up smiling every single day.

It makes me ecstatic. I don’t know why but it does. I feel like holding everyone and shake them and shout, ‘ Its the world cup!!’

This is undoubtedly the best football commercial I have ever seen. Thank God for the world cup!

When I crashed a party.

This happened in March. I decided to take a short detour on my way back from office and thought it would be a good idea to return through the KL convention centre. My destination was the Starbucks inside. I loved the elaborate interview Starbucks goes through before getting my coffee. By the time they finish enquiring about the different boundary conditions for my drink, I usually don’t remember what I ordered in the first place. But then they do make great coffee.

The convention centre is an impressive building close to the twin towers. I was too distracted to notice the unnaturally empty surroundings around the centre, devoid of the usual loitering tourist. At a distance, next to the main entrance, I noticed a fleet of swanky cars. A couple of old men had just alighted and they were surrounded by a group of animated photographers clicking away wildly. There were four colourful dragon puppet like things frolicking around the old men in an apparent bid to welcome them. All this was accompanied by loud and incoherent drumming. Apparently finesse and sobriety were dispensed with in a traditional welcome in this part of the world. Obviously the whole thing was too much of a visual treat not to attract a more detailed attention from yours truly. So I decided to take a closer look and followed the troupe as they entered the convention centre. The old men were the centre of the attention and obviously were some sort of local bigwigs. A few guys in suits and dark glasses hovered around whispering what sounded like Roger, I can't hear you, this is fun, albeit in a Chinese accent, into state-of-the-art walkies.

The ensemble entered the main hall. So did I. The sight inside was stunning. The whole hall was spectacularly decked up with flowers and confetti with a huge crowd in their best evening attire. They were in groups sitting around brilliantly made-up dining tables. The moment the gang I was shadowing entered the whole hall stood up and everybody was completely silent.A deep voice announced over the microphone ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dato Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak the prime minister of Malaysia’.

I just had the biggest WTF moment of the decade. To say I was surprised would have been an understatement. Being an Indian, who has grown up watching the smallest cog of the government machinery guarded by a posse of grim faced sentinels and having bragged about the sixty car convoy of our own prime minister which I happened to witness a couple of times, standing at an arm’s length of a head of the government, by mistake, was a situation I was finding very difficult to come to terms with. As Wodehouse would describe it, I was in a pickle.

A huge board at the side proudly indicated that I had crashed into the Chinese New Year Gala Dinner. That explained why most of the guests were in the traditional Chinese attire. There was only one person in the world who would have convinced me to have been bold enough to continue with my bravado and sit out the whole event and pretend to be a guest from the Indian embassy. But he was trying to sell things on EBay a thousand miles way. So I felt it was time to call off the adventure and decided to quietly make my exit. I hoped that no one would notice an individual hopelessly under-dressed for the occasion, listening to an IPod had wandered in and none did.

A big sign outside listed the guests for the evenings. The ambassador from the People’s Republic of China, the American ambassador, the British high commissioner, a host of industry and organization heads, the city administration, the party had them all. I do recall not reading any name from the Indian embassy though. I tried to exit the building with that same confidence with which I went in but that plan ran into difficulties when I discovered I had lost my way. But before I was hauled up for walking briskly with no apparent reason around the corridors outside the hall, a sweet lady comprehended my problem and cheerily showed me the way out.

So what was the LFI* ? As long as you walk assertively without furtive glances, you can crash the most exclusive of parties.

*Learning from Incident. I read quality management manuals with my meals.

April's Fools.

April sucked. I was ill. I stopped moving about. Metals stopped corroding mysteriously which had an unfortunate effect on my workload. The Greeks stuffed me. Apparently giving birth to the Western civilization also gives you the right to destroy it. But in the midst of all the wretchedness I found solace in two things. Cognitive therapy and the newspaper. While I need not elaborate on the former for the time being, I am all too keen to share why I have chosen Schadenfreude as the word of the month. Never before has the newspapers carried such uplifting news which provided the much needed comfort that there are people out there who are having a more terrible year.

Blank-fined!

The only reason I hate Goldman Sachs is because I don’t work for them yet. One of my ambitions includes working for five evil corporations in my lifetime. I don’t think I have worked for any yet though I don’t know whether the students’ executive committee at IITM counts. GS has had a series of bad press this year. With billions of dollars of bonuses, audacious hiding of Greece’s debts and of course the recent civil suit from the Securities & Exchange Commission, GS is being blamed for everything and anything. Being the most successful bank to come out of the recession unscathed has its pitfalls. Anyone who has browsed through the details of the SEC case would be wonder struck. Let me try and put it in a simple format.

• Hedge fund designs financial instrument designed to fail
• GS sells the instrument to their clients
• Hedge fund bets against the very financial instrument it has created.
• GS doesn’t inform clients that the hedge fund is betting against the system.
• Hedge fund makes 1billion dollars.

The dazzling brilliance of the whole law suit is that according to the shockingly lax regulations, the hedge fund hasn’t done anything illegal. GS’s only fault was not to inform their clients about the position of the hedge fund. This suit has set off a chain reaction of events which has slowly made it clear that investment banks have moved away from their primary duty of transferring capital to where it is required to creating sophisticated gambling systems. I will refrain from turning this into a diatribe against the financial sector and its inability to grasp long term vision. That job has been accomplished exceedingly well by Matt Taibbi here. I don’t recall any description of any organization more brutal than how Mat has described GS.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

I always assumed these GS folks to be super-smart but I was disappointed to see that they have left an email trail of their shenanigans which led the senators and media scrambling to crucify them. Fabrice Tourre, whose exploits brought about the SEC suit, was so full of himself after creating the financial instrument that he couldn’t hide his glee in a mail to his girlfriend where he called the deal ‘shitty’ and called his work ‘intellectual masturbation’. If only he had acted upon his feeble conscious attack. On a completely different note, I would love to know if there is a study on how many gifted crooks did themselves in while bragging to women.

Of course the naive among us will assume that this series of law suits is just the beginning of holding the bankers responsible for the recession. These suits are a decently clever approach taken by the Obama administration to force the US senate to push through the financial regulations bill. If anybody is expecting GS to go into a decline, they need to be pinched back to reality. But for now, it’s just great reading the papers about GS executives scurrying to save their skin and seeing Lloyd Blankfien fumble on TV.

Statutory Warning: 140 characters can ruin you.

Lalit Modi. The man who got tweeted out of a multi-billion dollar enterprise built by himself. One has to admit that the whole incident is hilarious if not downright stupid. No matter how clever, suave, well-connected, rich and indispensible one may be, there are two things which can destroy any man in a matter of days. A woman and the ego. I am still struggling to understand where Tharoor erred. Did he break any law by charging a hefty fee for helping out a consortium to bag the deal? I do agree he was incredibly stupid to have left such an obvious paper trail. Just for that he should have been fired. If a minister sucks even at hiding his wealth, then he has no business running the affairs of the nation. Indians have no patience for such incompetence. So what if he has done more for India’s relations with African and Latin American nations than any administration before.

Tehelka has a brilliantly done article about what situation led to the huge fracas. While the article makes insinuations against people as untouchable as Sachin and Sunil Gavaskar without citing concrete sources, it’s a tremendous read. And frankly in such frivolous issues I don’t mind admitting I prefer ‘news’ reports which are more suggestive and scandalous rather than drab and colourless one may encounter in the national newspaper of India.

There are a few interesting lessons we can draw from the event. They are nothing new but this whole row has brought it out more beautifully than other scams have. Power and influence is illusory when you do not have seats in the parliament to back it up. Case in point, Mr Pawar continues to play around with food prices while Mr Modi is looking up the yellow pages for names of lawyers who will exploit him further. Politicians still call the shots in this country, economic liberalization notwithstanding. Modi thought the combined backing of Ambani, Mallya and Wadia would save his skin being oblivious to the fact that unlike the Indian public the industry captains can identify with effortless ease whether an issue is inconsequential and when to choose their fights. Modi had started believing the papers which hailed him as an unconquerable foe who had trounced the home ministry, Subhas Chandra, BCCI, ICC, ECB, Sony. He never realized that at the end of the day the only thing which matters is how much of that famed power could make a difference on the floor of the Parliament.

The Androgynous Swami.

This case was kind of unexpected. When I heard that this Swami who has a thing for cross-dressing, was running what can only be described as a training facility for sexually liberated individuals, near Bangalore, I was very disappointed with myself. I considered this a huge intelligence failure on my behalf and berated all my contacts for having failed to have informed me about the existence of such a guild so near to where I stay. But enough about my discontent.

Let’s be frank. While outwardly all single and a few not-so-single men may have been hypocritically denouncing this sect, they would all have signed on to that infamous ‘contract’ in a heartbeat. The absurdity of the incident stems from the fact that the video was released by a woman who was jealous of Cool Dude Nitya’s proximity to this Tamil actress. Now why would some women vie for the affections of an androgynous Swami is mysterious. I have dealt with this topic at length in my upcoming book ‘Why women never seldom fall for smart and witty men. A true Story’.

I however loved how the newspapers dealt with his eventual arrest in Himachal Pradesh. The headline screamed that the three cameras were found with him!! Oh the horror! Three cameras mind you. How despicable and vile would a man have to be to be found with three cameras? He should be impaled in front of Majestic Bus Stand.
While everyone was trying their best to recover from this sordid act, Nitya came up with the gem of an ironclad defence that he/she is a woman and hence by all sexual impropriety suits filed against him are null and void. If this approach is legal, I shudder to think what my female stalkers may be up to. (Yes, therapy woman, I am talking about you. Leave me alone!)I wonder how the conversation may have gone between Nitya and his lawyer before he sprung this defence on the police.

Lawyer: Hey Nitz, you are screwed man.
Nitya: Hmm.....I agree this is a pickle but I have a cunning plan.
Lawyer: Not again.
Nitya: What if I play the victimized woman card.
Lawyer: But you are not a woman....
Nitya: That’s a mere technicality. I will just announce I am. Call me Nitu from now on. It will help me get into character.

The Eyjafjallajökull Conundrum.

Iceland needs to come closer to the Equator. No one pays much attention to them as they are so far away and then they end up doing silly stuff just to get our attention. First it was bankrupting their national bank and initiating the financial crises in Europe and now there’s this volcano with an identity crisis. After all those Hollywood movies dealing with worldwide apocalypse if there’s anything we have learnt it’s that stuff have to go wrong simultaneously at every corner of the world for things to shut down indefinitely. Also the thing needs to be predicted by a renegade scientist/ ancient civilization. None of these cardinal rules were followed before Eyjafjallajökull went kaput.

Iceland needs to get over the fact that world doesn’t think too much of them. I agree nothing much has happened on that island after Bobby Fischer kicked Spassky’s ass and Ronald Reagan slipped a Mickey in Gorbachev’s drink and made him sign a nuclear disarmament treaty. But is shutting down air traffic all over Europe the best idea you people could come up with? Ands what’s with this consonant fetish? Eyjafjallajökull? Really? Kindly get rid of this consonant diarrhoea if you want the world to take you more seriously. But it was amusing to see how much damage just one volcano, somewhere on the fringes of civilization could do. Very humbling.

Good Bye, Dog.

Mahesh Mahadevan was found dead a couple of days back on the UC,Irvine campus. The police have labelled it a case of suicide by asphyxiation. The circumstances surrounding the case and Nai’s stirring and devastatingly poignant last post on Stumble Upon suggests that the authorities may be correct. And with that act of his, I lost my ex wing-mate, quiz team mate of four years, co-coordinator in so many events and a close friend & confidante.

When Nai first came to IITM, his history of an amazing academic record was stunning even to the haughty IITians. He brought an image of a person so sharp and brilliant and of a level of competence so unattainable that acute jealousy would have made it easy to dislike him. But to his credit, it turned to be the opposite. Perhaps the most affable of all the new guys who joined Mandakini Hostel, he made people comfortable around him at a spectacular pace. Even a notoriously reticent person like me fell prey to his genial company. Thankfully that ensured our coming together to form a team which was one of the major hallmarks of my stay at IITM.

Throughout his four years, Nai could be seen doing everything, everywhere. Everybody knew him and he knew everybody. Whether it’s succumbing to NQA’s assaults for the umpteenth time in yet another quiz with me, or miraculously metamorphosing into a rap star in his final year, his constant propensity to pick up completely unrelated skills and excelling in them at an astonishing speed never failed to overwhelm people around him. He seemed to be in a tearing hurry to master as many things as possible as fast as he could. A lifetime seemed too less for all the things he wanted to learn. Wordplay and quick humour defined his conversations with everyone. The fact that many never got around to grasping the quick-witted repartees never stopped him from jumping at the smallest opportunity to turn a moment funny. Watching Nai with his alert posture guarding the goal posts with his less than imposing frame was a fixed sight at the Mandak quadrangle every evening. So was his presence at every major/minor/completely irrelevant hostel event. His shocking get-up as a promiscuous woman in his first hostel night and his classy get-up as a rap star in his final hostel night has found place in innumerable folders title ‘Mandak Memories’. Bound to be found in long winded ‘fart sessions’, wolf games and practice session of some sort, he was the image everyone associated with life in Mandak and in IITM in general. There are very few compatriots from IITM who have not shed a tear today.


















The infamous 12 Angry Men spoof team,2007

His charisma seemed only to increase in Irvine if the condolences messages on his FB page are anything to go by. Not surprisingly he seemed to have taken up the only thing he didn’t get time for in IITM- dancing. His taste for adventure sports which never found a vent in Chennai finally found a medium as he feverishly conquered skate boarding. In the middle of everything, he managed to squeez in mastery of acapella too. His brand of humour didn’t fail in building a clan of loyal fans even there and not so startlingly, he was a darling among the ladies.

Personally, Nai’s was one of those rare friendships I used to proudly advertise as an accomplishment. In his company, I always felt I was doing something clever, saying something intelligent, thinking something different. His charisma forced me to behave so. Effortlessly. Our interests converged on so many topics. We competed with each other to show who loved British comedy more. We threw in Blackadder references just to see if the other got it and appreciated it if he did. We went crazy trying to outdo each other in mastering referencing to Seinfeld at the appropriate moments. He always called me Shayon-da subtly hinting at his displeasure at my abandoning my roots and making people pronounce my name Sayan. For some reason he also at times referred to me as Herr Fuehrer. I never asked him why. I wish I had. Everything he said to me, everything he wrote to me were always so full of references, puns, play and hidden significances that communicating with him was a delight and a challenge.

As a fellow team-mate, Nai was a joy. With him, Chanani and me, we formed a team which I always referred to as the greatest ever Dum Charades team never to have won anything. We had devised codes for the smallest aspects only to repeatedly fail at every opportunity to use them and we laughed ourselves hoarse at the hilarity which usually ensued on stage. We had devised a code for the movie Troy and fervently prayed for four years that by a stroke of luck we should get it once so that we can set a new time record in DC. I will never forget the look on Chanani’s face when he opened the chit at Saarang 2008, our last shot at qualification after struggling for four years. It was Troy and we cracked it in one second. Though it seems so silly, I was so happy that day. And so was Nai.

Quizzing with him was a different experience altogether. Answering the vaguest, quirkiest and most impossible of questions was his exclusive domain. The sudden burst of passion which flooded his complexion as an answer occurred to him, his jumping up to answer it and then inflicting a forceful and albeit painful high five on me to celebrate is an image imprinted permanently in my head. But what I remember the most is the all too often walk of shame back to the hostel late in the night after failing to win yet another quiz. He always gave a quiet ear to my rants about how Pota & Co were ruining enthusiasm by winning everything. I had the time of my life organizing quizzes with him and working on esoteric and arcane connects. With Jayant we formed a great quizzing team. With KV we went a notch higher and formed perhaps a trio which participated just to trip rather than win anything. Watching Nai and KV in conversation was like watching a joust between Messi and Rooney. Today I can only guess how distraught KV may be feeling. I also feel terrible for dear Psueba who loved talking to Nai. Yet another great pair undone.


















Me,KV&Nai: Shaastra 2007 Main Quiz

There are just so many images which are flooding my mind right now. The unforgettable spoof of 12 Angry Men where the geniuses of Nai, Psueba and Bhadwa decided it would be an interesting experiment if all the jurors let down their trousers in the middle of the play. The coincidental but unrelated cycle accidents which left both of us bruised and bandaged at the same time and Nai felt it would be a good idea to take a picture. His comments and constructive criticisms/praises on each and every blog post of mine, no matter how inane or irrelevant the post may be. He was the first person from IITM to write me a testimonial on Orkut. He also taught me the basics of basketball, with tremendous patience. I remember the frustration he felt whenever he had me in his team. Perhaps the only time we almost fought. I spoke to him just three weeks back, two weeks before he died. He was excited about me going to the Malaysian GP. He warned me of the noise during the race and promised to meet me when he visited India later in December. We tripped on the brilliance of the Seinfeld reunion. On hearing I was planning to go camping that weekend he signed off with a characteristic quip asking me not get ‘camplacent’- overconfident about my camping skills. Everything seemed so normal. All of the above are small bits from the past, some sound even a bit silly perhaps, but seem so overwhelming to me right now in their entirety.






















Bicycle Accident Buddies, 2004

I spent the entire day going through our old mails and gtalk conversations and I was struck by a fact that I had never realized till now. Before every major decision/event in my life, I had consulted him. And he had always replied in clear, objective terms on what he feels would be the right way ahead. I am feeling extremely stupid that this realization just hit me now. The depth and intensity of our friendship seems to have got buried under memories of frivolity and inanities. Its so tragic that its only after his death that I am able to realize how he made life so rich for me not just with his jokes, talents or competency but by being an invisible sounding board on which I had unconsciously been depending on for so many years. I can feel that the realization of what I have lost hasn’t sunk in completely and it will take quite some time for me to completely understand the enormity of the change and how poor it leaves me.

I would like to believe I see life how Nai did. That living is all about learning continuously. Reinventing oneself while staying true to one’s passions. The fact that he did it so much better than I ever could made me value our relationship so much. What frightens me the most right now is that there is a thought out there so terrifying and destructive that when it hit Nai, it convinced him to stop doing what he loved so much, learning and living. If that thought hits me someday, will I fare any better? I am scared.

Please help in bringing Nai back home. Funds are being raised on www.findmahesh.com. Please contribute generously.

Indiblogger: Youngistan Contest

I am nominating four of my posts for the Indiblogger Blog of the month contest and as it is being sponsored by Pepsi, I need to put in my two pence regarding this ‘Youngistaan Contest’. With a Rapidshare account as one of the prizes on offer, I have shed all qualms and unhesitatingly associate myself with this corporate initiative.

So I need to create a challenge for Ranbir as he tries to lay his hand on a bottle of Pepsi. Here goes,

A bottle of Pepsi lies before Ayesha Siddique. She will give it to Ranbir only when he manages to convince Shoiab Malik to serenade her at the top of his voice with Sania Mirza dancing in the background in a tennis outfit. The catch lies in the fact that Ranbir will have to marry Ayesha if he fails. He also needs to shout Baba Nityanand ki Jai after every ten seconds during the whole mission.

Of flights, tall buildings and convocations

BIA to KLIA

As I woke up last Saturday to find myself flying over the Malacca Straits, cosily nestled in the non-cattle class of MH193, I asked myself a pertinent question which seemed very relevant to me at that point of time. What the fuck am I doing here? Last I remembered, my team mate offered me a vada pao and told me that it wasn’t spiked after failing to convince me that an issue with metallurgical undertones, required my immediate attention. A glance at my forearms gave me a clue. There was a tattoo which read ‘metallurgical emergency’ and another on the wrist saying ‘KL Office’. I rushed to the toilet to check for more and found ‘solve energy crisis’, ‘one month job’, ’Global Credit Card’ scrawled at various areas over the torso. One week later most of those tattoos have made sense except one on the back which said ‘One Chicken McGrill please’.

The first impressions of KL were clouded by the experience of a horrible flight at an ungodly hour with a brutal thunderstorm thrown in for special effects. Why have a 4hr 5 min flight in the middle of the night beats me completely. By the way remind me to tell you the story why the flight length is exactly 4hr 5 min. Interesting are the ways world economies work. The daft timing was supplemented by a cruel coincidence of my VP taking the same flight. His presence at the executive lounge and then in the seat in front of me killed all prospects of a drinking binge I had planned for the evening. Modifying the recruitment process would have been high on his to-do list if he saw me racing against time to finish a bottle of JD which recent events have confirmed is a difficult thing to do.

But I can say that KL is a striking city at the first glance, just like the way Chennai is not. I always assumed South-East Asian countries to be hot, crowded and chaotic like my motherland and I was very disappointed to find KL was not so. I will devote a separate post to the joys and sights of this city and how the ubiquitous presence of vadas, idlis and posters of Trisha in a pink saree made me feel at home.

Level 19, Tower 2, PT.

My excitement about working at the hottest address in downtown KL and perhaps one of the most striking structures made by man was very short-lived. Once I realized my desk was at the measly nineteenth floor and there are chumps working on a further sixty nine floors above me, my ego didn’t allow me to enjoy the otherwise electric atmosphere around the place. Additionaly the fact that my status message on Facebook indicating my new address proved to be too cryptic to get the number of comments to my liking, disheartened me further. Naturally I dismissed the other possibility that people just didn't care.Inspite of RMZ Centennial being relatively downmarket compared to the Twin Towers, I was at least at the top floor there (sixth) and loved talking condescendingly to the poor bastards in the fifth.

A few of my colleagues have asked me whether the office here is better. The feelings are mixed. The space is less and it’s so quiet that I could actually hear myself procrastinating. They have an inhuman practice of shutting the coffee machines at five which is a bummer of a situation with me trying to get used to a 12 hr work routine for the first time. Of course there are none of those weekly mock drills/false alarms we have in Bangalore where everyone has to vacate the office because someone wanted a well-done toast and got a bit carried away. Evacuation from the floors 18/19/20 has their associated complexities. Of course the ladies seem perhaps a bit friendlier here. Either that or I am taking too much caffeine.

The Zen Convocation

I was pleasantly surprised to see this morning that I have been included in the annual convocation for Zen Masters. The invitation to the event can be seen below.(Source: Uss)



As you can see I am nothing less than the presiding faculty himself. I look forward to this event every year and it’s such an honour to be sharing the dais with such distinguished names.

I will take this occasion to impart some ancient wisdom to the students present. For those who failed remember that failure is but a stepping stone to yet another opportunity- to fail again. So watch your step.

To the students passing, if you misunderstood the trips of your faculty members as imparting of wisdom and dropping of knowledge then my best wishes for a future you are completely unprepared for.

For the PhD candidate, I must admit, that was fast!

For a very deserving candidate of the Egregia cum laude, let me humbly admit that it often felt while teaching you that we were on the wrong sides in the classroom. As the ancient saying goes, the greatest teachers are those who feel like a student. So congratulations on a job well done on of making me the greatest.

To the rest of the faculty members, “Arey yeh qualification resume me daal sakte hain kya?”

A New Blog.

I realized that sucking at one is not good enough. Ineptitude should be displayed in an overwhelming and multi-faceted manner. I always felt the need of a forum where I can post these short, crisp reference-laden one-liners/ notions which keep striking me. When I go back and read them, it feels good to remember how I have been thinking at various points in time. Twitter didn’t do it for me though as I wanted it to look the way it looks now. Of course every statement is so vague, pretentious and inconsequential that either it would make me look mysterious and intriguing or a complete pompous jackass. As my credentials in the latter have been firmly established I decided to take this low risk initiative.