Comfortably Numb...

My 'Sporty' life- part II

2006-09-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

I worshipped Ayrton Senna. To say that he was a genius would be like saying that a nuclear bomb causes a mild explosion! He was god's tacit means of wrenching my allegiance from cricket, a genius who could drive his car on water if he wanted to. His death in 1994 would leave me heart-broken and in tears, an emotion that completely flummoxed my mom. The poor soul had only seen her pesky little brat reduced to such a wretched state under extremely tenuous circumstances like:
- severe and sustained admonition for underperformance in the academic or the social domain
- the abject denial of a new sporting equipment or denial of permission to partake in a sporting event

‘Magic’ Senna's death will always remain one of the darkest memories in my life. But life had to go on or atleast that's what Schumacher seemed to be telling me. I followed his fledgling season in Jordan before he jumped ship to Benetton. The one thing that made me switch allegiance was his sublime wet-weather driving skills. That was a skill that distinguished Magic Senna from mere mortals; he could drive through pouring rain with far better precision than I could swallow a gulab jamun! Senna was God, nothing less and now so seemed Schumi (notice my tactical shift to his more alluring nickname, rather than referencing his complete surname? yeah, I had just crowned a new emperor for my throne!).

Thus, followed two years of sublime magic by the 'Rainmeister' in his sub par Benetton. Many experts have since claimed that his equipment was far more inferior to the other lead-runners and that it was his sheer genius that powered his mastery over his rivals! So, who was I but just an innocent 14-year to question the claims of all those commentators/experts right? Couple of driver’s championships later, Schumi was bored with the success. He had to entertain himself with a unique challenge and thus came about the most spectacular marriages in the history of Mankind, Michael Schumacher and Scuderia Ferrari (Diana-Prince Charles, Monroe-DiMaggio, Lombardi-Packers can all take a bow! You were all nice contenders, but the sheer magnitude of success n excellence that ensued from this wedlock will be carved amongst the highest echelons of sport for ages to come.) The most promising driver on track was moving onto the most flamboyant race team ever!

No wonder this marriage had completely won over legions of fans. Ferrari was the epitome of sporting icons, Michael was the heir-apparent to emperor Senna. What probably went unheralded amongst the festivities was the stragetic installation of the most brilliant generals that Formula1 would ever encounter: Team Manager, Jean Todt; Race Engineer, Ross Brawn and Design engineer, Rory Byrne. While this marriage went through the initial jitters, my support for Ferrari/Schumi was unwavering! I was willing to live or die with Ferrari/Schumi. While Hills, Villenueves and Hakkinens seemed to be winning their championships, there is one thing that is still etched deep in my heart: The sublime drive that Schumi showcased in the 1995 Belgian Grand Prix through torrential rain in his sub par Benetton Renault. Legend goes that while Gerhard Berger was struggling through the treacherous 'Eau Rogue' corner in his wet weather tires, Schumi not only drove past him nonchalantly but managed to peek a glance at Berger's tires to see if wet-weather tires were developing blisters. Needless to say, he drove on with his intermediate tires and won the race 19.5 seconds ahead of 2nd placed Damon hill. Ah! The sheer audacity of his talent!

I can never root against such talent; he was non-pareil when it came to driving! There are no two ways to it. To ice the cake, his resplendent brilliance was captured quite frequently by one of my favorite sports reporters: Nirmal Shekar of the Hindu. Reading Nirmal Shekar's articles on Schumacher and Tendulkar are like listening to Pink Floyd while smoking pot; it is tough to describe which pleasure enhances the other! Devouring the Saturday sports special supplement of the Hindu was my most anticipated event of any upcoming week. A convenient half-day school, followed by a sumptuous mom’s lunch was the ritual that preceded my 3 hours of nirvana every week. Perhaps the only joy that could match this surreal experience would be a sumptuous feast of Hindu’s sister publication, The Sportstar. The fortnightly magazine with unforeseen vision and uncanny insights into the sporting world. It was my vicarious tête-à-tête with gurus like Peter Roebuck, Nirmal Shekar and R.Mohan.

It is through Sportstar that I would develop my new-found appreciation for the English premier league and European soccer in general. There happened to be this juggernaut of a team called Manchester United that stomped through the field and gathered trophies. It seemed like Man Utd (yes, the usage of the abbreviation is quite immediate because there were no prior infatuations, just plain love at first sight!) While my prior devotion to soccer was via legendary Indian clubs like Mohan bagan and Mohd sporting, this seemed to a be whole other galaxy all together. I.M.Vijayans and Chima okeries couldn’t hold a candle to the resplendence of David beckhams and Peter Schmeichels…a new era was dawning in my sporting universe now. A new age being crafted on lazy english afternoons and irreverent british soccer demi-gods! Ballhandling geniuses holding aloft silverware were sights that held me breathless.

My 'Sporty' life - part I

2006-09-12T01:10:00.000-07:00

My Life has always revolved around sports. Cricket, (like any true Indian worth his salt!), was my first love. Football (Soccer) a close second. My alma mater, the great DAV-BHEL school in Ranipet embraced and proliferated my 'sporting genius' for the lack of better talent/enthusiasm/physical attributes amongst my peers! My proficiency in cricket, soccer, basketball, athletics, shuttle, tennis, volleyball, TT, snooker, gilli, goli etc. etc. was nurtured to varying levels of excellence (or ineptitude depending on your viewpoint of being an optimist or a pessimist). Life in a BHEL township comes with its own perks...acres n acres of playgrounds and parks, a veritable cornucopia of facilities and a desperate lack of other entertainment choices!

All those factors chose to conspire rather fortuitously in dictating a childhood fraught with sports and games (of all kinds, rules and affiliations). It was an addiction I unconsciously chose to inculcate most gleefully. After all, what kind of insane kid would grow up to hate chocolate if your favorite aunt owned a chocolaterie, huh? So, thus began my 'sporty life'...an integral facet of my ethos which to this date has remained as unwavering as my mother's love and dad’s support!

My passion for sports gets exhibited in two distinct forms:
- Following sports (the more benign and favorable form of my addiction)
- Playing sports (the malevolent and sometimes unpopular cousin)

My compassionate instincts prevent me from tormenting you with the gory/graphic/banal details of the second form of my passion for now. I shall devote the rest of this blog describing how the first form of passion has shaped my life in such spectacular fashion.

As any true son of the Indian soil would attest, most of our 'sporting childhood' is intertwined inseparably with Cricket and the Indian cricket team. Kapil Dev's dazzling outswingers and Sunil Gavaskar's stoic defense formed the central theme of any bedtime tale that my parents chose to narrate in my early childhood. Then came our beloved Krishnamachari with his swashbuckling, Gayatri mantra-laden assaults on brutal fast bowlers twice his size! As my conscience/appreciation for the sport started to grow, I got hooked onto watching cricket like a single working female would to 'Sex n the City'. Shastris and Kumbles followed and I was stuck with cricket for the lack of a better choice. Then came a diminutive little teenager, a chubby and affable kid who went by the name Sachin Tendulkar! My universe was now whirring at gazillion miles an hour, I had found a new god! His batting exploits I would re-enact in rather spectacular fashion in my bedroom and bathroom. Damn you Sachin, you were singularly responsible for substantial damage to my walls, switchboards, tables and showerheads man!!

Dravids and Gangulys followed and I danced along like a man on trance. After all, Cricket was our national religion right? (Whoever said India is a secular country huh?) It is well beyond my literary ability to capture the complete impact of cricket on my life or for that matter a billion other lives in India. So, let me adopt the classical British style of understatement and just summarize it this way: Cricket made my world tick, without cricket I would have been a depressed lunatic waiting for mother earth to swallow me! Well, that is 'understatement' enough to express my passion for everything cricket. It was almost natural progression for every kid raised in India to develop this affliction, just like learning the Alphabet when you stepped into kindergarten. This is a cultural phenomenon that has always fascinated me, this undying passion and zest for the most British of all sports that thrives in India. In fact, I can boldly claim that if not for some "minor" historical details, Cricket is probably the most Indian of all the sports still played/followed all aorund the world!

While many other sports like Hockey and Tennis vied for my attention, they would always remain minor distractions...Cricket was the emperor of my universe! Until Formula1 motored along into my teenage life! Star Sports was still an alien channel trying to fill up it's non-cricket slots with sports which were as alien and inexplicable as tensor calculus to me. But wait, what was this funny sport where they race ugly looking buggies that were rather misleadingly referred to as cars? Hmmm...interesting! This Michael Shoemaker eh..Schumacher seemed a pesky and yet tenacious kid. While everyone else bent over backwards and let this Aryton eh...Ayrton Senna guy drive right over their prostrate selves, Schumacher seemed to have other ideas! Well cricket world cup was another 3 years off and we were only playing Zimbabwe this next few months. Thus began an affliction that would soon begin to supplant cricket for the throne.

[To be continued in future episodes...]

Lost in Transition

2006-08-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

Oh No!! It is that time of the year again, my old lease has run out and I need to vacate or risk being evicted unceremoniously from my cozy perch. Two years of cushy existence in this apartment have anesthetized my senses to the travails of shifting/moving! I had relegated those painful memories to the melancholic sections of my mind, those sorry archives I revisit only during extreme duress. So, it is with a heavy heart that I now peruse through those despondent chapters, looking for that episode ensconced amongst my most depressing moments in life. My distant memories of being “Lost in Transition”…

What do I do now?? The swanky one-bedroom pad that I so meticulously chose for my last year of grad school existence is still a distant fortnight away… I am now forced to partake in this annual campus town ritual of brute-forcing myself into an unwilling friend’s premises for the time-being! There exist a few popular strategies that I can choose from to secure a habitat during this thorny period of homelessness. I shall try to list these “life-saving” strategies in the following paragraphs …
[I shall refer to the original lessees of the apartment who will stay on and not be involved in this painful act of transition as “original owners” and the unfortunate souls who seek refuge as the “refugee friends” in the following sections]

- Strategy #1: Subtle means of extortion, involving unctuous acts of servitude. This usually involves involuntary offers from the refugee friends to cook, clean dishes, and share utility bills with the original owners. This tactic can be sensed by a sudden and inexplicable metamorphosis of the refugee friends into amicable samaritans.

- Strategy #2: Bargaining for a free-stay in exchange for all those worthless acts of generosity that the refugees ‘kindly’ chose to shower on their ‘friends’ in the not-so-recent past (Those golden times when each of the parties involved had a distinct mailing address listed as per INS regulations!). This tactic is generally characterized by unnatural acts of bonding and ‘hanging out’ with the original owners around 2-3 weeks before the original period of transition. A sudden spike in the frequency of inordinate and unconditional offers of drinks/meals/refreshments during casual night outs is generally observed.

- Strategy #3: Blackmailing your friend with fictitious memories of friendship and cloyingly sweet episodes of fun and frolic. This tactic is characterized by melodramatic antics of the refugees and a heightened sense of apathy amongst the original owners. This tactic results in exchanges that are rather awkward for the parties involved but supremely entertaining for the neutral observers. A protracted exchange between the parties can begin to resemble afternoon soaps on the Indian satellite channels!

- Strategy #4: Imposing one’s seniority on a defenseless junior. A brutal and unpopular technique that generally renders the prey (i.e. the original owners) defenseless! Any hint of resistance is quashed by reproachful renditions of past generosity by the “senior” refugees. This tactic is an antithesis to the fact that the proto-typical “Senior-Junior” relationship is merely a vestigial custom, with vague connotations to college days in India.

- Strategy #5: Brandishing family contacts/relationships that would put proficient genealogists to shame. Typical exchange between the parties would be along these lines:

Refugee: “Hi Machi, you remember X? Your cousin who was 8 years your senior and went to ABC Univ? His roomie during grad study was my uncle’s wife’s brother’s close friend from LKG da! Wat an amazing coincidence that we know can get to be roommies for a few weeks na?”

O Owner: “Oh really? Strange coz’ I didn’t even know X existed till you kindly chose to enlighten me with a juicy snippet from your eventful family’s past!”

Refugee: “Seriously da machi…it is indeed a small world! History does repeat itself”

O Owner: “Yea rite! Tell me all abt it! (Sigh)”

- Strategy #5.b: A subset of this tactic would be reference to classmates/friends who had a common friend/ lived in the same street/ played in the same park/ went to the same IIT coaching class etc etc. This is a superb example of utilizing your opportunistic kinship and renewing bonds that you wouldn’t have dreamt of serving a useful purpose this far down the line!

So, the battlelines are drawn and strategies chosen/imposed by both parties involved. Unfortunately, there exists a considerable mismatch between the populations of the two parties involved. The refugees tend to outnumber the original owners by astronomic proportions. The kind of mismatch that exists between the population of single guys with “cool, fun-loving” profiles and the population of ‘homely’ girls with a “single/unmentioned” profile status in Orkut!

It is a curious dynamic that engulfs campus-towns during this period of strife. Unwilling owners are forced to accommodate flocks of desperate refugees, mostly out of compulsion and involuntary emotional blackmail. Boxes of cutlery and grocery supplies are crammed into non-existant nooks n crannies. Sleeping bags, wet towels and dirty laundry piled onto unsuspecting bedrooms and living rooms. Office and lab spaces notice an alarming spurt of suitcases and irrelevant cardboard boxes. Humanity teems out of every square footage of real estate available, while the new apartments are being cleaned, washed and readied for their new tenants. It is a state of uneasy truce, a dynamic state of equilibrium that cannot be explained even by the most profligate of mathematicians.

I now step into this unfortunate state of transition with mixed emotions. An unfortunate victim of my fate, having to revert to strategies I would have otherwise found unworthy of my dignity and chivalry! I hope it is as transient as a flight to India, visions of the Promised Land allowing you to grin and bear the torture. I shall indulge in fantasies of clean bathrooms, freshly laundered clothes and acres of space to help me tide over this dark and tempestuous period of persecution. I shall announce grandiose plans of my “house-warming” party to help assuage the feeling of abomination that is festering in my host’s hearts. I shall seek to live an unobtrusive grad student existence and maximize my time spent in my lab (although that would cause needless suspicion and anxiety in my advisor’s mind!!).

As wishful and impossible as this might sound …I shall not let the eternal optimism in me simmer down! I strongly urge all of my fellow calamitous souls (who are subjected to this sadistic ritual annually) to share my vision! Arise, Awaken and Bend not your vertebrae to this unfortunate occurrence, smile and set forth on a wondrous journey of discovering the body rhythms, quirks and personal habits of new-found friends! After all, it is testing times like this that make us a stronger person, right??

P.S. [Oh God!! I need to use the restroom NOW…but alas I am only third on the queue!!] Have a wonderful summer if you live in your “own apartments (all by yourself that is)” and forget not that we will inhabit our Promised Land sometime soon!

Recepción a San Diego, mi amigo

2006-06-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

The drive to San Diego from Southern California is fraught with soothing visuals and a laid-back coastline that delves sporadically into the Pacific Ocean. The entry into this gorgeous city is quite unannounced and understated. Lush green meadows interspersed by hills are a recurring theme throughout the city’s expanse. Civilization is realized once you take an exit from the freeway to visit your chosen destination within the city. Armed with my brand new semi-automatic digital camera, I was salivating for photo-ops. (Preparation for the hunt involved a lengthy 2 hour rendition of my camera manual and concomitant twiddling of the multitude of knobs and settings within the quirky little opto-electronic gizmo a.k.a the Canon Powershot S2 IS.)

The first thing that you notice about this gorgeous city is its green vegetation. Almost every slope, every hill is swathed with a lush green carpet and interspersed with wild flowers and flora rouged in varying shades of green.

(Right-click on the thumbnails and open in a new window for full-size images)

My first stop was La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya), a beautiful community by the beach. It resembles the inimitable city of Monte Carlo with its rather curious geography, a juxtaposition of the beach and ridged streets set along the jagged slope of a hill. The streets jut over a bluff and face the beautiful cove that makes La Jolla a family favorite in summertime. Art galleries and expensive showrooms dominate the shopping landscape in this sunny paradise. Sidewalks are lined with the 'Californian signature' palm trees and beautifully manicured gardens replete with flowers and potted exotics. The buildings sport a sand-stone color scheme throughout the community. The intelligent choice of sandstone accentuates the colorful flora and promotes the high-end promenade quite beautifully. Expensive cars, well-heeled clientele and a sunny countnenance add to the Monte Carlo-ish legend!

(Right-click on the thumbnails and open in a new window for full-size images)

The palette of eateries is quite diverse and mouth watering. My choice of lunch was a mexican restaurant adorned with a palm thatch and a hammock for an entrance. The interiors resembled a mexican beach shack with grill-meshed windows overlooking the beach. The restaurant's functional menu lists all the regular mexican cravings i.e. Chilli rellenos, flautas, burritos, tacos and chalupas. The food was simple and tasty, but the view from the beach shack was the actual sumptuous treat!

The bright colors of the La Jolla inn in stark contrast to the emeraldine foliage and the tranquilizing azure background of the beach! The scene would have inspired Rembrandt to migrate to this paradise if not for its obscurity at that time. The blame should fall squarely on the dumb migrants, who delayed their 'Gold Rush'. 200 years too late for Rembrandt's existence to embellish this world with his virtuosity! It's a shame that California escaped the Maestro because the marriage would have yielded a breathtaking array of art...that would have left Europe to look like a desolate meadow ravaged by a thousand rampaging elephants! Ahh...the possibilities register a tingle down my spine (Sigh!!) .

A sumptous lunch devoured was followed by a gentle jaunt towards the warm, sun-kissed beach. It was a perfect day in the late 60s with just the right smattering of feathery clouds. The impish sun engrossed with it's late afternoon game of hide-n-seek with the cotton puffs. A sizeable crowd taking in the sun with their picnic baskets and family to provide succour. The sandy beach funnels into the La Jolla Cove. A sandstone cave carved out over multiple reptitions of the high-tide, carefully crafted for the young and the old alike to frolic around.

My next stop was the island of Coronado, a short drive across the bay from downtown San Diego. An island that brings back fond memories of Goa, laid-back and languid, cordial and pretty! The shops an invitation for indulgence, the promenades set in cobbled stones. If you are in a hurry, you don't belong here. A driving speed of 30+mph would be termed astronomic and rude. A perfect place for a lesuirely stroll, a steaming cup of latte' or a generous helping of your favorite ice-cream. A view point along the coast offers a magnificent view of downtown San Diego and the adjoining bay is a hub for water-sports enthusiasts and weekend sailors.

My last stop was downtown San Diego; home of the famous Gas Lamp district, Balboa Park, the MLB Franchise San Diego Padres and the NFL franchise San Diego Chargers. The cobbled sidewalks in the gas lamp district offer the perfect avenue for a romantic escapede with your paramour. The lazy mist that rolls in at dawn acts the perfect catalyst to trigger your hormones and wreak havoc in your blood stream! The choice of restaurants seem tailored for a romantic date as well, candle-lit tables for two populate the side-walks with many a charming maitre'd welcoming you to splurge your hard-earned money on their conniving establishments. Every restaurant has its own charming quirk be it live jazz music, a flamenco band or an exotic feng shui. Every element chosen craftily to foster your hormonal cataclysm and siphon exorbitant sums of cash for services that promise to bolster your courtship and weaken your finances!

There is a distinct mexican flavor to the city as it is the southern-most tip of territorial USA and leads directly into the mexican border. Can there be a better exemplification of the latin american flavor than the Cuban Cigar? Select establishments along the promenade deal with original cuban cigars. I was curious to investigate the immense hype that is perenially linked to this rarest of man's creations! What makes a cuban cigar...well, a cuban cigar? A walk around one such establishment enlightented my inadequate faculties! To learn about the 'Cigar way of life' was quite unique and fascinating...A life size humidor (humidity controlled wood chambers maintained at 68F and around 65-70% humidity) is stocked with cigars that cost anywhere between a 10 to 1000$. (Yes, I did type it right, a thousand dollars!) The cost is generally a function of the grade of tobacco and the location of the cigar-maker. Cuban cigars are the most sought after, while some from Honduras and Nicaragua are deemed a close second. All this might sound like a morbid indulgence for the ignorant soul, but for these 'cigar afficianado' it is perhaps a way of life, a surreal act of indulgence on the choicest tobacco to kill themselves with!

All said and done, San Diego is a gorgeous place to be young and in love! The activities to indulge your better-half are limitless and charming, a life meant to be ravished with passion and amour...so let us raise a toast to San Diego mi amigo...'Ola!

I am Back!!

2006-06-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

I realize that my blogspot has now begun to resemble a haunted castle, an edifice that has been orphaned and left to decay, the disgruntled relic bearing vestiges of its grandiloquent past! It is time that I dust the cobwebs and atone for my sins of indifference and sloth! Crimes committed in the wake of accruing professional commitments, alluring NBA playoff action and a crippling addiction to the X-box 360! I agree that the aforementioned excuses might sound like a lame attempt at camouflaging my laziness, but I dare you to try them on for a week and then let me know if I am lying!

I do wish to thank all those loyal souls who have frequented the site with an unwavering optimism that I hold in great esteem. I promise you that the blogspot was not an attempt to garner instant celebrity status nor was it a mere indulgence in the latest fashion craze that has infected netizens young and old alike! It will remain an ongoing adventure and I welcome you to steal a peek as and when you wish. I only wish the frequency of blogging could resemble a metronome rather than the staccato of an AK-47 that has been the case till now.

Now that the 're-introductions' and apologies have been taken care off, redressing my extended sabbatical hopefully…I shall launch forth into my upcoming series of blogs! Life has been a rush lately, the latest joyride being a 13-day trip to sunny California on a ‘purported’ business visit to a conference last week. Careful planning and a beneficial distribution of strategic contacts/friends across the Californian coast empowered me to contrive a ‘homerian’ odyssey across this magnificent state. Each episode of this odyssey a delicious dish of an elaborate seven course dinner, a sumptuous treat to the senses. The sights, smells and sounds held me spell-bound, ravishing me with a beauty unforeseen. A feast that I devoured with the hunger of a refugee teleported straight from Somalia to a Victorian buffet in Buckingham palace!!

The promise of delivering this travelogue in various chapters is borne purely out of my greed to relive each of those spectacular moments in high-definition. I hope to capture the magical experience in sufficient detail and transport you to those magical realms. Besides, it is my unabashed attempt at experimenting with the genre of travelogues!! So, Ladies and Gentlemen...I present to you my Californian Odyssey in spectacular technicolor! Keep tuning in to savor California through the eyes of a hopeless romantic!

The PhD Symphony

2006-04-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

A PhD is a labor of love sustained purely by desire and annealed by the most arduous of tests! Many a sleepless night, I have pondered over the ebbs and flows that this career choice has taken me through! The mélange of emotions that I have experienced can be likened to a glorious symphony.

[ For an exhaustive listing of all the musical terms referred to in this blog, click on this Wikipedia's Musical terminlogy link ]

It begins with a mercurial accelerando for an opening act, fueled by grand visions of academic ascendancy and economic prosperity only to be quelled rather abruptly by 'growing up' pangs. Your thesis now stutters along much akin to an allegretto with your courses and evolution weighing down your ebullience! The pace quickens with the completion of your qualifiers when your research fervor soars into an allegro...your ideas interplay like violins and cellos exploring the mystical elegance of F-flat! Your group members chime in with their oboes and harps making the coda i.e. the first act an exotic cocktail of verve and promise.

The Second act opens with an allegro that in real life is ‘termed’ literature search, preliminary discussions, feasibility study etc! Your advisor (read Conductor) perched atop his academic pedestal brandishes his baton; sheperding your group (read orchestra) through passages of sustained brilliance, only for your 'post qual slump' to break the tempo and lull the pace. Your research is now a mere adagio, barely engaging your creative genius while actually building up for a lively interlude. Days become weeks, weeks become months before the conductor senses your stupor and waves his baton frantically, reminding you of an approaching conference deadline...the string quartet (read 1st n 2nd year group members) are galvanized into action building up into a crescendo signifying the submission deadline while the wind quartet (the 3rd and 4th year grad students) go through the motions regurgitating their old results to chime in with their submissions! The post deadline phase is a coda...decelerating into a break before you resume your third act...

The Third act opens rather tentatively; a juxtaposition of your new found research proficiency and your shocking realization of all the far-superior brains operating in your chosen domain of research! Your first conference presentation is a curious staccato of false bravado and hidden angst. This interlude is rewarded with a tempered applause that the audience deigns appropriate for your debut performance! This feeling of joy dissipates rapidly upon sitting through other plenary lectures where multiple virtuosos display their talent with consummate ease! But then, confidence is a contagious fuel that refuses to extinguish itself! So you carry on in a vivace till the end of the act, soaking in the generous applause that you have now managed to coax from the audience!

The final act opens playfully with your content grad-school existence coruscating through every note! Your ease with research empowering you to scale heights you dared not aspire before...the conductor’s baton swaying ever-so gently, according you the freedom to explore and improvise! The string quartet teasing the wind quartet to match its profligacy...drawing plaudits from the crowd till the conductor accelerates the tempo and firms his grip on the baton, reigning in your blithe spirit. His movements are now more deliberate, instructing you to prepare for your preliminary exam (prelim), tempering your ebullience to a measured pesante. The prelim is a staccato of violin and cello, a complex interplay of notes not very familiar to your research faculties. The sophistication of the notes, squeezing out the last iota of experience and confidence that you had accrued over copious hours of labor!

The ‘post-prelim’ phase is an adagio where you tie up the loose ends and prepare for the crescendo that will be your thesis defense. The approach to the defense is very hectic, the tempo turns mercurial, and all the components of the orchestra contribute to building up the tempo. The final crescendo is a violent outburst of all your results, much akin to a dam bursting through to flood the audience with your complete body of work i.e. your thesis. The audience is held in awe and forced to live through your research life span! Traversing dark labyrinths, scaling azure peaks, treading lush meadows, swimming tempestuous oceans...experiencing vicariuosly the multitude of emotions that you were subjected to during the course of your PhD. The cataclysm i.e. your defense sweeps them of their feet and leaves them spellbound!! The cognoscenti slowly recovering to their feet...applauding you with a thunderous ovation and conferring your PhD!! Wow, what a feeling of joy and relief it will be to bequeath the title, a perfect jewel to account for all those acts of varying complexity you had to labor through!

Disclaimer: The afore-mentioned description might sound rather grandiose and mostly fictitious; an ironic cocktail of apocryphal glory and insignificant esteem! But then, what else is a PhD after all?

What is it with Formula1 and today's youth?

2006-04-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

Why is Velayudham (an auto driver) so fixated on advertising the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro Formula1 (F1) team? Puzzled??…well, why else has he adorned the maximum available surface area of his auto with the choicest of Marlboro ads? So is the paraphernalia that he has swathed his auto with, (by the remotest of possibilities) a reflection of his taste for the classiest choice of tobacco in this world? The chances are that his knowledge of tobacco might not be too far-fetched than the very ethnic, desi-bred cousin of the western cigarette, the Beedi! The afore-mentioned trend one would more readily associate with the alpine dwellers of the societal hierarchy i.e. the teeny-bopper college crowd and the cash-strapped 20-something corporate fraternity.

Is this the parity, the striking similarity that our conniving politicians have been seeking between these vastly diverse social groups? The current day backpack clad, low-hip boot-cut clad, urban youth worth his salt must follow the diktat "Thou shalt own a vehicle" to even qualify for the ‘cool’ and ‘hep’ adjectives in his resume….. But this diktat now comes tagged with a disturbing new corollary to it…"Thou shalt adorn the vehicle with ads of the leading tobacco cartels in the world". Don’t get it? F1 has become a rage amongst the youth today, thanks to the heady concoction of ultra-modern technical gizmos, cutting edge technology, charismatic drivers and the most intoxicating of all the ingredients, speed! But the expression of this rage has not been in the best of means.

The youth spend hard-earned cash adorning every available inch of their vehicle exterior with stickers that advertise the brands of some of the biggest tobacco cartels in the world! This fashionable exercise has recklessly pervaded even the 15" by 10" real estate so carefully earmarked by the Indian govt for the ‘Number/Registration plate’, much to the chagrin of traffic cops all over the country. The point here is that majority of the enthusiastic participants of this bizarre exercise have hardly any clue of what the stickers advertise. It is a trend cruelly juxtaposed with the fact that most of the F1 teams could hardly afford their stay in the highest echelon of motor racing without generous contributions from the major tobacco cartels in the world.

But, the sheer magnitude of marketing space and mileage that these tobacco cartels are achieving in one of the most populous and potent markets in the world, especially within its niche audience is shocking! The sad irony being that most of the brands that adorn bikes, cars, t-shirts, shirts and even school bags and water bottles are not even available in India! So, now that the tobacco cartels have already pulled off the biggest marketing coup in the history of advertising all that is left for them is to do is to ‘actually’ start selling the brands!! Here’s a hypothetical scenario...how many of these ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ youngsters would like to exchange the stickers for more close-to-home brands like Charms, Scissors filter or Panama?

Urgh…what a despicable idea! How on earth could any sane person commit such acts of ludicrous inanity, right? So, what is it that makes sporting clothes and automobile paraphernalia that advertise "foreign" brands, so meaningful and fashionable? It is the sheer ignorance and naiveté of actually embracing a trend without any serious effort of comprehension that is appalling. One can now see the wisdom behind most of the countries in the European Union phasing out tobacco ads since 2004. It would at least prevent the illicit and subterranean embezzlement of puerile minds.

The fault lies not in the hands of the tobacco cartels alone; after all in this world of quicksilver advertising and aggressive marketing, they can hardly be blamed for associating themselves with the most appealing of pastimes! F1 definitely has a lot of influence on the young and gullible minds of the Indian youth. But it is the expression of one’s appreciation for this exciting sport that has gone totally awry in India. The infiltration has indeed reached subcutaneous depths, with school bags and water bottles designed for tiny-tots sporting an assortment of tobacco ads. While most of the impact has been cosmetic, it can turn malignant with the introduction of many new brands of cigarettes manufactured by these giant tobacco conglomerates that have already been sponsoring F1 teams. It is time for the youth to take a stand! To choose between fostering this debilitating fad or exercising restraint in their fashion choices...

Whither goest thou, Generation 'Z'??

STOP!! Don't let Life pass you by...

2006-04-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how much life has changed since the Aug of '02 when I landed in Champaign as a dreamy eyed, awestruck madrasi grad student! That journey was heart-wrenching in so many ways! First time ever that I was flying in an airplane (wanted it to be like that!!), first time ever that I was not going to see my parents for more than a month a time, first time ever that I was not going to be able to eat Dosa/Idly when I needed to and the first time ever that I couldn't stop my bike near a roadside chaiwallah at 2am and have the best tea ever in the world in his time-worn and aft-stained, semi-clean glass of joy!

It was a journey into the unknown albeit one that I had always dreamt of! So, would dreaming about something very intensely count as experience enough?? Coz' if it would, then life should be a breeze for me,
- Romance... a walk in a tree lined park during fall morphing into an orange-yellow canvas of falling leaves and unfathomable beauty!!!
- Research... a meticulously construed Rolex watch, ticking away to perfection for the rest of its desired life!! Each gear intermeshing precisely with its complement, the machinery ever so-smooth...the execution like clockwork!!
- Career... a plot so masterfully conceived that it would put the collective brilliance of Gulzar, Javed Akthar, Spielberg and George Lucas to shame!! The denouement of the plot like a fast-paced Dan Brown novel, a thrill-a-minute joy ride into the azure zeniths of success!!
- Family... a recipe straight out of a Johar/Chopra movie, littered with cute nieces/bratty nephews, funny uncles and frivolous aunts, revered grandmas and intimidating Grandpas, parents as supportive as the Rock of Gibraltar...wife an exotic cocktail of Dominique Francon and Sonali Bendre, kids like a million rays of sunshine brightening every facet of life they pervade!!

But it is funny how life has this uncanny ability of perennially surmounting even the most fertile of fantasies, throwing up the most unexpected of surprises when you least expect it! That is exactly how life in Chambana has been for me! If my dreams were as close as I could imagine to perfection...then Life these three years has been more than just that! It has left me longing for more like a wide-eyed kid at a candy store...completely usurping my feelings of loss and pain! The inexplicable pain of separation from our loved ones back home, which can creep on us more unexpectedly than a masked serial killer would in a ‘teenage slasher flick’! The insurmountable feeling of loss for all things Indian and mine when I grew up!

Life has been a journey too wonderful to even stop and enjoy! Stop and enjoy is what I exactly did today when I was walking on Green street! I could remember my first impressions of the US as a complete FOB desi! The sights, smells and sounds...almost like a baby getting to feel this earth for the first time! It is kinda sad that I have gotten so used to this place now, so much so that beautiful foliage of fall barely registers in my pre-occupied mind! The whiff of that very "blonde-girl" perfume barely reaches my nostril and forces me to turn and salute the girl for passing on that iota of joy!! The beauty of this historic campus with its brick-lined edifices, towering spires and teeming hordes of students barely do I appreciate!!

Alas! What a sad thing getting used to can be sometimes!! A travesty almost, to be impervious to the sheer magnitude of life that is gushing thru every facet of our surroundings! It is perhaps during such moments of clarity that I appreciate how fortunate I am to be living the life I am!! And it is during these transient, surreal moments such as these that I appreciate the joy of life!

So, STOP and smell the beauty of life that surrounds you! Don’t let it pass you by…lest you not revisit them!!

PhD = Piled Higher n Deeper...

2006-03-29T21:06:00.000-08:00

The topic should sound real familiar to all the "Phd comics" aficionados...Jorge Cham the brilliant author of the comic strip apparently got that from a famous joke:
BS=Bull Shit
MS=More Shit
PHD=shit Piled Higher n Deeper

Jorge Cham was on a cross-country trip promoting his comics and happened to stop by at UIUC sometime back. His 'presentation' was a hilarious parody of a typical scientific seminar incorporating all the time-honored elements i.e. Introduction slide, Objective, Methods, Results and Discussion, Future directions, Conclusion etc. The auditorium was packed to the rafters with wannabe PhDs who religiously devour all his offerings!

I thoroughly enjoyed his 'exposition' and highly recommend sitting through one of his talks if you get a chance. The modus operandi of these comics is the delectable art of "Procrastination". The dictionary definition of procrastination is "To postpone or delay needlessly"... so Jorge claims that if we can eliminate the term "needlessly" or find a suitable need ... wink wink!! Now, is that a brilliant observation or what?

Sitting through that talk got me very nostalgic!! I sat there reminiscing about my wondrous journey that has been Grad school. I still remember the first year, when getting an "A" in every course was the piece-de-resistance of my very existence. Decked up in the finest regalia that my dad's rather generous budget could buy me in the finest shopping malls of Chennai, stumbling from one class to the other...finding time only to share my academic travails with my equally obsessed fellow desi grad students, seldom caring about sleep and nutrition with the flame of academic excellence burning bright in my eyes. Struggling to establish a cooking schedule with my roomies, the sheer ineptitude of our culinary skills leading to many near-miss catastrophes! Weekends packed with exciting activities like laundry, grocery shopping and homework; a welcome break from our otherwise egalitarian lifestyle, eh!

Jostling with phone cards to catch the faintest whiff of home in the sad voices of our parents and loved ones, conjuring up visions of grandeur and future excellence in all our frantic conversations lest our loved ones feel the desperation in our over-worked lives! Settling down to an alien culture, coming to terms with complete strangers wishing you on random streets, washing your own clothes and doing your dirty dishes! Gaping at every pretty undergrad hottie during that rare instant when our hyper-tuned minds are not grappling complex mathematical/chemical/physical equations from our next homework set. Cursing friday nights for populating the streets with party animals who seem to be God's own sadistic reminder of the better side of life!

The second year progressing into a more balanced struggle…a year of existence arming me with the arrogance of familiarity! Deceiving me into a false sense of security and tempting me to the lush pastures of banal existence. The leviathan burden of coursework taken care off spurned me into many worthless pursuits. Rapidly accruing proficiency in many useful facets of life: professional and otherwise, completely revised my outlook to life. The world was not completely martian anymore; I could prop my feet up and soak in the ambience now. Laptops and the internet made the world a slightly smaller place. Cooking was not quantum physics anymore, recipes were not the sole preserve of moms and aunts! Supplies of frozen foods and Indian stores were not a weekly compulsion, nor were the illegal DVDs of Indian movies.

Indian cricket team wasn’t the only source/drain of passion, nor was ‘Friends’ the only show that I could laugh at! Seinfields and college sports were pervading into my existence with reckless abandon! Trips to local restaurants weren’t a blatant transgression of my religious resolve nor would they bamboozle me into consuming animal parts in subterfuge! Long gone were the 'Bata' shoes and the 'Action' sneakers, displaced by the finest apparel that Walmarts and Old navies could offer esp. during thanksgiving sale!! American football and Baseball were the 'in-thing', though it still didn’t make sense why they couldn’t punt on a second down or keep running after each at-bat! Eh…who cared, this is America baby! Yo, thas what I am talking about!

Phone calls evolved into voice chats with webcams! Long weekends were spent traveling and not cooking food supplies for the next three weeks while doing the month’s laundry parallely! It didn’t matter that a coke cost 55 rupees from the vending machine and the better ice cream always cost 300 rupees more than the regular ones! Lab meetings made more sense and I could actually interject to comment on my lab mate’s results! It was okay to have a CG less than 4.0 and call your profs by their first names! 'Daal chawal' and 'Thayir sadam' appeared less frequently on the weekly menu and nightly escapades to Taco bells and pizza deliveries increased exponentially! Visiting malls was not merely to gape at chicks, but to actually buy stuff too! You felt naked to step out without chewing gum in your pockets, especially after that delicious “extra-spicy” Kung pau tofu you had for lunch with your lab mates!

Sorority girls weren’t born smelling that way but actually bought those perfumes from the stores! Frat boys could burp and fart too! Sweatshirts and fleece replaced those sentimentally knit sweaters that mom told you to wear coz’ it gets really cold out there. Gone were the monkey caps and those ‘super-tight crotch’ Shah Rukh jeans to be replaced by Nautica skull caps and Gap loose-fit jeans! You didn’t have to risk losing your passports to get into bars and actually knew beers not named Budweiser, Bud light and Heineken! Nutrition facts on the cover mattered more than the cost on the shelf itself! Cricket tournaments weren’t restricted to your apt parking lots and Indian functions were more than just tasty dinner opportunities!

It was better to refer to excrements and acts of reproduction when venting your anger than refer to other family members and their anatomical specificities! When outlet malls were savoir-faire compared to walmarts and old navies! When Comedy Central was the most brilliant channel on the face of the planet and ESPN sportscenter was a must watch coz’ you were in your lab shutting down your experiment during the end of the game! Coffee at Starbucks meant more than just a 4$ debasement to your hard-earned savings, it was okay to pass up on free food for a quick bite at Chipotle...

Ahh...those were the times...when water turned to beer and Life rocked dude!!

Fast-forward to the present and I look up my weekly schedule and it reads something like this:

Monday: Grading lab reports and grocery shopping with my roomie
Tuesday: Swimming classes
Wednesday: Soccer practice
Thursday: Play touch football in the quad with buddies
Friday: Lab sessions and cricket practice
Saturday: Cricket match at 9, Ugadi function at 6pm
Sunday: Cricket match at 11, Basketball in the gym at 3pm

Hmmm...am I missing something here? Oh wait, Research. Holy shit!! So little time and so much to do. Damn you Jorge, you have brainwashed me into your school of thought! I have inadvertently eluded the blame of procrastination! Gone are those days when existential angst was just another GRE word and professional betterment was the ONLY reason for my 'unwilling transplantation' to the US of A. America can be such a wonderful thing you know, embracing you warmly and serving you fries and donuts! Too much fun never seems a crime, snuggling in your comforter that extra half hour doesn’t instill the same sense of guilt as before!

Ah, well! Back to work then my friends! Grad School unfortunately cannot be a way of life, it has to end somewhere and my erudite ancestors have always preached me one thing: “You are much better off finishing grad school in your own terms than letting someone else do it for you!” So, work it is for now.

Pssstt...hey! Baseball season starts this Monday and it will be Friday tomorrow!!

u know wat I am sayin bro?? ;)

An Ode to the 'Performing Spirit'

2006-03-12T01:54:00.000-08:00

Music is the fuel that powers my soul...From the mellifluous brilliance of Hindustani and Carnatic music to the lilting rhythm and bass of Hip-hop, from the playful delight of Western classical to the relentless exuberance of Rock, Music unfailingly fits your mood and elevates you to a higher plane.

In fact, the experience of a 'live' performance is something else altogether, an exalted state of enjoyment that mere words can never capture or begin to describe. Each form of concert or exposition offers a nuance very distinct from the other. A Carnatic music kutcheri with its typical exploratory style can open your eyes to the wondrous complexity of this art form! A Bharatnatyam performance can coax you to empathize with the performer’s emotions and draw you into their Elysium! Many a time, I have been transplanted into such empyrean realms, romancing the gopikas alongside a frivolous Lord Krishna, felt the pangs of Yashoda as she comes to terms with the challenges of maternity, borne the rage of Lord Shiva as he arbitrates over the existence of the mortal world!!

There are few experiences that can match the sheer resplendence of a musical symphony! The venerable Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Urbana-Champaign this Friday. Amongst the many amazing things that I can brag about in Chambana (Urbana-Champaign) is the magnificent art complex "Krannert center". Its legacy and grandeur a testimony to the tireless crusaders of art who dared to dream, its program schedules a delectable who-is-who of music, dance and theater!

The celebrated orchestra performed Schubert and Mozart during its program. Their initial offering, "the Overture to Rosamunde" composed by Franz Schubert during 1823 was an enchanting concoction intermeshing wind instruments like the Oboe, flute, bassoon, trumpet and the clarinet in delightful measure with the staple string instruments i.e. the violin, viola and the cello. A mellifluous orgy of an Allegro performed with clockwork precision by the virtuosos who adorned the stage!

The 'piece de resistance' of the performance was the "Sinfonia Concertante" in E-flat Major composed by the peerless Maestro Mozart during the summer of 1779. This composition places particular emphasis on the violin (generally not the preferred string instrument of the Master, Viola and Cello occupy that exalted pedestal). For a tyro that I am, brandishing rudimentary skills with the violin, this composition is sheer ecstasy. An Ambrosia served by the choicest connoisseurs to satiate my senses, tingle my spine and levitate me into a joyous delirium!! The first movement, 'Allegro maestoso', a marvelously subtle and elegant dialogue. The second movement, 'Andante', a succession of glorious question-and-answer phrases in which the soloists strive to surpass each other in beauty and profundity of expression. The two soloists wielding their magic with their violin and viola left me spellbound! Imagine a conversation with violins…

The whole experience instilled in me a new-found respect for the performing spirit! There is a well-deserved aura of nobility associated to the artistic clan! Any art form is a means of expression that is learnt and mastered after many an hour of ‘sadhana’! To invest the time and effort into it and then muster the courage to perform though takes more than just practice. It takes gumption and passion, a love for the art that transcends avarice and a thirst for fame. A performance is the culmination of talent and confidence that stems from a deep cognition of the art. It takes passion and zest to meet the adulation or the indifference that the world will throw at you!

I pay obeisance to thee, oh adventurous spirit coz’ tis the joy of exposition that you seek! I doff my hat for your passion that is willing to endure the hurdles! The hurdles of indifference, of critique and vitriol, of the dearth of equipage, of more pressing commitments that life might demand! I salute thee for transporting me to worlds I did not know could exist but for your fertile enterprise...

Hail the 'Vernal Equinox' !!

2006-02-27T17:15:00.000-08:00

The onset of the Spring season is after all a celestial event. Don't trust me? Chk this out then...

The weather today was utterly infectious...Bright, sunny and cool! I was severely afflicted with symptoms of inexplicable verve and untraceable zest. Emotions that are completely misplaced considering the fact that my beloved car is sitting in the shop waiting to go under the mechanic’s spanner, an intimidating stack of Lab reports which need to be graded and turned in by the end of the week and a rather lackadaisical progress report in the research front! Not to mention the predicament of the Car Mechanic’s bill that will hurtle me to the precipice of penury. A despondent state of affairs indeed...which on any mundane Monday would make a privy grad student want to switch places with Hermione Granger. Her excellence in transfiguration being an enticing skill to practice during these desperate situations!

So, as I was pondering over a plausible explanation for this blissful apparition, I noticed that my iPod was doling out "Endrendrum Punnagai" from Alaipayuthey...Ahaa!! ( For the uninitiated and I daresay ignorant few who are unfortunate enough to have not savored this brilliant concoction from A.R.Rahman, PLEASE click on the hyperlink provided to listen to it on Raaga.com.) Boy! What a 'picker-upper' that song can be, huh? It can make the most morose of situations seem like a walk in the park! I am sure that multitudes of paeans have already been sung for value of a portable music player in one's life, so I will abstain from acknowledging the same!

But, I do nurture a very intricate relationship with my iPod, feeding of its digital ebullience to sustain myself during my journey through the murky aisles that frequent my journey that is life. So enthused was I that attending to my daily chores seemed impossible! It was as if a shot of adrenaline had been pumped straight into my brain. After a brief and rather futile attempt at furthering my academic credentials, I gave into my venerable guru Oscar Wilde's advice! I succumbed to my ephemeral love for the outdoors and took a stroll around my magnificient campus. I thoroughly cherish these capricious phases when my banal existence can afford to fade conveniently out of focus. It imparts a sense of perspicuity that is completely ingenuous and serene. An amazing feeling of tranquility pervades though every pore of my body and helps me realize the true joy of life. It helps me place everything in perspective and take on the world with renewed vigor and sharpened intellect.

(Images courtsey of: Kalev Leetaru and Alan Craig. Clicking on the images will lead to a repository of their brilliant images on the uiuc.edu website, feel free to enjoy a cornucopia of spell-binding photographs from their collection)

And for that, I have the advent of spring and the virtuosity of A.R.Rahman to thank!! Resolutions taken during the evanescent state of bliss include: stocking my office with my baseball mitts, baseball and the football; promised sessions of 'long-toss' with my buddies who populate this historic edifice called MEL; extended sessions of literature search, grading and paper composition, armed with a coffee sprawled across the wi-fi enabled Bardeen quad. Holy shit, my nerves tingle and my mind salivates at the endless possibilities of Spring '06. This is mannah from Heaven, served fresh for my personal ecstasy and purely to satiate my eclectic desires!!

For all my apprehensive friends who question the nobility of my intensions to earn a PhD, who doubt the reasons for my "protracted" existence in Grad School...here's a reason one cannot beat! Wish you guys made it to grad school or stayed in grad school any longer, huh?? Keep tuning in for more of my exploits before the U of I deems my presence burdensome and unworthy as to evict me from Urbana-Champaign forcefully!!

A hundred thousand Curses...

2006-02-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

God damn man!! Shiite! What a bunch of losers, the Illini are! My college team, "The Fighting Illini" can now officially be rechristened the "Bendover and get creamed" Illini!! When the situation dictated that we play our asses off and win every game from now...this is the tripe we come up with?? My blood boils over , my mind seethes with rage, my mouth is flowing over with invectives...WTF man! What the hell is wrong with my B'ball team? We were hailed to be a bunch of talented ballers, ready to capture the Big Ten firmament and march onto the NCAA tournament with all the swagger of '50 cent' during a spring break concert!

Guess now we know what we really are! Hmm...what do you do? As my movie-making Guru Quentin Tarantino once so succintly surmised in two immortal words..."Shit Happens!". Most of this invective-filled diatribe is a direct result of the dream season that we had last year when our team steam-rolled every opposition that was thrown across our path to reach the NCAA Finals. (Okay, we did slip a tad against Ohio State for our only regular season loss!) oh Boy, What a juggernaut that team was...I definitely need to extol their virtues and innundate my blog with their exploits some other time!

Anyways, all my cursing and venting leads to another very interesting question...

What magnitude of swearing is passable before it gets offensive? I am sure that everyone has their own relative standards depending on which co-ordinates of the erudite/tactful spectrum one prefers to exist in! I guess one cardinal rule that has been extolled by our rather accomplished fore-fathers is that swearing in front of a girl is extremely unchivalrous and can lead to very debilitating after-effects! But, that rule aside I am sure that one cannot deny 'professional etiquette' to be an overruling diktat in this matter. Swearing comes across as crass and uncivilized in the professional/public domain, will lead to varying degrees of ostracism/disgust from our peers. Not the most constructive addition to one's resume for sure!

So what is to happen of my impetuous college-going self? The part of me that held sway over most of Anna university with it's whimsical ebullience?? (Okay, okay...I have been accused of mild aggrandizement before too :-( but come on! ) My quintessential self which believes in referring to the holy act of procreation to articulate the most inane of things? The coruscating diamond that I so carefully chiseled from the rough-hewn ranipet self that I was earlier? What of all the hip-hop songs that I memorized over sleepless nights of AIR's rather stunted FM programming?

Will I have to immolate it all at the altar of Professionalism? Risk stagnation, isolation and failure at the cost of retaining a prized fragment of my ethos?? I guess not! I realize that there are far less excruciating solutions to this conundrum like:

a) Bite your tongue in the professional domain and act courteously without letting it deprecate into the realms of Unctuousness! Not express your anger or disgust in as many words but stick to the age-old British custom of understatement! A 'stiff upper lip' goes a long way in diffusing the most combustible of situations, trust me on that! One can conveniently switch off their alter-egos and don the genteel cape for a few hours of professional existence! A solution I personally find the most pragmatic and utilitarian...

b) Substitute your cuss words for similar sounding non-swear words...what I call the "Placebo curses"
Phrases like Oh crap!, Shoot, Frikkin' hell, freakin' crap, Holy molly, Holy Macarel, Holy Baloney (add ur fav palcebo to the list). I personally find this very Juvenile! When u let fly a "Holy Crap" or a "oh Shoot!" everybody knows EXACTLY what you are referring to! so what's the big deal man? If you can't bite your tongue, your crap or shoot reads bullshit to me anyways! Hence my decision to stick to the first solution, just shut the fuck up and let the anger/frustration/disgust dissipate away!

c) Now, here's a rather novel solution:
Pack your bags and ship your ass to Yugoslavia. Wonder why??
Check out this amazing article

Hilarious shit aint it?? What wud ur choice be?? feel free to ping me on it!

Aight man...take it easy!!

The Rang de Basanti Conundrum...

2006-02-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

I watched Rang De Basanti this weekend and was thoroughly disappointed. For all the hype and hoopla surrounding the movie...I found it to be rather hollow and lacking soul! There is an interesting debate my friend Magesh posts in his blog that I concur with...
http://nmagesh.blogspot.com/

The movie was definitely loaded with tons of the 'wow' factor: what with it being Aamir's next movie after Mangal Pandey, A.R.Rahman's rediscovered brilliance for a soundtrack and Alice patten donning makeup and reeling off dialogues in Hindi with great aplomb! The movie starts out portraying a motley gang of rather wasteful youth idling time and hanging out in very off-beat 'hang-out spots'. But, the manner in which Sue decides to stuff the extremely onerous task of starring as Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Ramprasad Bismil, Asfaqullah Khan and Lala Lajpat Rai down the throats of clueless young men is completely farcical and confounding! The sepia-toned scenes of the documentary however cleverly intertwined with the happenings in these young men's lives do not justify their acts, nor their complete lack of direction!

For further comments and views..refer to Magesh's blog and the comments posted. Do feel free to post yours and contribute to this arguement!
ciao...

Greetings...

2006-02-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

Friends, Romans and countrymen...(ahem, ahem)
Greetings to y'all! I finally succumb to this super-epidemic culture of blogging!! I had always relegated blogging to be a practice for the "free-at-work", "short-at-attention" sorta people, ones who had to speak their minds thru this omni-potent media to leave their mark on this civilization! Well, Guess I sold out then...huh:-(

Welcome to my world anyways! Feel free to drop by and peek a glimpse at the random assortment of opinions/events/infotainment that I spew out thru this portal. I promise you a smorgasbord of emotions and ideas, nothing more, nothing less!! Opinionated, I will be coz' tis my right to be! Controversial I mite be, guess I can't cater to the complete spectrum of human thots n emotions I guess! Soporific I won't be, coz' tis my nature not to be!

To get a flavor for my opinions, I strongly feel you need to know my antecedents. Hence, without any further ado,I present to you Ladies n Gentlemen...Sandeep Mariserla!!!

I was born and raised a single kid entirely in Ranipet, a tiny town 120 kms south of Chennai, India. Ranipet is a tiny little excuse for a town, its greatest claim to fame the hundreds of leather tanneries who export the finest quality leather to Europe and excrete the most-toxic waste straight down the local drain! Guess patriotism was a plot rather easily lost on these poor souls! Its an area still held sway by the Dravidian parties and the magical presence of MGR and Rajinikanth in that order. Not necessarily green nor agricultural in nature, the economy is held sway by the hordes of small-scale industries that populate the industrial estate. Schooling is very need based and hence strictly Tamil nadu entrance exam/BE seat oriented i.e. learning is as obsolete as a bottle of champagne in the Sahara!

To say that its been a wondrous journey for me wud be akin to claiming that Godfather was a good movie!! I spent a pivotal 5 years of my college life in Chennai (Singara chennai/namma Madras to the relevant Tamil makkal) taking in a culture that is as distinct and typical as Saravana Bhavan sambhar. My fellow cooks will endorse that no amount of proficiency in south Indian cooking will lead to the replication of the sambhar served in these legendary eateries that have established their tentacles as far out as LA and NYC. I have a "5 yr college town" theory which goes "Anyone who spends 5 years near about his college going days in a certain town automatically declares that town/place to be the BEST place on earth!".

Madras and I are no exception to the rule, though my rapidly accruing globe-trotting memoirs are testing my allegiance. Stupendous places like NYC and Boston being lead contenders to supplant Madras from it's azure perch! (More on Chennai/Madras in later posts...)

5 yrs of 'education' in the famed Anna univ couldn't eradicate my lack of scientific cognition/academic thirst even though my Integrated Masters degree would strongly distract you from discerning the same. I happened to spend an amazing 6 months in Bangalore working on my Masters project. If you believe in destiny, then God wrote those six months of my life fresh after creating Paz Vega and Salma Hayek! Can you believe one can exist in the quintessential state of bliss, what was so beautifully defined by Pink Floyd as "Comfortably Numb" for an entire six months without missing a beat or taking care of business? Those to paraphrase Bryan Adams were "The Best days of my life". Days fraught with needless adventure, dizzying science, endless distractions and an IISc intra-dept cricket tourney to boot! Sweet mother of God, may all those people who inhabited my existence during that phase be blessed and showered with my gratitude!

My scheming intellect or the complete lack thereof still could not impede me from landing a plush admit in UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for the uninitiated few). It was my passport to the land of the Free where milk and honey flowed like water never did in Chennai! An apt culmination to those magical few months in Bangalore. My fateful flight journey from Chennai (my virgin one too at that!) would land me bang in the middle of never-ending streches of corn fields. UIUC's location is a miracle, a most brilliant masterstroke by the US govt apparently to ward off/isolate any suspicious 'foreigners' from the super-computers and cutting edge-research that this place was hand-crafted to nurture. How ironic this trivia sounds when juxtaposed with the current day and age...Urbana-Champaign is populated by teeming hordes of Chinese, Indians, Europeans, Texans/Southerners, East-coasters and even the Californians to good measure. A violent departure from the typical native mid-western demographic of uber-conservative Caucasian agrarian families!

Life in Urbana-Champaign has been quite rewarding and illuminating! More on that later, but for now I exist a deviant desi grad student who's just found the promised light at the end of the tunnel i.e PhD. Keep tuning in to find out if the light is a speeding train hurtling towards him...will he survive, will he consummate his vaunted quest for academic excellence or fall prey for the lascivious wealth that abounds this college-town!
Coming soon to this portal...Don't miss it!