More randomness

- I was just thinking of the rather bizarre Tamil insult : "Pudungi".

Why do so many Tamilians accuse each other of practicing a really peculiar form of self-mutilation? I can't think of anything similar in any other language.


- How come my blog is more popular in Hong Kong than it is in India?

- Mark my words, this is the season when Darko Milicic becomes a star.

- Some of the female bus conductors in Bangalore are rather nice looking. Wouldn't it be fun if one of them took the Rajni route to Tamil cinema?

Randomness

- Why doesn't Wikipedia have an article on Ichaadhaari Naagins?

- Today's fortune from orkut - "Your mentality is alert, practical and analytical"
Am I the only person who thinks that some database mix-up has happened?

- Ad of the year nomination: Luminous inverters: never thought that it was possible to make an ad featuring Sidhu that is not annoying.

- Women's tennis has really come a long way from the dark ages when Graf and Sanchez-Vicario dominated the world, hasn't it?

-Kaushik

A study of the human race

Suppose you were on the 3rd floor of a building, and you wanted to take the elevator to the ground floor, what would you do when you got to the elevator?




If you are like about 40% of the Indian population, you would do the following:

1. Press both the UP and DOWN buttons.

2. Rush into the elevator without paying any attention to the direction in which it is going.

3. Sigh tragically when you realize that the elevator is going up.

4. Go up all the way to 9th floor, give an embarrassed grin to the 3 people who get in there.

5. Wear a really puzzled expression when the elevator stops again in the 3rd floor, but nobody gets in.

6. Exclaim loudly : "There is a bug in the bloody elevator, this happens every time".

7. Get off at the ground floor without even considering the possibility that the path that you took might have been sub-optimal.



I think stupidity is the defining characteristic of the human race.




-Kaushik

Bad day gets worse

According to my answers to this checklist by Megha, I am the "lecherous A K Hangal type".


Tremendous urge comes to go bungee jumping.

Looking at myself in the mirror, taking myself too seriously.

- I am starting to look like I am only a Nobel prize away from being the inspiration for an Oscar winning movie about beating manic depressive insanity.

Need to shave soon.



- I have realized that the mere fact that I have a blog does not mean that I have to post about pointless events in my daily life, like being chased by hijras or being shat on by a crow. PLEASE don't ask. I think I want my blog to be a platform for my thoughts and ideas, not a bad Seinfeld imitation.


-Kaushik


PS: Isn't is somewhat amusing that blogger.com's spell-check doesn't recognize the word blog?

Legal reform?

Something serious, mainly to soothe the intense self-loathing that has come on re-reading the contrived humour in the previous post.

My understanding is that current Indian law does not allow videotaped confessions to be admitted as evidence. I think that it would be a great idea not only to allow them as evidence but to actually require that all interrogations be videotaped. This should not only prevent the guilty from retracting their confessions but should also prevent the police from extracting confessions by torture.

How impractical is it to try and put a webcam in every detention cell and interrogation room in every police station in India? How hard will it be to maintain and store this footage? Who will have access to this footage and how can we ensure that the evidence cannot be tampered with?


What are the cons of videotaping interrogations?

Update: The self-loathing got so intense that I actually deleted that post.

Anti-feminist rant

This is dedicated to the wannabe Indian punkster who no longer allows these rants on her blog.


Dear modern anti-Sita,


Don't you have any morals? Do you want to destroy Indian culture completely with your westernized feminist ideas? Do you want all men to be put in jail?


The great Indian woman has always sacrificed her life for husband and family. You want to make our young girls forget that and be like hippies? I thank god that feminists did not exist in the ancient times. If there had been a feminist instead of Sita, she would have run off with some minister's son instead of marrying Rama, and the asuras would still have been ruling the three worlds.

You are even encouraging little 14 year old girls to have crushes on boys. It's ok that most 14 year old boys dream of getting laid by Mallika Sherawat, boys will be boys, but girls must remain pure and innocent, no? Don't you want women to be like Sita(of Ramayana, not of Fire) instead of being like Helen(of Troy, not of Teesri Manzil)?

We will not allow feminists like you to corrupt Indian culture. We will demand that all school children be made to watch Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham every week in Moral Education class so that they learn to love their elders and have family values. This will definitely stop the break-up of families that you feminists are causing.


We know from your name itself that you want be like man not woman and want to have punk hairstyle. The surest sign that kali yuga is upon us is that feminists like you are able to develop a large,fawning male following merely by writing intelligently.

Regards,
Kaushik Gopalan
Chief Constable
Indian Moral Police

Walking down the Bangalore-Bellary road

I walk down the Bangalore-Bellary road
and I wonder what might have been.

I hear the trucks rattle along beside me
and I wonder what might have been.

I see the lights go out in a little house
and I wonder what might have been.

I look up at the dark starless sky
and I wonder what might have been.

I feel a slight twinge in my heart
as I wonder what might have been.



Heh. That might actually count as poetry.



-Kaushik

General gyaan

If you are a guy planning to hit on a pretty girl you barely know, here are three things you should know:

1. She is not interested in you. The existence of mentally sound, cute looking women who go out with scrawny guys sitting two rows behind them in physics tuition has never been scientifically proven.

2. Looks matter. But the fact that your friends say that you look like a movie actor might not always help, especially if the actor that you supposedly look like is Sathyaraj.

3. You are going to get the kind of treatment that un-sentimental people with large boots usually reserve for pesky insects scurrying around their feet.



Good bye and good luck.

Random thought

To treat an individual merely as an instance of a particular class of people, is to objectify a human being.

Free speech zone

The comments on the feminist blogs that I read generally get nasty pretty quickly, degenerating into an ugly exchange of personal insults, mainly because there are a few people who put out views that are considered by most progressive("westernized"?) Indians to be incredibly sexist and chauvinistic.

The whole thing disturbs me for a couple of reasons.

First, of course, because so many of my educated countrymen still disagree with ideas that I consider self-evident. The general reaction in the blogosphere is to ridicule and isolate these people. I think the policy is somewhat unwise, because many many people in our country share these views. I think that to affect any kind of change we must somehow engage these people in meaningful dialogue.

My second concern is that so many of us have gone through school and college(even graduate school) without ever having the opportunity to debate this in a formal setting. It worries me that our education system, and our culture in general, puts so little emphasis on fostering debate.


For now though, I will allow people with anti-feminist views to use the comment space of this post to put out their views.

To start off, I will make the following assertions:

1. Violence against women is never justified. By anybody, in any circumstance.
2. Women should have equal opportunities to advance their career as men, at every stage of their lives.
3. Independent women do not threaten the institution of marriage or the happiness of their families in any way.


If you disagree with any of these assertions, please leave me a comment.

Men and feminism

Read the comments on this post by Aishwarya.

Excellent stuff.

Beating this topic to death.

US Senator Patrick Leahy(on the flag burning amendment):
"You do not stamp out a bad idea by repressing it, you stamp out a bad idea with a better idea."

Perfectly sums up my position on the quota system.

Thoughts

-Even though the general consensus among the people who know me is that I am an idiot, I have occasional moments when I feel uber-cool, you know, really good about myself. (No, these moments are not caused by substance abuse.)

I knock myself down from the high really quickly though, by doing moronic things like forgetting to attend weddings and sitting in the last seat of empty KSRTC buses.

Stupid, stupid guy!!


- What were the guys at Pepsi thinking when they made the Priyanka Chopra and the three stooges ad?


- What's up with the BoSox? Swept by Minnesota!!


- Kaushik to M S Dhoni: Son, have you ever heard the term over-exposure ?


- Dwayne Wade, take a bow.

An appeal

I walk down Raja Ram Mohan Roy road twice a day on the way to and from my office. On the way, opposite Kanteerava stadium, there is a building whose walls have "Do not commit nuisance here" written on them.

If you are in the habit of peeing on those walls, I request you to stop immediately as the stench severely affects my sinuses.

I thank you in advance for being considerate.

-Kaushik

Professionals and politics

Many people have suggested to me that India and Indian politics would be much better off if more professionals enter politics.

I have often wondered if that is true.


Would IIT and IIM graduates make really good politicians? Are they better than the rest of us at putting out ideas, at convincing people, at evolving consensus on controversial issues?

Are engineers and managers more likely to resist popular demands and act solely on their convictions than timber merchants and shoe salesmen?

Are doctors more likely to mediate compromise solutions than farmers?




Are people with more degrees actually wiser than the rest of the population?

Open letter to Priyaranjan Dasmunshi

Sir,

I know that you have been very busy in the last few weeks considering bans on a film that offends religious sensibilities and another by an actor who offends Gujarati sensibilities. I regret putting more pressure on you at such a tough time.

However, I consider it my duty to bring to your attention a disgraceful advertisement that threatens the essence of our nation's culture by threatening it's cricket viewing habits. I refer to the bizarre Gillette Vector Plus ad featuring Irfan Pathan. The makers of this disgusting ad are displaying it with alarming frequency in various sports channels during cricket matches, thereby offending the sensibilities of the millions of men and women watching.

I understand that you might be unwilling to ban this monstrosity. However I strongly urge you to order that for every time that this ad is shown in a sports channel, it should be shown at least 5 times on Fashion TV. This will not only reduce the number of times it is shown but will also discourage moral corruption of the youth of this country by FTV. Thus you will not only endear yourself to cricket lovers in this country, but will also outdo even Mrs Sushma Swaraj in protecting the moral fiber of this great nation.

I thank you in advance for your kind consideration of my request.

Regards,
Kaushik Gopalan

More on reservations

Advice to all the anti-reservation people I know: Stop focusing on the unfairness and injustice of it all. There are undoubtedly millions of people who did not get an engineering/medical seat of their choice because of reservations. But recounting their stories does not count as a contribution to the reservation issue.


Focus on coming up with a fairer, more just alternative which takes into account the aspirations of the people from the backward classes. That would seriously be helpful.

On the bus ride to work

Usually on my morning ride to work, for about a kilometer or so, I am usually the Last Man Hanging(from the footboard). I am starting to get used to this because, despite the risk of a horrible death or grievous injury, it is fairly easy and intuitive to know what I need to be doing......... hanging on for dear life. The only annoying part in this is when the conductor asks you to buy the ticket immediately and you need to do a couple of scary maneuvers to put your hand in your pocket and pull out the money. In general, however, I have become fairly decent at handling this, as evidenced by the fact that I am neither dead nor in hospital. (Touch wood)


My (expert?) advice for people hanging out from buses: please don't get too comfortable doing this.

I saw this guy hanging out(rather precariously) from the edge of the last step of the footboard......... who was talking nonchalantly on his cellphone!!!

Brave, brave,BRAVE man.

On the Phoenix Suns

It is a huge pity that the Suns were knocked out by Dallas in the NBA western conference finals.

I think the Suns play basketball's version of Joga Bonito.

On The Mayor of Casterbridge

"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me,
and that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground,
and that no sexton be asked to toll the bell,
and that nobody is wished to see my dead body,
and that no murners walk behind me at my funeral,
and that no flours be planted on my grave,
and that no man remember me,
To this I put my name."

"MICHAEL HENCHARD"




Micheal Henchard's will from The Mayor of Casterbridge.






If there is another book the has as good a beginning and end as The Mayor of Casterbridge, I have not read it.

That said, I intensely dislike the rest of the book. Even Neena Gupta and Ekta Kapoor would struggle to come up with a more perversely complicated plot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayor_of_Casterbridge


That's just my personal opinion though, the book is generally regarded as a classic and is one of Hardy's most famous works.

On Govinda

If you are not the intellectual type, which Im not, and if you can understand Hindi, which I can, watching a Govinda movie occasionally is a pretty decent way to kill time.

If you are not sure whether you are the intellectual type or not, I have a fool-proof test for you.

Read any Ayn Rand book. If you can understand and appreciate it, you are definitely an intellectual. If you cant, then you probably arent.