Yet another juvenile rant..

I'm trying to roll two rants into one here; they're vaguely connected, but I'm not sure how much sense I'll make. Anyway.. 

I recently read a book called Don't Ask Any Old Bloke for Directions. It is written by an IAS officer who quits his job and goes motorcycling across India. By all accounts, it should be a book I'd normally relate to, and that was probably why it was gifted to me on my birthday a few years back. I finally got around to reading it, and I was disappointed. There were parts of the book I could completely understand and love, but the overall balance tilted in favour of disappointment. A feeling of being let down. 

To start with, the book sets up this notion of a guy who gives up everything to go on a journey of self discovery across the country. Someone who says no to a position of power in the establishment, and goes off on that classic rebel pursuit, motorcycling nirvana. The writing is shoddy and rambling at places, but has a certain charm to it, like listening to a slightly drunk guy at a party who has very entertaining stories, but the alcohol just isn't allowing him to structure them properly. However, a third of the way into the book, I got the sense that this was all a sham. He never let go of his security net, like the initial part of the book (not to mention its marketing) claimed. It wasn't quite the I-gave-up-everything-and-stepped-into-the-abyss story it was made out to be. He owned a few restaurants that placed him comfortably on the financial front, and he could afford to let go of his government job and tear up and down the country on a motorcycle. And he hadn't quite let go of the trappings of power. And that is all fine by me. He's above forty at the time this happens, has a family, and I suppose that's not the age where one can just cut the ropes, get rid of the training wheels, and let go. Hell, I would've shivered at the thought at 21. I would've devoured the book and paid no attention to its flaws had it been a simple collection of tales from the road. What ticked me off was the whole posturing, the misleading premise, and the attempt to make it sound like a Che Guevara story from India. 

Which brings me to my second point. Che Guevara had the misfortune of making an epic trip across South America on an old Norton 500, and in the process he saw the plight of the people on his continent, his people, and underwent a metamorphosis into a kickass revolutionary dude who tried to make a difference for those people. However, what he really managed to do was capture the imagination of half of the worlds douchebags, and continues to do so today. I have huge respect for the guy, and my knowledge of him extends outside of what Motorcycle Diaries tells me. I will not go into the mechanics of how he ended up as a silhouette on headbands and underpants, but I do get royally ticked off when people start putting up Che images on their blogs and facebook pages after they've done a few hundred kilometres on a motorcycle. 

George Carlin once said,"I don't have pet peeves, I have major psychotic fucking hatreds! And it makes the world a lot easier to sort out." This is my personal equivalent of that. Right after I'd read the book I mentioned earlier in the post, I saw two acquaintances start pretending to be Che after a few hundred kilometres on their bikes. I ride a bike as well, and my love of bikes is well documented. I come from a family with a strong communist background, and my own views on life are left of centre, sometimes very much socialist. However, each time I go out touring on the bike, I do not expect to return after having overthrown a government or two. The thing is, motorcycling is fun in itself. You don't have to pretend to be a South American revolutionary to have fun on two wheels. To me, those who resort to that are missing the whole point of motorcycling. The fact is, both the IAS officer and my two friends went out to have fun, and I'm sure deep inside they realized that their revolutionary abilities wont make a pimple on Che's posterior. Yet they chose to pretend. Very, very few people have become actual revolutionaries by undertaking a motorcycle tour, and none of them have really matched the scale of Che's accomplishment. There will necessarily be very few Ches and James Deans. Statistically, that makes your chances of becoming a rebel revolutionary minuscule. Less than worthless. Statistically, it probably makes you a douche. 

Che's legacy has been defiled enough by the underpants and arm-bands, and to see bikers join that parade ticked me off. So I started my own revolution, this post on a blog with 3.8 annual readers. Yeah, that'll teach them. 

Rant over.  

Plane crashes and the ensuing danse macabre..

this has been a bit of a bad year for aviation. the AF447 crash in the atlantic, the yemenia crash off the coast of moroni, the turkish airlines crash at amsterdam schiphol, the afriqiyah airlines crash at tripoli and now the air india express crash in mangalore. each of these crashes led to extensive reporting by the media, as they well should be covered. but somehow when it comes to aviation, the media never seem to get even the basic facts right. this, in turn, means the general public never get to know the facts about these accidents. all they get are some twisted half truths which further propel the aviation related myths that are already existent in their minds. whenever i see these reports, i am usually reminded of something i read in the outlook magazine long back, in the diaries section that they used to publish on the last page. it was a story about a reporter who was rushing to cover a mig-21 crash that happened near palam airport, and even before he reached the site he was relaying back 'facts' to his publication, making outrageous claims that there were 30 people on the aircraft. i would think that pretty much everyone knows that a fighter plane cannot carry more than 2 people, 3 in some cases. and turns out the journo's cabbie corrected him and told him that very same fact.

even though these journalistic lapses are generally annoying, the fact that so many crashes happened this year meant that the annoyance has been slowly creeping within me and taking the form of full blown anger. and the reporting by indian media in the aftermath of the air india express crash was the last straw that broke the camel's back. do they even think before they send out these reports? there are some basic journalistic ethics that need to be followed but i guess in these days of sensationalism, those go right out the window, and titles like 'BURNING PLANE' in font size bazillion are what sells. even so, i feel compelled to write this, knowing that this may not make any difference.

the accident : we are all too keen to pass verdict before we know what happened. this has been the case with pretty much every accident, not just air crashes. in india, if two vehicles collide, almost 90% of the time the blame is placed on the bigger vehicle. unless the smaller vehicle did something ridiculously and obvsiously stupid, the smaller vehicle gets away scot free. similar rules are extended to the sky too. the first half-fact is usually treated as the final cause of the accident. in this instance, there are reports which state that the pilot missed his touchdown point on the runway byh 2000 feet. this was immediately labelled as pilot error, and some of todays papers insist that this was the cause of the accident. none of them talk about other possibilities and facts. no one mentions that the actual zone on the runway where he can safely touchdown extends at least a thousand feet, and that even if he missed that by another thousand, he might still have had enough runway left to stop his plane. no one talks of the millions of possibilities that couldve caused the pilot to miss by thousand feet, if at all he did that. i would say that there are a good number of plausible scenarios where the pilot need not have been at fault. yeah alright, truth is boring.

the point here is this, avoid speculation. its stupid, it propagates unnecessary lies, and i personally think that its disrespectful to the people involved. these crashes are a reminder to us of the dangers inherent in aviation, no matter how much we've tried to mitigate them. and people sitting on armchairs on the ground and commenting on the jobs of those who actually face these dangers angers me. to the media, please state the known facts, and please verify them before stating them. if you wish to speculate, do so intelligently, through someone who actually knows a thing or two about not just flying, but air accidents on a whole. the so called aviation experts presented on the tv channels so far are prize chumps and jackasses in my opinion, who are spouting half baked opinions. get credible people, if you wish to discuss this incident, and not someone who would disrespect the dead crew for a few soundbytes.

the airline : air india suffers from what i like to call 'the aeroflot syndrome'. the airline has done a lot of cutting edge stuff over its lifetime, but being a state owned carrier it will always have public perception going against it, especially in terms of safety and service. sure, some of the service points are debatable, and i'll gladly debate that another day in another post, but i see the safety perception as a bit unfair. i wouldnt go out of my way to vouch for their safety, but i will say they are as safe or unsafe as pretty much any other airline in india. their maintenance practices are probably better than average, would be my personal assessment. but note, its only a personal assessment. in any case, some sections of the media making dubious hints at air india maintenance etc would be well advised to stay clear. i mean, what is it with these people? cant they wait at least for the interim report of the accident investigation? and if you look at the air crashes the past year, it includes a first rate carrier like Air France, as well as carriers like Yemenia who aren't exactly well known. it includes brand new airliners as well as old ones. what does it all say? nothing. wait for the individual damn investigations to conclude.

the airplane : the 737-800 has had 8 hull loss incidents so far. if you count from the first generation 737, thousands have been built. this one had a line number 2481, and was two years old. what does that mean, again? probably nothing. we dont know YET. there is always a section that comes up with dubious assesments of the aircraft type, sub-type and even manufacturer. the 737 is not unsafe. nor is the a330, which had two crashes in 12 months. hell, even the tu154 that crashed with the polish president on board, which is a soviet era aircraft known to have a bad safety reputation, is acutally quite a safe aircraft since many of its accidents were caused by factors beyond the aircraft or crew. a few were shot down by missiles, one ran into snow ploughs on the runway that atc had failed to clear, and one was in a mid air collision due to atc error. yet even aviation buffs give me a weird look when i tell them i want to fly on a 154. i do not have a deathwish, i insist it is a safe plane. sure, there have been planes with design flaws, but the planes involved in this year's crashes dont have any known serious flaws, and to insinuate otherwise without proof would be irresponsible. even in the case of the fedex cargo md-11 that crashed in narita, this holds true. the md-11 has certain quirks of handling, but i doubt it has been established as a design 'flaw' yet.

the airport : mangalore airport has a bit of a peculiar runway, which is elevated, and has steep runoffs at either end. it is debatable whether there was adequate space in case of a runway overrun. people will second guess the decisions behind making the runway the way it is now, and it is very probable that the runway may have played a part in the accident. probable, not conclusive. but guess what, a sizeable number of airports have such problems. we build airports where we can, not necessarily where we ideally should be. we cannot always build perfect airports, sometimes they have to be built within some constraints. in madeira, portugal, the runway extends out in to sea on huge pillars. this plane would probably have been a goner there too. what does that say? nothing. airports arent perfect, we have to work with what with have. huge runways on plain spaces are probably possible only in deserts. where there is population and terrain around, we adjust and work a little harder. deal with it.

the crew : one of the initial statements i heard on the news was that pilot error was ruled out because the captain had 10000 hours flying experience. sure, but that does not rule out error. it probably does minimize it, but does not rule it out. but ill concede that one since it's at least not disrespectful to the poor chap. then came the news that the pilot is a british national of serbian origin. there have been some two-bit publications making an issue out of foreign pilots working in india. the nationality of the pilot probably had nothing to do with the crash, such generalizations are borderline racist i would say. for example, all russian pilots arent drunk, all chinese pilots arent bad with english, and all spanish traffic controllers aren't atrocious with their accents. some are, but only just as many as you would find in india, england or the united states. in any case, the key is respect. indications of pilot error or not, speculation on their actions is useless at this point when no facts are known. also, i have a bone to pick with the pilot unions who have brought in pilot workload as a factor. the wreck hasnt stopped burning yet, and these hacks are already pushing union agenda. there isn't anything yet to prove pilot workload as a factor, and pilots should be the last ones making such claims before the investigation is complete. at least out of respect for two dead colleagues.

in conclusion : there is never one single cause for aviation accidents. it is always a series of systemic faults and flaws that culminates in an accident. sure, it may have been triggered by something immediate and plausible like pilot error, but there are always systemic underlying causes. in every damn accident. and the reason we have improved aviation safety over the years is because we have studied these over and over again, and imbibed the lessons industry-wide. in country like ours where there have been incidents where aspersions were cast over the findings of investigative proceedings in the past, the media has an important role and opportunity here to bring us some honest investigative journalism. it's always easy to make scapegoats out of pilots, and if the media stupidly plays up half truths, the real truth may get lost in the cacophony. sure, you could call it pilot error, and train all pilots flying to mangalore a few extra hours on the simulator to understand the airport better, but the systemic causes will strike elsewhere in a different form and incident, and claim more innocent lives with it. the focus should be on an honest investigation, and to learn the lessons from its as soon and as effectively as possible.

Whats even worse? Shopping for Times of India..

Two rants.

Shopping. I do not subscribe to the line "lets go shopping". Do not. I can think of a million other things to do in that time, i might not do any of those things and probably will goof off on the couch at home, but i will not go. When i have to buy stuff, I know exactly what i want, and pretty much where i can find it. Within five minutes of entering a mall, i know where the t-shirts are, and in another two minutes i figure out the dark coloured ones, and one more minute to choose an appropriate number i require, and then its checkout. I do not like walking up and down wasting time looking at stuff i probably have no intention of buying. And my logic is this, that its bad enough giving my money to some two-bit corporation (not a hippie, not against corporations per se, just that its my money im parting with), but i dont have to give them my time. my time is mine (except when i charge $22 an hour at work). In fact, if i have gone on a shopping trip at any point, it was probably with people i value in my life. rant one over.

Times of India. What the fuck is the point of that paper? I know entertainment and titillation sells, i know they cover their pages with semi naked chicks and shiny advertisements even i like to look at occasionally, but i cannot stomach the absolute cynicism that drives a newspaper, thats right a NEWSpaper, to come out with a special obscenely overpriced edition on saturday that contains NEWS in it. what the fuck? a newspaper selling a special news edition on saturday? isnt that what they're supposed to sell EVERY day? and a word to the page 3 eco nuts who read said paper, i guess the irony is lost on all of you. cancelling your subscription to this joke of a paper that does nothing to enrich your life would probably save more trees than all your eco whining on said paper ever will. rant two over, over and out.

have fun. wtf?

y'know what pisses me off? when people say, "have fun". now this is a multi-faceted piss-off weapon, mind you. On one level, it's dumb. I dont know any human being who doesn't want to have fun. Sure, the definitions may vary, but everyone has fun in his or her own way. i mean, even psychopaths do, cos cutting people into kheema might be their idea of fun, even if its not necessarily yours. Manic-depressives are also having fun cos their twisted idea of fun may be to not be happy. So its like saying "breathe", cos you're going to anyway.
Another thing is abuse of this phrase. While it is inherently pointless, people take it one further level by using it whenever and wherever possible. whether you're going to work, to watch a movie, or to get an amputation done on a gangrenous limb that has three bullets embedded in it, people say the same ol' stuff. "have fun".
Now this is a code-red 'wtf?' situation as far as im concerned. it always leaves me with a question for the user of the phrase, that starts with wtf. like 'wtf has this guy got for brains?' or, 'wtf is mother nature smoking?'and wtf situations have only one cure. turn the tables on them. so the next time someone says "have fun", just say :

"No, thanks. I have other plans."


That was a public service announcement aimed at improving office environments in midwestern america. Thank you.

peel it off, dammit.

i have a confession to make. i take pleasure from some pretty weird things in life. now, before you dream up visions of me tied up and in fluffy handcuffs, allow me to clarify. i like peeling the plastic protective wrapping off, well, just about anything. it probably ranks on round about the same level as busting bubble-wrap, but this ones better i say. there is a strange satisfaction when u feel the plastic peeling off the mobile phone screen or laptop body it was protecting, something that cant be described in words. just the way you hate it when chalk squeaks on a glass board in class, which is a pretty inoccuous thing if you take a detached look at it. thats about as close to an analogue as i can possibly come, though its in an entirely different league and direction altogether. of course, admitting it wasn't pretty easy, because the world and i are at odds regarding our views on this particular breed of plastic. most people dont realize the fact that this was meant to be peeled off. i mean, if hewlett-packard wanted the stuff to stay, they probably would have made it more difficult to peel off. but what to folks do? they dont touch that plastic. like some sort of a strange ritual that would be sacrilegious to break, they let that plastic be. not being designed to stick forever, the plastic starts coming off the edges. at this point, it looks to addicts like me that its begging to be peeled off, and when i, in turn, beg the owner of the particular piece of plastic the honor of peeling it off, i invariably get rejected. what beats me is the fact that people keep that protective plastic till its hanging off the laptop or curled up on a mobile screen, looking ugly, getting in the way of everything, yet somehow in the minds of the owner, 'protecting' whatever it was pasted on.

the saddest part is that after this goes on for months even, after much attempts at sticking it back and much requests on my part to be allowed to peel it off, the stupid thing falls off, and they dont even realize its happened. motherfucking sadists, im usually telling myself at this point. the only things that plastic did in its life was gather dust on its sticky part and curl up ruining the looks on an otherwise beautiful laptop or phone. i mean, its a catch22 right there. most people, whether they admit it or not, buy things giving huge weightage on how the thing looks. and then, in the name of protection, re-sale value and some other loads of bullcrap, keep it covered in hideous contraptions of cheap plastic or latex, never enjoying or flaunting the beauty of whatever it is that they bought. i mean, whats the point in buying a phone worth a good part of my paycheque and then keeping it in a ten rupee latex cover that looks like its a condom tied up? flaunt it, and let me peel the plastic, i say.

but then the world order isnt going to change easy when it comes to protective plastic sheets. i mean, what does a guy like me do in a world of sadists? oh i know what i'll do. guerilla warfare. the plastic revolution is coming. what exactly am i talking about? oh yeah.. nowadays i dont ask the owners their permission. i just walk up and say, 'dude, that's a cool laptop'. and peel it right off, before they even dream it coming. of course, the gratification is a bit accelerated, but turning the sadist tables right back on them sorta makes up for it. the key part of this guerilla maneuver is the getaway. for a successful getaway, hand the plastic back to the stunned owner. the instinctive reaction is to try and stick it back. the impossibility of that takes some time to sink in, ample time for a getaway. oh yeah, there are pre-emptive strikes in this war, too. sometimes when i go to the electronics sections in malls, i conduct large scale attacks on plastic. for all i know, i may be ridding the world of a lot more sadists.

i have no idea why i wrote this, its somehow been botherin me for a while now. and if you just bought a laptop or a phone, you know where to find me.

Mechanic Ramayana

Even more on biking, read at your own peril.

My mechanic is an ex-racer.

While this statement may conjure up visions of grandeur on his part, and grandeur by association on mine, things are far from such a pretty picture. And while i do admit that there is an inordinate difference in the the depth of my theoretical and practical knowledge on automobiles, and that theoretical knowledge is not of much use when your second gear refuses to engage, i also think that mechanics are highly overrated. Maybe it's because i get overwhelmed by their depth of practical knowledge and my brain switches into simpleton mode. Either way, the point is that our combined knowledge has done but scratch to improve the well being of my bike, which incidentally is my pride and joy.
Initially my contribution to this pride and joy was to keep it shining through rigorous application of spit and polish, and spend sweat and tears in keeping it serviced. and sweet fuck-all apart from that. i've said this before and i'll say it again, the first few months with a bike are a period where your feelings for it turn from love to one of invincibility. you and your bike are the a-team on the road, the one to challenge your supremacy is yet to be born. of course, you hastily correct this rather shortsighted view after your first encounter with one of the mechanic breed. The first time i needed to go to a mechanic was, yes you guessed right, after an accident. The accident itself did nothing to my feeling of invincibility except enhance it since i escaped without a scratch, but the bike wasnt so lucky and needed a mechanic. Now theoretically i could replace the headlamp assembly, but i wasn't so sure about the practical part. I was still madly in love with the bike, we were sorta like newlyweds, so me taking it apart was analogous to me performing open heart surgery on my wife, despite the fact that headlamp replacement was more suited to a nose-job analogy. Another characteristic of this situation is that you're so in love that you run around for second opinions etc., and no expense is spared to get your love back to good health. I, unfortunately, did the same.
I ran around to four mechanics asking their opinions, and predictably (in retrospect), got four different opinions. one told me i needed to replace my fork. Since that was a rather expensive proposition, he was easy to strike off my list. Another said it's ok, just change the bulb, the whole assembly is expensive, change it when u put in for more serious repairs. Of course, the urge to keep my bike shipshape meant that he was easy to cross out of the list as well. Of the remaining two, i dont recall much about their opinions, but i based my choice on the fact that one of them was a racer and the other wasn't. So i chose him to nurse my bike, and theres started my saga.

From my perspective, mechanics were put on earth to rob innocent bikers of their money. This is not specific to any mechanic, i hold this as a universal truth. The old breed of mechanics who loved your bike more than you did, dont exist anymore. The kindly old man with a boxful of tools in a dilapidated shed has been run over by the much resented march of civilization. Even service centres in villages these days have hydraulic workbenches that lift the bike to an ergonomic height, and multi purpose electric tools that change heads mechanically so the mechanic need not waste time switching from a spanner to an allen key. But this change, unfortunately, cannot be equated with a rise in quality. Your average mechanic has become more educated yet dumber, better paid yet greedier. Half the repairs on a job sheet are routinely overlooked at these places, basic thing like oil are never checked, and some of the more unscrupulous ones swipe new parts from bikes and replace them with damaged ones. And being rather naive, i was not prepared for this labyrinthine world. Multiple service stations authorised by the maker of my bike proved disappointing, and each damage hurt me and my pocket and yet never got fixed. The only consolation was that this was true for service centres of all the major bike makers.
So, with my trust in these shaken, i returned to the fold of the roadside mechanic. Sought out the racer chap again after months, and started giving the bike to him. He seems like a good man, speaks good english which is a relief since i cant make sense of Kannada, and behaves more like a racing team manager than a mechanic. Which was nice initially, since he figured with a single look at me that i ride fast and race pretty much everyone from every red light, and he started giving riding tips. And my riding definitely improved, especially cornering skills. I was elated, i began what i called 'riding on the edge of capability', noting down speedo readings at difficult corners and trying to best them the next time around. Of course, this was meant to invite more accidents, and sure enough, they happened. That's when i figured that the racing outfit he imagined to be running with me as lead driver was a GP team, to him, from an expenses point of view. And here I was, thinking of something like a SriPerumbudur track team :P Anyways, after the first crash, he gave me a list of stuff to replace. Some didnt even look relevant. When i asked him i got a lecture about racing safety, and i meekly agreed to replace them. More crashes followed though, and i became acutely aware of the fact that i might not be able to afford his services. But then, sentimental fool that i am, i had taken a liking to my 'coach' by now, and not wanting to jeopardize my racing 'career' i decided to look for alternatives. I went to a big service station again. and returned back to my mechanic just as fast, since those service station types still hadn't cleaned up their act.
But then i started having all sorts of doubts. The invincibility phase was long since over, and i knew the limits of my bike, so i decided to see the limits of the mechanic. i wanted to know if he was the kindly honest chap he came across to be. So using my theoretical knowledge i'd badger him with questions designed to trap him, yet all i accomplished was further doubt in my mind and no concrete answers either way. I started hitting below the belt and asked him to show me the parts he claimed to have replaced, which he did, yet i suspected they could have been from some other bike and that i might as well have thrown my money away. Finally, i snapped. That happened one day when i was riding to office, and the bike ground to a halt. The wheels were stuck, and wouldnt budge. Something to do with the gears i imagined. Since i wasnt too far from his shop, i took it to the mechanic. He gave me a detailed list of repairs needed, including changing shifters for my gears. he quoted about 3 grand for it, and i flipped. I gave him a piece of my mind and told him what i thought of his proposed 3 grand bill, and told him to just get it barely roadworthy at the cheapest possible price. He warned me that might lead to worse gear problems, and i told him i'll cross that bridge when i come to it. He got it done for a grand, and i rode off quite pleased with myself for having put my foot down and having saved a pile. If only i had done this earlier, i would have saved a lot more. He does good work, as i've come to know, i should just have checked him from swindling me. This thought strengthened further in my mind for the next three months, and the bike ran perfectly, as if to vindicate me.
Until i lost my second gear one day. I took it back to him, and stood there while he dismantled the engine. He showed me where the shifter had been eaten into by the gear, where gear teeth had broken off and ruined other gears. I stood there dreading an i-told-you-so speech, wishing the earth would swallow me up. Cos he did tell me all this the last time. And it cost me 6k this time. Humbled, i paid up and without a word he gave me a half-grand discount. I took the bike and made a mental note never to mess with mechanics again. Thats when he dropped the bombshell, something you'd never expect a racing manager to say. "take it easy for the next 1000km, son", he said "dont push beyond 60." My jaw was scooping dirt from the road as i drove, nay, inched back home.

Last count, i've done 81 of the 1000 prescribed kilometers. I'm never gonna make it.. aaargh.

Amwaytaminute..

So i got waylaid by one of those Amway fuckers. I'm usually very wary of such traps, having seen a lot of not-so-bright cousins fall in the trap and end up losing money. I'm usually on guard against these types, but this particular guy slipped through the net, so to speak. He said he wanted me help with some business idea of his, told me that he's an entrepreneur starting out etc etc. He was apparently a friend of one of my acquaintances, and cited his reference. And I was given to believe that he required my services as a designer. Now most freelancers and aspiring freelancers know what its like to have work come to you. You have a better bargaining position since you were approached by them. Not to mention the huge ego boost that someone, especially a start up with a lot to lose, has placed his trust in you to get the job done good. I agreed to listen to this chap. A little extra money on the side never hurt anybody right?
Which is what he must have been thinking when he got into this business of conning people as well. I should have guessed it was one of these chain marketing fuckers from the eagerness he displayed to meet me. I put that down as the enthusiasm of a start up following his dream. I did figure it before it boiled down to him telling me he was from Amway, but i had already met him by then and not being in a mood to be impolite to random strangers, i decided to hear him out. Also because the meeting was at my place, and if anyone had to do any running away it would have had to be him.
I dunno if he was trained to do it, but he was trying very hard to make me identify with him. To sort of strike a common ground. He started off commenting on my Jim Morrison t-shirt. He asked me if i was a fan of The Doors. I said i was a big time fan of theirs. He said he liked them too, though somehow he didnt look like he did. There are subtle signs people give out about their intentions, and you can use these to read right through them if only you can spot them in time. For instance, the t-shirt I was wearing had the famous lizard king portrait of morrison up front while on the back it said "I'm the lizard king, I can do anything - The Doors". The front is definitely more striking than the back, and i dont ever remember the back of the t-shirt having attracted comment. But he asked me about my music only after i turned around the first time, thus revealing the name of the band - not morrison, mind - to him. Observant chap, yes, but then he said that he liked their music as well. I was half inclined to put him a favourite song / lyrics question which usually weeds out the fakers from the believers, but decided to let him be. After all at that point he was still a potential client to me.
He comes into my mess of a room, and even though i can sense the unease on his face, he proceeds to make himself comfortably seated on the mattress on the floor given that i own no chairs. The room is trademark dirty, and he pretends its the same sort of room as he had in college. His creaseless clothes even at the end of the day tells me his room and mine are poles apart. You could tell the state of my room by looking at me even on days i wear neatly pressed shirts to office; where you live and what sort of person you are is something that you cant erase off you.
Then he launched himself into an explanation on the franchising business with McDonalds as the example. Most of the times when i set an alarm for a certain time in the morning, i wake up one or two minutes before it on my own, and then lie in wait for the alarm. I had the same sort experience here. Just before he took out his pad of paper and his cheap plastic pen to explain the franchising concept to me, i figured this was heading towards Amway. I just sat back and waited for the alarm. Which came when he started explaining McDonalds. 'Cos thats the bloody same example all my cousins used when they started explaining too. And that was even before any of us had ever been to a McD's. These guys must have some sort of organised propaganda machine working for them, i guess. Thank god they're selling only carwash, mouthwash and hogwash, and not the thousand year reich which by the way was probably hogwash too.
I was really depressed by the way he made little drawings and wrote down memorized figures to explain all the bullshit he'd been taught. People are almost willingly manipulated, it seemed to me. I didn't betray my thoughts on my face, I let him continue instead. The figures never seemed to end, he even knew how much his mentors were making per month. A little into his lecture he probably figured that while i was patient with him, i wasn't at all buying into what he was trying to sell me. So he began renewed efforts in tyring to find common ground, and asked me about the last movie I had seen. Wrong question, since I'm a serious cinema buff almost to the point of being a snob, so i told him that the last film i saw was hable con ella by almodovar, instead of the Chak De India he was probably expecting. He made a half ditch attempt to still find that elusive bond, and told me its a beautiful movie. The way he told me told me the truth, and the expression on my face told him he should probably shut up, which he promptly did. Anyways, things went downhill for him from there. I was waiting for him to mention Amway to tell him in the politest possible manner to fuck off and dont bother me again, and he was doing his darnedest best to avoid mentioning them. Finally after about twenty minutes into the conversation, he mentioned them, I told him what i thought about them and the aforementioned fuck-off, and it was all over. Or so i thought. Tenacity is a quality i would credit him with. Now that he had failed to recruit me into his evil cult, he started trying to peddle me samples of their evil stuff and wanted me to inflict the same torture as i just underwent on my friends by giving him their numbers.
I had wondered how these people maintain a social life. I mean, your primary customers were your friends who were expected to recruit other friends and so on. Assuming half your friends are jackasses who would be easily conned into something like this and the other half aren't, you stand to reduce your social circle by half by doing something like this cos the intelligent ones amongst your friends would figure by this point that you are an idiot not worth counting for a friend. I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone using their spare time to peddle me car polish when i don't even own a car. Come to think of it, i cant imagine any of my friends wanting me telling them what toothpaste to use either. And since my circle of close friends was pretty much closed, something like Amway would mean all of us ending up not talking to each other. Amway might have imagined it different, but this is how it works for me. Yet there they are, a 6.4 billion dollar company, Infosys Wipro and TCS rolled into one according to the idiot i talked to. There must be too many lonely people in the world, methinks. An interesting spin off business from Amway could then be the social networking business. All those lonely people probably need dates.
Anyways, i managed not to lose my temper with him, for such interesting thoughts were going on in my mind. I did tell him however that i will not consider sacrificing my social circle for his advancement in the Amway chain. He begged me to reconsider and said he'd get back in touch in a month. I told him not to bother, but I have a feeling he probably will.
i realized later that i had nothing against the guy. my prejudice against his cause was the reason behind my hostility. Maybe he had financial problems severe enough to warrant getting into something like this as there werent too many other lucrative things he could do without leaving his job. But what i did hate about him was his inability to separate himself from the bullshit he was selling. One look at him when he was explaining his figures was all it took for me to figure that he actually believed in those numbers and doodles he was making for all those people he met. I hated that. Its when i see that people can believe any bull they're told that i remember that the nazi ideology was so easy to sell, and that people are selling similar stuff today and other people are buying. I hate that as well. Period.

end note : after i wrote this i kinda thought that equating them with nazi propaganda machines was a bit bit far-fetched, but when i read more about these guys i think i wasn't that far off the mark. they have faced multiple lawsuits in various countries for cult-like behaviour, apparently. read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway for more on this.

On Birthdays..

Birthdays are a diabolic invention, i tell you. Birthdays are wrong on so many levels I can't even count them all. Well, I can count a few though, and thats what i think I'm trying to do here. For a start, I just celebrated my birthday yesterday, and whatever I couldn't help but realize during the course of that crazy day is not going to make me refrain from celebrating in the future. Its the same sort of catch22 that happens in so many other walks of life. It usually goes like this : there is something or someone screwing you over, but because a certain part of that whole process of getting ripped is immensely and addictively pleasurable you do it over and over again. At some point if you are lucky you are enlightened to the fact that you are getting ripped off, but instead of sparking a revolution this more likely breeds submission. You continue to get yourself screwed, realize how good it is making you feel in the short term, and continue doing it in at attempt to make it last forever, make it longterm. The intellectually endowed might allow themselves a conversational wank over the whole thing once in a while because that makes them feel good too. Which is more pathetic since they have seen whatever it is screwing them over, seen that it is happening to the world in general, yet all those bastards ever do is sit around a bar table with drinks in hand and engage in intellectually masturbative activities involving the subject at hand. I must admit to my shame that i am an aspiring member of that group as well, and that i am not going to practice what i preach. But i will attempt to wank at a slightly higher level than them. So where do birthdays fit in?
well, my reflections and realizations stem from an analysis of my own birthday celebration. And thats precisely what I'm about wank over. I realized that birthday celebrations are very very wrong. and what did i do? what I've always been doing... hiding behind a curtain of celebrations, enjoying every minute while it lasted, knowing that the ordeal as well the curtain would last only as long as each other. Ordeal, you ask? Let me explain. what do greeting card companies do? they take a random day, dedicate it to something, and make money out of it. Birthdays similarly are a tool for the society in general to let the individual feel special, let everyone have his day in the sun and make him feel wanted, feel good.. the works. The sad part is that for the most part of the rest of the year, the very same society might not give a shit if the poor sod exists or not. His boss might be exploiting him, his wife might be cheating on him with the plumber of all people, his daughter might be a cheap whore but on his birthday they make him feel all different, that everything was perfect, that it was his entry to the world this day years ago that made it perfect et al.. They tell him what a great guy he is when the last week they humiliated him in public, tell him what a great family he has when its crumbling to pieces, let him take the day off when he was refused leave when his own mother had died, and the sad part is.. most of these guys who i am characterizing under 'poor sod' would believe everything is ok, that everyone likes him, and so forth.
The flat monotony of everyday life is a much better torture than lifting an individual out of that monotony, taking him high up where he doesn't belong, and then watching him fall back while you stand and watch from the relative comfort of that very same monotony. Thats exactly what a birthday does. I realized it at the peak of the day. There is a feeling of warmth in the morning, yet as the evening draws closer you are cold. You realize that it will be another year before this happens again, and you don't want to let this all go because you haven't had such a feel-good time in years. Its the return to normal that keeps this cycle together. No one wants to return to normal, and i suspect I'm not the only one who felt cold toward the end of the birthday. And got colder and colder till the distant glow of the next birthday starts becoming something to look forward to, sorta like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel except there is no tunnel if only we would look more closely. This contrived tunnel seemed to be the root of all problems, yet i took a step further. For this was only one tunnel in a maze. I started realizing that there may be something to the Hindu concept of rebirths after all. I am not religious, but i suspect i do have a spiritual side somewhere below all the cynicism, or i would perhaps have not made this parallel. Though i have a slight alternative to offer. Instead of being stuck in a cycle of lives, i think we might be stuck in a million cycles all in one life. Cycles of joy, sorrow, fortune, hardship, birthdays, beliefs..you name it. Yet what pissed me off i think is the fact that there seem to be a few who have mastered the cycles, who are on top of things, who have the key and even though they themselves are stuck in cycles of their own yet have control over vast swathes of human life. And i also hated the ones who profess innocence.. who believe that things are essentially good even when faced with enormous evidence (albeit debatable) to the contrary. Those who believed that they don't manipulate people, that they are not being manipulated, when their very existence is a game and counter-game of manipulation. I mean, what are birthdays if not a huge manipulation of someones reality, a stretch of his personal time-space fabric? there is no real significance attached to the day for everyday millions like him were born, and millions like him are dying. is it a way for society to keep tabs on the progress of someone's life? a subliminal schedule that you are expected to keep? like starting to think about what you want to do in life when you turn sixteen or when to get married once you reach 26, for example? the expectations might not be collective or generic, because i don't believe that this manipulation is being carried forth by a massive central machinery. for he is being manipulated by what might be called as his social circle, which in turn is manipulated by the immediate community above it, and so forth all the way up to those few who are riding these cycles. which is why that the sort of a future vision shown in movies with a big brother watching over will be a failure in my opinion because there are people in this world who may have realized that this probably is a much better way to run the world. For in the eyes of the individual, it is the expectations of his loved ones and friends that he has to live up to. He does this as he is nothing without them, little realizing that these collective expectations can be manipulated and manufactured as well. and the common birthday is just one tool in a plethora. the game is dynamic due to the lack of a central force, it is chaos pulling in different directions yet somehow pulling the collective a little way in the direction that the masters of these cycles want.
These are all theories, realizations, opinions and thoughts. I am not raising questions, i am not starting a revolution or attempting to start one, i am not going to move a little finger against any of these things that i see, for i have submitted to it as well. i may have resigned myself to the fact that such is life. I could fight my way out of my cycles yet end up in further more. i may become the master of a few, maybe many if I'm lucky. but there will still be more cycles to conquer and i wont ever conquer them all even if i wanted to. any break out will lead me or anyone who attempts it into a never ending battle, which i believe may not be worth it. I may change later, but for now i am content in the illusions of temporary satisfaction that drive a cycle of permanent dissatisfaction. I am content constantly picking up nuggets of satisfaction in an attempt to build a castle that never will be done in my lifetime. yet what will happen if i try and break out? the same. the moment one breaks out of these thing, they are either done for, or they become the master of the particular cycle they broke out from. Yet due to the basic nature of humans to remain dissatisfied, he (or I) will go looking for more cycles to conquer and meet the same unsatisfied end on a different plane. like a matrix within the matrix.
so i will celebrate birthdays, give and get gifts, believe that the world loves me, love the world in return with all the effort i can muster, give the boss a high five near the water cooler, believe that the girl i love loves me as well, repeat the cycle till my body reaches the limits of its serviceability and die in a much simpler frame of life, content yet discontent.