A borderline atheist's conundrum..

based on true incidents. written about a year or so back for a short story competition.

in two days, i was to leave for America. it is the dream of a good number of people i know, and i was poised to achieve it. i just didn't have the clothes for the mission. a couple of friends came down and decided to help rectify that, and they were more than welcome since i was rubbish at shopping. i roamed the streets of the city's shopping district, full of apprehension. not just about what clothes to buy, but more about what awaited me in three days time. i considered myself quite the traveller and wanderer, but this was far beyond what i'd traversed so far. our efforts stretched from afternoon to evening, and we were now at that twilight phase where the sky seemed undecided about where to go, stay with the day or give in to the night. my thoughts were on similar grounds, since i was headed someplace i was not too keen on, yet was thrilled for the experience of travelling into the unknown. i was confused.

we had come to a popular bookstore, near which there exists a clothes shop specializing in export rejects. by this point i had pretty much all i needed, and my friends were tired of picking stuff out for me so they headed into the bookstore to do some browsing and shopping of their own and left me alone to fend with the choices of t-shirts before me. t-shirts were all i had left to buy. in keeping with my 'hate-shopping' policy, i was done in five minutes, and all my t-shirt needs were addressed. unfortunately, it wasn't the same for my friends who decided to take their own sweet time browsing through books they were unlikely to read anytime soon. i wasn't left with much option but to sit outside on the stairs leading to the street from the building that contained both these shops.

as i sat there pondering over things i should probably not have been pondering about, a girl appeared. she was the sort of girl you couldn't help but notice in an instant. pretty in every sense of the word, commanding the attention of everyone who passed around her on the sidewalk yet seemingly unaware of it. yet she seemed unsure of what she was doing there, and merely stood in the middle of the sidewalk while people milled around her. i kept stealing glances at her while i waited for my friends, and she was facing away from me. i wondered what she was doing here, in the middle of this crowd. perhaps she was waiting for someone? for lack of better things to do, i kept looking and wondering. until she turned around. at which point, the decent thing to do was to look away and pretend i wasn't looking in the first place. which is what i did.

but then i was put into an unfamiliar situation. the girl looked straight at me, into my eyes. i tried looking away, but i was transfixed, to put it mildly. she started walking over towards where i was sitting, and i automatically started going through the usual checklists. i looked around to see if there was anyone behind me, and there wasnt. i looked back to see if she was still looking at me, and i was pretty sure that she was. maybe she suddenly decided to buy a book, or perhaps cheap export rejected designer clothing.. yeah, that had to be it. all these evaporated the moment she stood right in front of me, and said 'hi'. a simple, sweet 'hi'. were i my usual self, i would probably have said 'bond. james bond'. but what came out was a 'bwuuhh?' from my mouth.

she extended her hand, and i timidly shook it. soft hands, yet a firm handshake. it almost seemed like i met her at work and was concluding a business deal. i looked up at her face, and she was smiling. i continued with the checklist. do i know her? have we met at some party where i got drunk and did something so stupid that she remembers me? the latter seemed plausible, but somehow i was inclined to rule it out. i had the good sense to let go of her hand when the handshake concluded, but my senses were thrown off gear again when she said 'd'you mind if i sit down here?' another 'bwuuhh..' gave her the go ahead and she sat next to me. a few moments passed in silence, while i figured out what to say. predictably, i couldnt form a single sentence. anything i attempted to say would surely come out as the now familiar 'bwuuhh.. '.

she put me out of my misery by saying 'how are you'. which still had me wondering whether i have met her before. i wracked my brain in a vain attempt to remember, and despite priding myself on my memory, i couldnt imagine where i possibly could've met her. but on the positive side, i seemed to be regaining my ability to speak, and said 'fine. how have you been?'. this, in the remote possibility that we do know each other. she made small talk with me initially, while the processing abilities of my brain were almost equally divided between responding to her conversation and figuring out plausible reasons for how a girl at least three leagues above me was talking to me out of the blue.

small talk soon developed into a full-blown conversation, which may have lasted all of five minutes maybe, but applying relativity, it seemed like an eternity in my head. i was just as confused as i was at the start regarding why this was happening at all, but was more than happy to just play along. it was a random, free flowing conversation, neither of us knowing the other presumably, until the moment she said 'you looked worried earlier. what's the matter?' since i had been thinking of my upcoming journey until i saw her, i told her i'd been thinking about it and was apprehensive about heading there alone. she asked me if i had any friends here, and i said i had quite a few, mentioning that i was waiting for a couple of them with dubious reliability while shopping for things i needed on the trip. she asked me what i'd bought, and i showed her the shirts, sweater and t-shirts i had accumulated as part of the afternoon expedition. she said she was new in the city and had no friends.

i was disinclined to believe that somehow, perhaps it was her demeanour, but she insisted that was the case. at this point, any red blooded guy would offer to be her friend, but i was more inclined towards saying 'bwuuhh..' again so i kept shut. i wanted to tell her i could be her friend, and show her around town, but i was battling the now all-pervasive bwuuhh. which is when she said, 'would you like to pray with me?' i mustve made an expression of incredulity, because she immediately launched into an explanation. 'well you are worried about your trip, and i am part of the church of so and so (i forget the name).. so i thought prayer would help you'. she took my hand in hers and asked me to close my eyes before i could form a coherent response. once she held my hand, a coherent response was pretty unlikely, in any case.

so we sat there, on the stairs leading to the bookstore and the shop with cheap export rejected designer clothing, while the rest of the shopping public moved along on the sidewalk in front of us, while my friends looked at books they were gonna buy but weren't going to read, holding our hands, closing our eyes, one of us reciting a prayer while the other pretended to pray while wondering how a borderline atheist like him got into a situation like this in the first place. after another eternity, the prayer was over, we opened our eyes and she smiled at me. i smiled back, she let go of my hand, and,still looking at me, pulled out a brochure from her backpack. a fucking brochure, for her church. which was followed by a notebook where she wanted me to write how i found the prayer experience with her, and sign my name. i was too stunned for an indignant expression. i could shoot down pyramid marketing guys before they even took off, yet i'd been had this time. i accepted defeat and signed the notebook, and walked home with one less reason to believe in god.

Cheburashka ♥

In Soviet Russia, nostalgia feels you! that didnt quite come out right, but yeah the question isn't too far off. is it possible to feel nostalgia for something you've never known, from somewhere you've never been?

I have been a huge Russophile from probably the age of five. I grew up in a family chock-full of believers in the communist ideology, not least of whom being my mother and my grandfather. We had a subscription for Misha magazine from where i learnt the Russian alphabet. My mother herself took Russian in college, that language being one amongst the many she went on to learn. I had penpals from the soviet union, and the prized stamp in the collection that we inherited was one from the communist East Germany. Thinking back, i owe a lot to my love for all things russian, since it was a boyhood fanaticism for their aircraft that got me started on the aviation road. or airway, rather.

One of the things i do is spot airplanes. And when it comes to that, the rarer the better. If it flies and is weird, i probably know a thing or two about it. I have cherished memories of a long list of strange aircraft sightings, from an Antonov 124 at delhi to an Ilyushin 18 in trivandrum, and all the way back to delhi for a cargo 707 which is a rare thing these days. I would travel miles if i could get to see the An-225, and i would travel back in time if i could to see the Air India Il-62 and L-1011. To be frank, the regular Airbuses and Boeings are kinda boring, to the point that even the paramount Embraers are a relief for me.

Antonov An-74

Cheburashka - Can you see how the nickname came to be?

And what i haven't had the chance to see, I read up about. I have a sizeable database on the weird planes of the world, and keep adding to it on almost a daily basis. Which brought me, a couple of years ago, to a most interesting aircraft, the Antonov-74. I had been looking for an aircraft the russians nicknamed the 747ski (which is actually the Antonov 30), dont ask me why i needed to know that, and i stumbled on this airplane instead. And this, in turn, was nicknamed 'Cheburashka', apparently after the Soviet animated character it resembled.

So, wiki-fan that i am, i immediately went on the Cheburashka page, to look it up. Airplanes were soon forgotten (i remembered the 747ski again only months later), and i couldn't get enough of this little chap. Pictures were downloaded, links were opened, youtube videos were watched, and torrents were downloaded. it didnt even disappoint me that i had gotten japanese dubbed versions on torrent, there were very few good torrents in any case. I've watched the video at the top of this post dozens of times now.

And strangely, it felt nostalgic. It felt like i had seen it before, a long long time ago. I know for a fact that i haven't, yet it seemed to fit so seamlessly with my memories from childhood that i was amazed.. i'd say yeah, it IS possible to feel nostalgia for something you've never known. It took me two whole years, but i finally got around to writing this and sharing it here.. Take a look at the video, and if you couldn't love Cheburashka, your friendship contract is probably up for renewal :P

PS - if you do like it, especially the song, i can send it over. or come over myself and sing it. and then hit you on the head non-lethally but severely enough that you wont remember my bad singing. whichever.

A wedding + roadtrip, and some disappointment..

The wedding + roadtrip:

Two very good friends of mine, Sooraj and Asha just got married. I'd been pretty kicked about it since the time Sooraj called with the news that they're getting married, and had decided immediately that i was going no matter what. i'd been wanting to do a roadtrip on the bike as well, since it had been seven months since i did a serious long ride. this was the opportunity, and i guessed sooraj wouldnt mind since he's already set the bar with his delhi-kerala trip. Pgt agreed to ride pillion, since he'd been saying for a while that he wanted to come along on one of my trips. whether he'll come again for another one is a different matter, but go we did.

The plan was to head via coorg and hit the northern end of kerala at kasaragod, and then ride south on NH17 to kanhangad where sachin lives. From there on i would be without a pillion since the two of them would head to kannur by bus for the wedding, while i'd make it on the bike. Sooraj had arranged a resort for all of us to stay the night, and about 15 people from NID were already there to begin the festivities. The ride there was pretty uneventful except for a bit of rain once we crossed the kerala border. Coorg, as expected, was stunningly beautiful in the rains. it was glorious riding all the way to madikeri, with green rolling hills on either side and small sleepy towns punctuating the ride. the misty mountains on approach to madikeri made my day, as we shot through them covered in a light spray from the morning drizzle.

Once the roads took a sudden turn for the worse, we figured we had crossed the kerala border. the flurry of checkposts soon after confirmed it. we played hide and seek with a snaking river all the way to kasaragod, and then landed at sachins house for a sumptuous lunch cooked by his mom. the animal kingdom had taken quite a hit on their population to feed us that afternoon. i headed off immediately after lunch for kannur, and made a halt at payyannur where sooraj lived. Now, i have a constitution's worth of rules for myself when it comes to bike trips. These vary from the intensely pragmatic to the ridiculously arcane. and on each trip, i end up breaking at least three or four of my own rules. the rules i have regarding prior trip planning are usually always broken, but this time in addition to those, i broke a big rule that i had. 'Never ride to Kerala'. One reason was that most places i wanted to ride to in kerala would take me via my home town of cochin, where the risk of running into someone i know was a bit high. i couldnt ride home since my bike would be immediately impounded and my name would be deleted from the ration card. the second reason was that the traffic in kerala is insane. i take public transport as much as possible when i'm there, i dont quite think im enough of a maniac to survive driving there. plus, it'll add a few years to my age overnight.

so this time, that rule was broken, since i wouldnt be driving much in kerala, and kannur would mean that i dont have to go anyplace where there's a chance i'd run into someone i'd know. my pre-trip planning was sloppier than usual, and i neither had a toolkit nor any spares. i got sloppy on that count because the bike had never given up on me on any trip so far. well, this time she did. at payyannur, the bike wouldnt start anymore. so the groom-to-be, his brother and their friend came to my rescue and eventually we managed to start her up. at this point, i decided to visit sooraj's house anyway, and catch the argentina-germany match there. the story of that is dealt with in the second part of this post.

overall, it was a fun wedding. it's always nice to see the couple happy, instead of looking grim (which ive seen quite a few times elsewhere, by the way). sooraj was grinning like an idiot, and asha had her sweet smile as always, and we the friends were rapidly switching between making bad jokes and eyeing the girls in the auditorium. it was nice to have caught up with some old friends, and it was nicer to have made some new friends. with the wedding out of the way, it was time to head home. the next day was an all india-bandh, and since that would mean no petrol pumps, i couldnt risk a ride. so, right after a nice wedding sadya, i started off for bangalore. and i wished i hadnt.

each trip is difficult in one way or another, but this one was something else. as i made my way up the winding mountain roads on the ghats, the sky grew ominously grey. i rode as fast as i dared, aiming to cover as much distance as possible before the rains hit. that may have been a disastrous decision, in retrospect, since i was smack in the middle of nowhere when it finally started raining. i was surrounded by thick forest, there was heavy fog in patches, the last sign of civilization was about fifteen kilometres ago, and the road still kept climbing higher. since there was no shelter of any sort, i decided to keep riding in the rain, climbing higher and higher on the twisting road, with all my lights switched on so the oncoming trucks would see me. it was about four in the afternoon, but seemed like six thirty. there were no signboards indicating the route to mysore, and i had no map with me. i couldnt have opened a map in that rain, in any case. after riding about half an hour, i got this gut feeling that i was lost. there was no traffic now, only me riding around on a narrow twisting road flanked by forest on one side and coffee plants on the other. there was no place i could take refuge in or ask for directions, until i finally saw a shed in the coffee plantation, halfway up the mountain slope. I had to park on the road and walk halfway up the hill in pouring rain to find out from the guy there that i missed the mysore road a few kilometres back in the fog.

after turning back and finding the road, i took it all the way up the hills to reach the deccan plateau, and stopped for a chai. in what is becoming a tradition now, the five minutes i spent in the chai shop were the only minutes without rain. as soon as i hopped back on the bike, it was cats and dogs again, and i was cold, soaked and on the verge of giving up. i asked the shopkeeper about the roads ahead, whether they get better or worse. he told me that there's a bit of forest for twenty kilometers, apart from that it was ok. I was contemplating taking a room at the next town and riding the next day risking the bandh. At the very least, i wanted to sit it out till the rain subsided. I asked him how big the forest was, and he assured me that it's not a problem. somehow, i decided to press ahead, and that turned out to be a good decision. the small forest he mentioned was the fucking Rajiv Gandhi National Park, as i found out later. if i'd sat out the rain, i would most likely have run into the elephants there at night, given my luck.

after crossing the forest, i was back on familiar roads again. but there wasnt much sun or warmth, and the net result was that i was soaked all the way back to bangalore, and couldnt ride as fast as i wanted to since the wind was making me shiver. my shoes are still wet even as i write this, the day after the trip. i reached home at around nine in the night, with ample time to sleep since the next day was a bandh. and sleep i did, like a baby. if you dont count the snores, that is.

the disappointment :

the song goes, dont cry for me argentina. i damn near did. and im sure a lot of people in kerala did as well. i do not intend to turn this post into a discussion and dissection of their loss, since the reasons vary from the rational (lack of a decent defence) to the irrational (i wasn't wearing my lucky jersey that day). what i intend to do is focus on the madness that i witnessed.

at the outset, let me say that i am a huge football fan. i used to love playing the game since school, played pretty much in every game that happened in college, and still continue to play when i get the chance. i dont watch the game much on tv, but i still prefer watching football to any other sport. i own jerseys of argentina and my favourite clubs, spent a large chunk of my first ever stipend on a pair of (then)expensive football boots, and keep a football in office that i kick around when i'm bored. yet what i saw in kerala was quite something else.

in kerala, argentina and brazil have large numbers of fans. in a state not known for things like cut-outs of film stars and politicians, world cup footballers from literally the other side of the globe get huge cut-outs placed at road intersections by their supporters. and that was years ago, and that was something i'd come to expect. even in homes, there was a healthy amount of craze for the game. i remember my father waking me up to watch the match where roberto bagio missed the penalty. when i went for sooraj's wedding, the family there were all looking forward to watch the match, and i could see the expressions on at least some of their faces wanting the wedding eve visitors to leave quickly. sooraj included. he had made a bet that he would cut his ponytail if the germans won. i'm sad to report that in the end, he did.

so, given all this, i was unprepared for what i saw this time. when i went home the weekend before the wedding, i'd counted 400 argentina hoardings along the roadside from palakkad to thrissur, before i stopped counting. these were put up by local sports clubs, businessmen, groups of friends, even individuals. brazil had a sizable number as well, followed by lonely looking hoardings supporting germany, spain and the netherlands. i saw one each for england and portugal as well. shops had painted their shutters in the colours of their favourite national teams, i found out on a sunday. there were flags and other decorations hanging along every road and junction. during election times, back in the time when the rules regarding painting on walls was a bit more liberal, we used to see signs on walls saying 'Booked : CPI(M)' in anticipation of a coming election. I actually saw a big wall with 'Booked : Argentina Fans Association' on it, ostensibly in anticipation of an argentine victory. I know we're a football crazy population, but all of this seemed to me a little over the top. and in my list of irrational reasons for our loss, i added 'bad karma generated by an over-enthusiastic populace'.

let me explain that a bit. one of the boards said 'If the earth were a football, and the sky was the pitch, and the stars(of the astronomical variety) were the players, they would still be beaten by the brazilians in the final'. i doubt if coach Dunga would share the same assessment. heck i'm a die hard argentina fan yet even i had a feeling we would lose thanks to our rubbish defence. the text on quite a number of these hoardings were along similar lines. the day brazil lost, fans of every other team took out a rally together to gloat. brazil fans seem to be hated by a lot of people. of course, ten minutes after the argentine defeat, when i was on the road from payyannur to the resort sooraj had arranged for us, i saw brazil fans tearing down and burning argentina hoardings, and bursting crackers. a few friends who were behind me in a car,most of them brazil fans, were stopping and urging people to burn the argentina flags, and one guy they urged turned out to be a hapless argentina fan taking down his hoarding so no one would burn it. i was shouted at by one group that had congregated at a junction to tear down argentina hoardings for having committed the crime of riding past them with bright headlamps. it was mayhem, and i'm told i didnt see the worst of it that happened further inland from the highways.

i put the hoardings down to the fact that vinyl printing is much more accessible and cheaper now. anyone with a bit of extra cash kicking around can get one printed, and thanks to photoshop, they could be standing next to Messi wishing him the best. and a lot of people these days seem to be having just the right amount of extra cash kicking around. and any excuse to celebrate will do, i guess. i kinda had mixed thoughts about the whole thing. i was glad to see the love for the game, yet i was wondering if the whole rivalry and hoarding drama had gone a bit over the top, leaving the game in second place. i dont know, and dont see myself fit to judge, but i'll look forward to what happens in four years time.

Red blues..

So i was sitting in this lecture today that was varying between interesting and boring. I was near asleep thanks to the lack of sleep due to last night's party, and the lecture began at 9 o clock, a time i'm not really accustomed to. what was i doing in a lecture? well, i have to undergo something called avionics domain training as part of work, and it is actually more interesting than it sounds, except when the teachers get carried away and move into hard core physics and engineering. when that happens, all i can do is note down terms and learn at my own pace on the internet.

so, anyway, i was in this lecture when i realized i've run out of space on the sheaf of papers i had been using to jot down notes. i walked over to a table at the side of the room where stationery supplies were kept, and picked up a notebook. since i was using a pencil until then, i decided to pick up a pen as well. i took a look around, and then started walking back without taking a pen because all the pens there were red. i took two steps and the thought struck me, 'what's wrong with using a red pen?' nothing, apparently, as i found out after taking one and using it for the rest of the lecture.

i don't know about you, but in my school, the red pen was authority. we had to wait until about fifth standard before we were allowed to start writing with pens, and then we had a choice only between black and blue. under no circumstances were we to use red ink. the effect it has had on us kids is profound, i guess. i'll attempt an explanation. in my line of work, when designing cockpit displays, there are some pretty darn strict rules on when to use red. even so, red is an option i often explore liberally despite knowing the rules that govern it. yet, in all my life, i never seem to have used a red pen. i guess somewhere subconsciously i never got rid of the idea that red ink is only for teachers to correct homework and exam papers.

well, all that changed today.. :)

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.

An ode..

i think that there comes a phase in the life of pretty much everyone who's gone to art school, when they fancy themselves a philosopher. like all phases, this one too affects people differently and for different durations. for some, its so quick a flash that you'd miss the philosophiness if you blinked, and for some others its a lifelong affliction. i dunno what it was in my case, but i sure did have the phase as well. i guess i relapse into it occasionally, whatever.

the funny thing about this phase is how we usually try to grapple with what we think are deep philosophical problems. it needn't be the traditional philosophical schools of thought, it can be anything really. in a design school, design philosophy was often the preferred brand. it was often derided as gyaan, etc, but grapple with it we did. and quite often, when we thought we had a certain amount of grip on it, we dispensed it to others as well. it was probably a necessary phase too, to some extent. yet in other cases, i just wanted to invent new ways of shutting people up. in any case, this post is from back then. maybe its one of my relapses.

i struggled with lame metaphors, that was my poison. while my well meaning but (in retrospect) perhaps clueless pals debated such gems as 'what is the perpendicular to your existence?' i was applying metaphors left right and centre, trying them on for size and seeing what fit and what didn't. i called them gems cos even today i cannot fully decide whether they were genuine questions or mere efforts of a few daft brains overreaching themselves. but yeah, metaphors were my thing. i didnt talk about them much i suppose, though i had my moments of being carried away too, and may have dished it out to hapless souls at parties.

i thought life was like a rocket, ready to blast off into space. when you start off, like a proton rocket ready on the launchpad at baikonur, you need all the lift you can get. you cant even take a crap without help, all you can do is lie there and cry. and all that lift, or support in the form of family, friends, education and the rest propel you upwards. the whole sky is yours, you can fly any which way you want. and people do. some dont get enough lift and follow flat trajectories, others get everything possible and streak through the sky blazing bright paths that can be seen and followed by those beneath or behind them. some dont even lift off at all, and just burn up on the pad.

as you go along, you start losing lift. and gravity being a cruel mistress begins to drag you down slowly. parts start falling off as components that have served you well in your upward climb become expended and move away. you may have loved that booster rocket but once it's purpose (ordained, perhaps?) is done, it slowy drifts away from you while you watch. but life goes on, and the next stage ignites and propels you even further towards your apogee, and so on. i saw these stages as the people and forces in my life. you lose some as you fly away into space, some remain till the end of your mission, some come in and kick start you when you need a new phase en-route. some you try and desperately hold on to yet are slowly prised away. and depending on how much you were being propelled, you succumb to gravity, or attain escape velocity.

for the record, i had discarded this back then, since i didnt like the ending, where in any case you burned up either on the rather immediate gravity induced re-entry or the eventual one after years in orbit. maybe it didnt quite fit my whole hypothesis back then, i dont quite remember why exactly i discarded it without effort to make it fit. anyway, i was reminded of this old metaphor of mine recently. I lost perhaps the most important person in my life. and corny/weird as it may be, i feel like that rocket, having lost the huge first stage thats propelled it so far. feeling weightless, still floating upwards, wondering with a fair bit of terror whether the next stage would kick in before gravity does her work...

i'll miss you grandad. see you on the other side someday.

notes from THE concert..

Bhagwaan ka memna (i used to call it bhagwaan ka bakra before someone told me memna is a better word) played the summer storm festival at palace grounds bangalore this saturday, and I WAS THERE :P

Just thought I'd put together a blog post outta my thoughts as well as badly blurred cellphone pics, and badly recorded youtube clips by others. Random as usual, kindly adjust..

Palace Grounds : I'm sure that place is designed to confuse. I mean, if any enemies were to attack the maharajas in ancient times, it would surely have been futile. There's just way too many entrances leading nowhere useful, that the enemy strike corps would just have packed up and taken a rickshaw home. We nearly did, as well. After a frustrating two hour drive through peak evening bangalore traffic, we took another 45 minutes to find the correct damn entrance. And all the maharaja's folks at the entrances, who probably mistook us for an enemy strike force, feigned cluelessness regarding the location of the concert. But get there in the end, we did. And miss the first song, we did. And scream like an idiot for the band to play the song that i missed but hadnt realized id missed it, i did.

Kyazoonga : these inept morons were in charge of the ticket counter. there was one counter to buy tickets on the spot, and one to pick up tickets which were booked over the internet. Strangely, the folks who bought their ticket on the spot made it to the concert on time. the ones like us who did the allegedly smart thing and booked online, we missed the first song thanks to the bumbling idiot at the queue for the pick up counter. i strongly urge my annual readership of 3.5 people to reconsider their decisions if kyazoonga are ever in charge of online bookings for an event you want to go to.

Preparation : how do you prepare for a metal concert, especially something as intense as Lamb of God? well, let me put it this way. the last time we went to palace grounds, it was for the Oktoberfest, and the preparations required then were pretty obvious. This time though, Chetan (my batchmate from college) asked me a seemingly innocuous "How do you prepare for this concert?" and i was stumped. In the end, i gave him instructions to wear a black t shirt, and then follow steps similar to Oktoberfest preparations.

Chetan, Sagar : Chetan did not follow instructions, and turned up in a rather bright purple tshirt. Which turned out to be a good thing. when the group got split up in the crowd, he (and to an extent, sagar too) was a six foot purple beacon we could all locate and meet up with.

The Crowd : I was surprised that this many people turned up for a hardcore metal concert. But i figured that one out later. Most people turn up for the concert experience, and aren't really really into the band. Sure, they knew a few of the more popular Lamb of God songs, especially the ones that play in the pubs, but not much more. The hardcore fans were only a handful, and you could spot them easily since theirs were the only voices singing (or is that shouting) along when the comparatively obscure songs were being played.

Moshing (and other dangerous activities) : I thought most bands these days had an anti-moshing stance due to people getting injured. But these guys actually asked for mosh pits from the crowd. I'd always wanted to give it a shot, and now was my chance. I eagerly entered the pit, and got bumped about quite a bit, and was thrown out the other end of the pit. There was yet another pit a little ahead, and this one turned out even more insane. There were a coupla jats in it, who had no clue what they were doing or who they were listening to, and they simply kept saying bh*nchod m*chod and roughing up everyone else in the pit. word of advice, never mosh with jats. in fact, try avoiding even the least violent of activities with them.

Vid Shot on the way to Row two.

Since there werent any lateral crowd segregators, it was possible to go all the way up front, if you had the stomach for it. I decided to give it a try anyway. as long as you kept a constant push in the direction you wanted to go, the movement of the crowd would eventually get you there i figured. and it did get me to one row short of absolute front. there was just one row of people in front of me. now, it needs to be mentioned here that i attended this concert stone cold sober. yes, i was at various stages termed a loser. the problem with sobriety when you're in second row is that you're painfully aware of the fact that most of the crowd there are sweaty stinking guys who are stuck to you, and you cant quite take that. so, just as i was about to give up and head for the relative safety and comfort found only on the edges of the crowd in a metal concert, they played my favourite song.

So i endured a little while longer, enjoyed the song while in second row, caught the closest glimpse yet of Chris Adler my drumming hero, confirmed that he does look as relaxed in reality as he does in the videos when he's doing batshit insane beats per minute, and then got the hell outta there.

F-Bombs : they fuckin dropped the eff bomb everytime they opened their fuckin mouths man. started off saying that they're from richmond motherfucking virginia, called the crowd fuckers every now and then, and urged us to make some fuckin noise and break some fuckin shit. they were fuckin awesome, id say but i normally dont fuckin use that many eff bombs :D .

Also, was i the only one amused when they dedicated a song to that absolute punk rock dude mahatma gandhi?

Verdict ? It was an awesome, if a bit short, concert. Their songs have helped me vent in times of utter frustration, and it was sort of a dream come true to see this. I'm betting they will return, since they seemed as surprised as i was to see the crowd that turned out. and if they return, i'll go again as i have a feeling the next concert will be even better.

On Context..

So I met my cousin after ages last week. I noted with happiness that he's grown up now since the last time i saw him, turning 13 this year. I also noted with concern that unless my uncle and aunt were planning on having another kid, I'm gonna soon earn the unenviable position of being the shortest amongst the cousins on my mom's side of the family. But of course, thats not the reason I'm writing this, the reason is that for the first time in my life, perhaps, i felt a generation gap with someone younger than me. yes, you may proudly sniffle and wipe away a tear of joy since i might just be showing signs of growing up there.

Since we met at a funeral which was a rather traumatic experience for the both of us, we stuck together spending time avoiding the adults and generally spending quality time together. for purposes of this blog post, the cut-off age for adulthood was set at one year above my age. Now, at some point in my conversations with young cousins and nephews and nieces, they ask me about my job, and i tell them. Usually this is followed by a facial expression generally involving widened eyes to indicate that they are suitably impressed. this cousin, though, did not bat an eyelid. what he did, instead, was to launch into a detailed conversation on cockpits and aircraft in general. He had seen all the episodes of 'Air Crash Investigation' and knew by heart the subtleties of various crashes. It was my turn to adopt the expression i mentioned before, as our conversation drifted on to a discussion on the sioux city air crash.

Turns out, the kid is a storehouse of knowledge. He seems to know far more than any kid i knew when i was his age. And then when i thought about it, the other kids i know now who are as old as him all seem a lot smarter on average. Of course, the prima facie suspect would be the internet, which is pretty much the single largest difference between what his generation and mine had. Sure, once i grew up and saw fancy toys like r/c helicopters and stuff in the store, i kinda wished that they were around in my childhood. but that seems to be a constant difference, for i've heard my mom remark about a lack of choice in toys when she was a kid. But the internet is a sort of game changer in that sense i suppose, since libraries were around forever, and tv has benefited (or is that harmed?) at least a coupla generations before his, including mine.

But there was one little problem. He lacked context. I noticed this when we were taking a walk down some woods on our way to an old pond. He was interested in nature like a lot of kids his age, but knew nothing about the insects or plants around him. He did not know various kinds of ants, was irrationally afraid of all species of millipedes even though he was fascinated by them and knew they were harmless for the most part, and he could not grasp how a 'vellaka' (which is the malayalam name for small coconuts that usually fall prematurely from the tree) was essentially a miniature coconut. Yet he knew vast amounts of facts about stag beetles and rattle snakes on continents far far away, and i'd never even heard about the former until he mentioned it. i did google it later, though, and it seems like a fascinating creature. In any case, my point is this. All the information in the world, without the proper context and background which gives it perspective, is essentially useless i guess, except for winning quiz competitions maybe. Having a fact-sheet about jungles in your head without ever having seen even a thicket, does not necessarily make you a useful guy to have on an amazon expedition. You need empirical knowledge to counterbalance theoretical knowledge i guess.

So, I counted myself lucky that the internet came at a time when i could appreciate it, and not before. And therefore i spent the time before the internet playing in the mud, building toy trains and ships, and going on bicycle rides far far longer than mom wouldve permitted if she'd known. I counted myself lucky that i know a cobra from a krait from a rat snake from a water snake which made all the difference when searching for lost cricket balls in marshes near paddy fields.

And in the little time i had left with my cousin before we headed back to our respective cities, i taught him how to spot and catch antlions, how vellakas of a certain size made good projectiles that would carry far enough and sting but rarely hurt someone, how to use the stem of a papaya leaf as a snorkel, how to jump off walls without getting hurt, and most importantly, how to skip stones on the surface of a pond. For a kid trapped in a ninth story apartment in the thick of bombay, i hope it made some kind of difference.

Happy B'day, Rocinante :)

My bike turns four today. It's been a helluva ride, almost 50k kilometers. I'm proud of the fact that she's done more kms on long trips than on the office commute. She's my life and love, my pride and joy, blood sweat and tears and all the other cliches possible. I love that bike.

We've been through a lot together. I've had 28 accidents, for starters. I've been airborne and underwater(and how!) on it, both true stories by the way. Skin was scraped, bones were broken, money was spent on expensive and hard-to-get spares, yet the biking spirit endures. I've been to chennai 9 times, pondicherry and goa 4 times each, shivanasamudram twice and once each to sakleshpur, coorg, bombay pune and ahmedabad. And a hundred other places remain on my list.

I hope to do ladakh some day soon, maybe even another country, though that is a distant dream. If i could, i'd go around the world, in a heartbeat. I've done enough miles to cover the equatorial circumference of the earth, and i hope we eventually cover the equivalent of the distance to the moon. I wanna go to the north east on a wild goose chase to find the elusive sonam kazi. I want to chill with the delhi folks after a ride through rajasthan. I want to see pushkar, jaisalmer and bikaner, probably even make an offering at the biker baba shrine thereabouts.

But above all, I want to say its been a helluva ride. I've seen parts of this country in a way few other people have. I've had the most amazing experiences, hurtling through dusty villages on hot afternoons, racing downhill on the ghats against the sunset, scrambled to escape the clutches of a rainstorm, tasting roadside chai in unlikely places, tearing up and down the highways in what can only be called a pursuit of happiness. temporary and fleeting happiness that disappears when i get to work on monday, yes, but a very important happiness nonetheless. A happiness that helped me keep my head amongst a life varying between the mundane and the insane. And for that, i'm grateful i have this bike, a sport tourer extraordinaire. I'm as much in love with my bike today as i was on the day i bought it.

Someone was dead-on right when they said, "Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul"

PS- I secretly christened my bike rocinante a few months after id started touring, in honor of Don Quixotes faithful steed. My pursuits are quixotic after all :)

Also, pratheek sends his wishes :)

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.