Writer unblocked

A few days ago Devanshi was talking about the writers block. Well, if it actually means what I think it means, she was talking about what all a faithfull blogger can do when he/she stops having the inspiration to write, or something in that line. Anyways, among the options she came up with (some of them, as bizarre as talking about the weather - man, you do that, and you're banished from my blogosphere for life, period) the only one that actually appealed to me was do nothing. And believe it or not, the lady herself seemed to take quite well to the suggestion. But tongue in cheek, the next day she comes out with a new post with an excellent theme !

Now, for someone like me, who is superstitious in a bizarre way, but also understands the concept of probability, it logically follows that whenever you find yourself short of inspiration, you just need to rant about the lack of inspiration, and touchwood, bang come the ideas the very next day!

Or maybe, I thought. ill atleast try to convince the few people who actually manage to reach this space that it isnt because of lack of effort that it seems forever since I last posted. To be frank, Iv started on 3 posts in the last two weeks. (phew!) One about Hutch having changed my price plan without informing me, again. (Oh well, btw thats a long story. last month they did it the first time and I almost took them to court before their chief accountant rang me up and admitted her mistake. And she was pleading so badly that I decided I wouldnt even press for damages - in terms of time and effort wasted digging through TRAI regulations and running from Hutch pillar to Hutch post ( I even felt a lot of our Govt offices give more customer satisfaction than a private telecom operator) - Anyway this time they had timed the change in priceing of sms's for the whole of Chennai to coincide with the day of my having completed six months of being a Hutch customer, so now they could fool around with me, and not give a damn!)

Then I thought, i think it was last sunday, of telling you of my secret so-called fears. Oh yeah, I was really depressed by the time I reached half way, with stuff like the fear that I would forever go on being lazy and lousy, sleep on unmade beds, with the lights on, littered with 2 day old newspapers, and sometimes even the clothes I wore to to office that day, or that I would never become India's answer to Warren Buffet combined with Peter Lynch (Well to save you from worrying your head off on that, they were two of the most successfull investors ever) or Siddarth Basu, Prannoy Roy and Rajdeep Sardesai combined. Tell you what, I got all worked up and started coming up with weird worries like going bald by the time I become 25, that i decided to stop right there! The third post i started on, i actually dont even remember what it was about, though it wasnt worth being on my blog anyway. For leads, it was an answer to a tag i really didn feel like answering

Anyway, today, when work became a little boring, I got hooked on to another blog from an unlikely source. Dmitry Tursunov, a not so famed tennis player, with a famed tennis blog. Somehow I get the feeling that he should be likened to the WTA players. The players that get huge followings for reasons completely unconnected to their game. Like lets say, the length of their skirts! anyway this guy used to have a really cool blog. He starts a post by saying that he wasnt feeling like writing anything interesting today, and goes on to keep you struggling to hold on to your seats. And he very freely picks on all his fellow players, which of course is great reading for our controversy scouting minds!

Well, reading that, like reading anything creative these days, gave me the really pinching feeling that I could write something that is damn funny even when i really dont have a special topic with a four syllable heading and three pages of long and winding prose! But then again, when i sit down to actually do it, Hermione Granger's (yo right, the Harry potter gal who knows just about anything) words keep echoing in my head. You cant make something out of nothing, even with magic. By the way she called it the law of some over-complicated word that even I cant remember.

So now, my only hope is the writers block unblocked, and that ill come up with some breakthrough ideas in tonights dream and tomorrow you'll have the blogpost of your life!

Two for the price of one

There are songs, and then there are great songs. Great songs with melody persuasive enough to keep you listening to it over and over again. Great songs with out of the world lyrics. Lyrics that are imaginative, and make you want to hear the song again just to catch the lyrics another time.

Among the many songwriters that I have followed, I have always been a fan of Elton John (of course, without forgetting his main lyricist Tim Rice (who wrote 'Candle in the wind', for Marilyn Monroe and 'Can you feel the love tonight' from "Lion King" for him as well as a lot of broadway musicals for Andrew Lloyd Webber). But the song that has enchanted me most is one that was written by Elton along with Bernie Taupin, who certainly had more than his share of disappointments like Elton. During their earliest days together, he and Elton were unhappily trying to be commercial songwriters.

The song talks about a youth who seeks to make a living in the "Emerald City", the land of opportunity, a town where troubles wash away. Instead, the youth is exploited for his talents and decides to abandon this place of vanquished dreams and decides to go back home where his future really lies.

For some reason or the other, this song reminds me of a world I struggled to like, never actually managed to do so, and finally give up for good, not even despairing about it. The world of being a budding Chartered Accountant. A world which, to me, can only be explained as unfairness impersonified. Even cruelty garbed in the sexy robes of hope.

And it appeals to me because it was quite obvious from the start that CA wasnt my destiny. Of course, it was a fine profession. It commanded a lot of respect. Money was there to be earned. They coloured it with the exotic hues of future prospects. But then yeah, the caveat too was accetable. Hard work, dedication. But then wasnt that a normal thing? But well, to keep it short, what transpired was a world where the mantra was work and only work, which again, isnt a bad thing on the face of it. But for a restless, fun loving guy like me, it was a bit too much. And anyway, i always studied it half heartedly.

To me, Charterered Accountants were just pretentious hypocrites. Pretentious, because they pretend they are happy, and that this is the life they yearned for (well, I know a few of them personally), and hypocrites, because they go around with the air of being the most knowledgable persons in the world, when, like most of you now know, they are just a bunch of arrogant self proclaimed intellectuals, who barely know anything (atleast, most of them) beyond the numbers they audit, who make a living -to crudely state the facts- finding fault, and even at their pinacle of professional excellence, cannot be trusted to give the truth (well, to be frank, while analysing companies, Iv been always suspect of the sanctity of its audited financial statements, which ultimately defeats the purpose - with a thousand standards and laws that justify not having to be absolutely certan)

So whenever I hear this song, there is an emphatic statement from the bottom of my heart to all those who think they can fool me about paradise, and to all my co labourers, who still go on believing in the dream that the suffering is for a moment and all that jazz... I actually compare you to the black slaves in 19th century America

So here is a dedication to the lot of you. Chartered Accountants, students, and most importantly, my old boss and colleagues who thought I wouldnt ever leave for all the threats I made. Who thought I actually cared!

When are you gonna come down

When are you going to land

I should have stayed on the farm

I should have listened to my old man

You know you can't hold me forever I didn't sign up with you

I'm not a present for your friends to open This boy's too young to be singing the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road

Where the dogs of society howl

You can't plant me in your penthouse

I'm going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods

Hunting the horny back toad

Oh i've finally decided my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road

What do you think you'll do then

I bet that'll shoot down your plane

It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics

To set you on your feet again

Maybe you'll get a replacement There's plenty like me to be found

Mongrels who ain't got a penny Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground

And oh yeah, this is just my destiny. You choose yours. I decided that hyped up values arent worth dying for. But dont be fooled into thinking that success in life is just about working all day and night, money, deserved or not, and social acceptability. Hmm, maybe success is all about that, but then, Id rather not be 'successfull'... !

Well to leave you in a better mood, heres another song. Again, commemorating a favorite lyricist. Oh ya its ABBA (for those of you who dont know, my music begins and ends there - and Iv loaded my player with every ABBA song) but well, this song is different. For story telling it could rival Jeffrey Archer. Read on

He had what you might call a trivial occupation

He cleaned the platforms of the local railway station

With no romance in his life Sometimes he wished he had a wife

He read the matrimonial advertising pages

The cries for help from different people, different ages

But they had nothing to say At least not until the day

When something special he read

This is what it said:

If you dream of the girl for you Then call us and get two for the price of one

We're the answer if you feel blue So call us and get two for the price of one

If you dream of the girl for you Why don't you call us and you'll get two for the price of one

We may be the answers to your problem, a chance with we two

So call us and get two for the price of one

He called the number and a voice said, 'Alice Whiting'

The voice was husky and it sounded quite exciting

He was amazed at his luck The purest streak of gold he'd struck

He said, 'I read your ad, it sounded rather thrilling

I think a meeting could be mutually fulfilling

Why don't we meet for a chat The three of us in my flat I can't forget what I read'

She said, "I'm sure we must be perfect for each other

And if you doubt it you'll be certain when you meet my mother"

Cheers... Ab

The Gandhiji way!

So Sanjay Dutt is finally going back to jail. The judge, His honour (excuse me, is that allowed?) Pramod Kode of course had to choose between seeing himself decried on the evening news (which these days, goes on for about 24 hours) by social activists as being lenient to a public figure, and being decried by the rest of the nation as not being lenient to the only public figure who managed to convincingly remind us of Gandhiji's message in living memory.

Well, going by news reports, the scene at the courtroom could very well have been coreographed to oblige some director waiting to finish off a film before the protagonist is rushed off to jail. It seems, (and somehow, reading it in 'the Hindu makes it hard to disbelieve) Mr Dutt, after hearing the verdict, walked back to the witness box with folded hands and tried pleading with the judge (and you thought that could happen only in a bollywood movie) that he had spent more time in jail than with his family (NDTV). Well, to be frank, I think for that one sin, he ought to be jailed for six years, considering that the 48 year old had spent just 16 months in Jail... If he wasnt with family, where on earth was he?

the judge, on his part, consoled him saying that he had 'taken away' just 6 years from his life, and he could go on acting till he was 100! six years people, the judge would have retired by then, and who knows, grown tired of watching Amitabh Bachchan as the omniscient daddy. Oh and yes, and the judge also did mention that he was bound by duty.

So, anyway, pending appeal at the supreme court, the actor is going to jail for 'a mistake he committed 14 years ago'. (Before you laugh at how fast things are done in India, remember that a trial in Canada on a plane hijack in 1987 commenced a few months ago, and had much more loopholes) A few american papers latched onto the words 'with terrorist connections' for their headlines.

Okay, now lets get our thinking hats on. One, do you think its justice, and only justice, is what was done in Dutt's case? I mean, without donning the black robes. Im afraid not. Now dont go gaga about the law taking its course, or that everybody is equal in the eyes of the law.

More seriously, for sometime, I have been perturbed (and their seems to be a huge number of things that dont in the least concern me, that I am perturbed about these days) by the question, Does law, the way it is established, actually give any room for circumstances (as opposed to 'facts') of the case? Lets talk about the Indian doctor who found himself on the wrong side of the by now fabled, 'war on terror'. All he was, and could be convicted was of having unsuspectingly left a sim card in the hands of a cousin, whom he would have known since the younger of them was born. Now look, I exchanged the first sim card i bought with my then room-mate, whom I had known for few months, just because I didn like the number (duhhh!)

How much more common would it be for this doctor to have passed it to his cousin. But there was no limit to the mental torture that he had to endure. So, to repeat the question, does law, stony faced as it is, allow for an arbitrageur to take this into consideration?

Back to the question of Sanjay Dutt, there's no denying he has suffered more than most of his fellow convicts. He had a past. And he was raw meat for a controversy starved nation (hey, Im talking about 10 years ago, when Richard Gere and Mandira Bedi werent at large)

Of course, his peaking career is not a defense in law. His possesion of arms evidenced, as the judge rightly put it, a scant disregard for law. But an uncleared convict is no more free, than a man on parole. 14 years is a long time. And after all, we're all sure he just did something foolish. A foolish thing , which he, Im surer, had no idea carried a sentence of 5-10 years imprisonment.

Me and the Boss

Heyyo I watched Shivaji (Sivaaji, to read out from the tamil correctly) yesterday.... I mean the tamil movie. yupp..... the Rajnikant one....

oh gosh, now how do I explain? well take it if you wil, but I did i did i did i did i did i did i did!

So now that thats settled, let me tell you what I thought of it.

Of course, I didnt tell you that I watched the movie sans the queue's that stretch all the way out of the theatre and into the nearby bus stand, sans the packed movie theatre, sans the hysterical crowds, sans the whistling, and sans the overpriced tickets... hehe. honest!

Talking about the queue, they delayed the start of movie by three quarters of an hour because, they couldnt without atleast 25 persons to see it. I dont kinow how to convince you of this, but at the right time for the show, there was my brother, me (and please understand that I belong to the genre that considers arriving after the title credits or before the end credits of a movie is half the ticket price wasted) and a stranger on one side of the theatre gate, and the watchman on the other, and nobody else even near. And to think that the bugger wouldnt even let us go inside, take tickets and be seated early. Yaaay, I am indeed talking about the movie that got released 10 days ago... with all the fanfare and whatnot!

Oh, maybe I do know how to convince. I must tell you I watched the movie in Kottayam, not in overzealous Tamil Nadu. Anyway, we had a show when about 25 people had gathered around the gate (now for all you know, they could have been keeping us outside to attract the few college guys who dared to cut classes on monday morning!)

And about the movie, I think it was good.... like, cool (though Shivaji doesnt sound cool when he says it, I must admit) In one phrase, a treat to the eyes. Whether you attribute it to the make up man, or the costume designer, the man looks atleast a few years younger than the heroines dad (who, of course, I havent seen) which is pretty acceptable considering most of the other heroes we have in India, and Im not even talking about Amitabh Bachchan.

The stunts were as usual, breathtaking, for their unbelievability, but then, neither was the Matrix Reality TV stuff. He didnt do anything emotionally stirring, so no complaints on that front. Humour was again from a comedian, but then I have no idea how good Rajnikant is at making a laugh.

Of course you dont talk about a movie without mentioning the heroine. Didnt particularly feel fascinated, almost got the feeling she was there just to bare all, or atleast, almost all. intriguing considering Shivaji wanted a so, so and so Tamil girl (now so so and so is because I dont understand Tamil)

And of course the music. Was good to go with the splendour of the visuals, but you cant help wondering wether this was the same A R Rehman who made the music for Roja, Bombay or even Boys.

So final word about the movie - is a good treat to the eyes, which is quite a good reason to watch something. Moreso when balcony tickets are priced under of 50 bucks... Oh ya, Im telling the truth.

PS : This isnt a movie review or anything. Just an explanation for having driven the wildest of fantasies of people who know me. That I would like a Tamil movie, and a Rajni one at that. But then, you got to accept that the times are changing!

(no offence to the fans of Rajni or Tamil movies please, but then What the heck, its my blog.)

A bird in hand, and the bush

Lets say you can shrug it off when someone says they enjoy being at work. Lets say you are kind enough to not look alarmed when the someone doesnt complain of having to wake on mondays. Lets even say you are just positively surprised to see that same one intensely scouring through an editorial on Bird Flu in China, as bland as 'the Hindu' can make it. (in the hope that it will give a clue as to the name of a company that manufactures its cure) Or when he asks you how your company is doing, and then clarifies that he meant its business, its profitability and its cash flows rather than yours.

But when he treats a new recruit at Infosys or a new article student going for his first audit, as his informant about the companies they represent, you notice things are getting out of hand. When you notice he sees everything in the world throught he lens of the stock market and exchange rates and what not!

The world in which anything is possible, where everything has its causes and effects, and the effects have their sub effects, and where something like lets say, buying an aeroplane, is a big deal, not the least because its expensive (talk about having people in your office who can actually buy one!) but because theres so much other considerations like the price of fuel for the rest of its life, the planned protests by the many NGO's about carbon emmisions as well as the possible advancements in other cheaper forms of transport that would make the plane worthless.

But even I never knew how much my picking stocks, and the logic I used had started affecting my way of thinking untill i recently came up with my list of arguments to counter my friends assertion that "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush"

Well just think about it. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, provided all you need is a phrase to underline a moral story for your grandson. But then today, people seldom ask their granddads advice when it comes to buying something for the garden cage, or something for their wife to cook, which are the two reasons anybody would go after a bird.
Ok well, there could be a third reason. People hunt birds for the joy of hunting. Tell a hunter that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, you'd rather have a PETA tee shirt on!

But back to the first two more plausible reasons. First, Lets say your looking for some birds for your domestic aviary, and have spotted some yellow birds with a blue beak and a red and green tail. You've got a net around, but you see there are plenty more birds roaming around nearby the bush. You could spread the net over the bush, catch one those beauties, scare off the rest, take the catch home, cage, and then preside over its solitude and eventual demise, ha. But if you waited for maybe a few hours, you could get a dream assortion of birds in your garden. If it was me, Id kill a few hours looking at the birds, grandfather be damned.

Or maybe you were hunting for birds because your children have been clamouring for something 'different' on the dining table. Now remember they are having wild geese after a long long time, and just a helping will not be enough. Either you can take home the one goose you've caught to your three children, their cousin, who has come home on holiday, and of course, your wife and your very own self and endure the muffled cries of "is that all?". Or you try your luck with the second bird, (If it wont be too late by then to cook dinner).

Now, of course, things may not be that bad at home. Still you would have just spotted a whole lot of birds on a certain tree for the first time in all the thirty years of hunting. Chance in a life time? after all, its just a question of one gun shot. But you might decide not to be cruel to the birds that have sought refuge in your woods.

What about your supply of bullets, or the new anti poaching laws, the presence of your vegetarian neighbour or even worse, the fact that it was ominous to kill a mockingbird?

And of course theres the question of your honour. For the last three weeks since you started taking pleasure trips to the woods with your hunting gear, your wife has been very understanding, but the last couple of days, you couldnt miss her enquiring look.

Over the last three months, I can count five different times when i coked myself on a trade that was doomed, just because I couldnt keep myself putting my hands where I shouldnt have. Or call it the difficulty of remaining the only sane person left in an insane world.