25 Random Things About Me

I shall finally, also, give in to The Tag.

1. I stare into space a lot. I'm not thinking of anything. I'm not listening to you. I'm not wondering about anything. And I'm definitely not sad! I'm blank. I like how my head can suspend things like that.

2. My 2nd toe is longer than my big toe. Apparently that means I'm going to be raped by angry monkeys, according to tradition and folklore.

3. I count each and every number plate I see. I do this to fill up useless time spent on buses and in cars. The downside is that I get slightly upset if the sum isn't finally divisible by the number of numbers.

4. I do division and multiplication in my head all the time, intentionally subconsciously. I do this to superpower my subconscious mind and become a genius. Then I can take over the world.

5. Whenever I make a To-Do List, I add Carmen Electra at the end of it.

6. I memorize poems and quotes. Romanticism can never be topped.

7. I am cynical about the things I really don't mind being proven wrong about. I don't believe in anything that can't stand up to critical reasoning and analyses.

8. I secretly watch corny movies. My favourite is Love Actually.

9. My favourite show in school days was Ally McBeal. It made me want to be a lawyer, as did Boston Legal much later. Scrubs made me want to be a doctor.

10. I want to make a difference to other people.

11. I want to learn Parkour.

12. I want to climb a mountain and sit there alone.

13. I want to be with people I can be totally comfortable with.

14. When I'm totally comfortable, I don't talk.

15. On a multi-tiled floor, I can only walk on any one color. Or otherwise colors of similar shade. I CANNOT step across a tile. If I do, it must be halfway in and halfway out. Then repeat on the next tile. After that, go back to regular walking.

16. I have to balance my touches. If my left shoe scrapes the ground when I walk, the right show must scrape in the exact same place. If my right thumb hits the desk a certain way, I have to do it with my left thumb too. It freaks me out otherwise. I think the best way to torture me, tied up, would be to touch a piece of wood or a glass to my toe. And then move it away slightly. I would kill myself trying to balance it.

17. There are some people I cannot let go of. Its sad because they're the ones who have already left me.

18. The only magazine I would pay money for is Top Gear.

19. Led Zeppelin - The Hammer of the Gods. I will have a room in my house. With wall sized posters, original LPs and memorabilia.

20. When I die, I want to do it on my terms. I want to jump off an airplane into the ocean, or off the top of a cliff into a deep ravine. Don't come looking for my body.

21. I mouth the Joker's dialogues to myself randomly.

22. I want to play Stairway to Heaven one day.

23. I want to I will write a book one day. This is the only goal in my life which has been a constant. I will die a sad man if I don't do this. I also want to make a movie.

24. I punched someone once, with real and complete hatred.

25. I have left behind bits and pieces of innocence with everyone I have known and do not know anymore. I am all dastardliness and meticulously thought out planning now.

I tag everyone. Everyone, I say!

Yes Minister!

Hats off to the Consortium. A peaceful Valentine's Day - no glitches, no involuntary marriages and no out-of-season rakhis. Apparently, pink chaddis have uses no one had thought of before.

[I secretly want to try it in the 26/11 face-off with Pakistan. Who knows? Might work? What say?]

Seeing as how things worked out so well this V-Day, on behalf of men everywhere I would like to put forward a common, humble request. Can the pub-going, looseness and forwardness continue, like, every Saturday?

You know, just in case?

Please? It was all just so beautiful, I mean!

On another note what does one say when the Women & Children Development Minister asks you to pub bharo??

I say, yes minister!

Master Plan*

Don't worry. They're right where we want them. You see, man is the most irrational animal of all. He wanders lifelong in search for idle idols and mythical gods. He finds wonder in some things little and in all things grand. He would sell himself to proclaim the myth superior to himself and to all his fellowmen. He worships a rock, man-made. He decorates a belief, which came out of a mind just like his. He glorifies all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

So we found out, a very long time ago, how we could play with him. A sport, to begin with. So keen is his desperate struggle for survival, above all else and sense and thought and re-consideration. With the passage of time under a steadily growing pressure of push and shove and kick, he learns to acclimatise to wherever he is and however he is. Without a whimper. Well, maybe a whimper. But he doesn't know to shout or to stand. He co-operates, know what I mean?

And here we are, and suffering is a virtue.

Let me explain again. Take away his property; mortgage his house for him. Then drive him out, into a hovel. Come again to take his TV and his shoes. Fire him from his job and burn down the hovel. Do this slowly, spread over months and years and decades and a century. And he will not resist. He will take it in, and crouch down further. His back will bend and his gait will become a crippled shuffle. And those will be his good old days.

C'est la vie. Ob-la-di.

Give him back his life and his vases and his furniture and his bank account in small pathetic doses, in transparent Red Cross kits and emergency food packets. He will come to kiss your hand and clean your shoes. His eyes will not recognize you for who you really are, for they cannot look so high up anymore. Bent backs can only straighten so much. Your smooth, sympathetic hands are what he will see and commit to golden memory. New born children will bear your name, and also new born streets and new born libraries.

Like I said, they're right where we want them. The soul is dead. Begin Phase 2.


* being also The Tale of The Coming of Google Talk.