Maussijee Suicide

I love Sholay. My cousins and I had the cassette of Sholay which we used to play over a dozen time on our VCR during summer vacations. We had almost made a routine. Play after dinner, forward the star cast in the beginning, rewind when parents came to join us after they finished their dinner, curse the cousin for over rewinding, take the remote control, forward the songs and forward the above scene. Why? Because it's boring. Yes, even those with no source of entertainment but continually watching Sholay find suicides boring. I almost wished someone made suicides interesting. And recently, you just did. You just crossed the boundaries of real life drama. You "blogged" a suicide note and how! May be my opinion is prejudiced because I know you personally but you made us think about something that we thought was the last resort of only the sentimentally deluded. People talked. Made jokes probably. You trended. So we talked and thought and made analysis and may be even concluded but all our talks and thoughts and analyses are like looking at it from above downwards, superficial and most of all, irrelevant. There's no credibility. So the only one to present an honest account of the situation is the one who caused it in the first place. But where's the credibility even in that? Why? Because there are benefits of everything. One may even wonder if you think (carefully not using "realizes") that the social media PR agencies might take it up as a case study. Why, a thought must've crossed your mind about the extent to which this would constructively affect your popularity. I'm not saying it is a play where the trick of any publicity is good publicity can be put to use or that you will now hammer the heated iron, because I know you and I know you won't. But I am hinting that any discussion on whether this would provide you with a bigger platform is redundant, because it would. And not for any reason but because you can handle the elevated status craftily enough. I am hinting that this is also a discussion of an entirely new way to generate pecuniary PR. I mean, @dharmeshG closed his account by mistake and when he came back he became what he is. What you have done might make the aforementioned act look like an A3 size poster in your college canteen. So if I happened to write a book about any depressing topic (like the one you read last), the best way to get myself published would be to join twitter, be funny for a month or two (not without a hint of packaged "issues"), write a suicide note, come back as a hero who fought post suicidal trauma, give a few interviews, articles in newspapers and BAM! Now wait for the publishers to pounce on me like hungry hounds. I exaggerate of course, but we cannot deny the fair possibility, yes, keeping in mind that all this is just too good to be true. So anyway, why would you want to kill yourself? "Being alone enough to not consider yourself a human enough to love is an issue" you say, and all I read is "I was bored". Is not being able to understand James Joyce an issue? Is failing to make your party good enough for my super sweet 16 an issue? Sure, boredom sucks. But this is not the age to be bored. This is not the time to be bored. There's a new wave out there. You know it more than I do. You're at the peak of this wave. Create your own fear and loathing, be unsure, be enraged, be eccentric, be stubborn, break someone's head, but seriously, do something. Don't let people write preachy letters like this one. You have it in you to ride the wave. Look, you even made "suicide" interesting.

Relax machan

When we talk about parallel universes, essentially rules being weirder than exceptions, we seldom consider the peculiarities of this world. We forget how all the parallels and all the obscurities can be and most certainly will be found in this very universe. Why am I talking like this? Because I am mind fucked. I am shocked at the way people behave. And this is not a late reaction to Justin Bieber’s albums hitting platinum. It’s just that recently the people running this country have been acting like a bunch of pussies. The whole Jaipur Literature Festival thing, Taslima Nasreen again getting something to talk about, many other such embarrassing news feeds and now the fact that there could actually be an “issue” carved out of the whole ‘porn in assembly’ thing. Sorry, I refuse to call it porngate. But politicians have always behaved like spineless, greedy wolves, always pointing their cannons in the wrong direction. It’s the citizens, you and I that have pissed me off. We devote all our attentions where none is required and we display absolute lack of energy where any level of speaking up for a cause is needed.

A few days ago I mass emailed my work buddies. The subject of the email is irrelevant here. What is relevant is that I had intentionally added a few regional jokes in it. The thing is, when we were going through our training phase, we used to make fun of each others’ state. So the fact that my email had some semblance of racism, did not seem like a big deal that time. But apparently people were pissed off and I was informed about it by a display of clenched fists. Well, my email was very stupid. It was so insignificant that it shouldn't even have been read. The jokes were obviously stupid. And I obviously did not mean any of it. It was all in jest. But then why the hell is everyone reacting as if Jay Leno said something about the Golden Temple on television? Even that was supposed to be a joke. I understand why the government did what they did, but learned young minds, with future of the country in their hands, acting like a bunch of Bajrang Dal activists? It’s preposterous, to say the least, especially when they have no vote bank politics to take care of. And when what they’re outraging about, is absolute bull crap, then, especially then, this whole talk of moral indignation due to someone’s racism seems forced. It seems like an act of someone who is bored and was only waiting for something like this to happen, so he can prove his significance or rather, his existence in an act of such desperation. These moral naiveties and half cooked, confused sensibilities are exactly the kind of things Indian people and Indian culture has suffered from. Even if we forget about the political implications, this still is anti-free speech. So please, my fellow young Indians, let there be racial humor. Let there be cross cultural jokes. Let the priest be a pedophile and the Sardar a dumbass, at least for the sake of harmless comedy, because we all know these things don’t matter.

Fan-boy blabber: Agneepath (2012)

Before I don the self proclaimed movie reviewer's cloak, let me ramble in my who-am-i-to-review-and-shit guilt and say that if nothing, Agneepath has accomplished 2 very essential things as a Bollywood movie. First, it has shown everyone exactly how to do a remake, i.e. keep the strong aspects of the original intact but always add a few fresh notes so that it does not sound like the same old song. Thank you Karan Malhotra for not doing a bad job. Second thing is the way Agneepath despite being an overly dramatic typical Bollywood flick never comes off as that. Agneepath is a cult movie. Like it or not, it falls into the category of all the recent box office record breakers, in which the writers expected the audience to either keep their brains at home or not believe in the laws of Newtonian Physics. While creators of Agneepath do not ask for a theater full of cows, they do hope that the Indian people will be awed enough by the other cinematic qualities that they won't mind overlooking a few glitches in the plot. And do we get awed enough? Well, if you like some Masala in your movie, then yes.

So Agneepath is the much known revenge saga of our angry young man Vijay who watches his father get murdered by the same gaon walas, who he had spent a lifetime caring for. Ha! Predictable, inane and outmoded but for me, a perfect remake. There will definitely be two types of people in the theater. One, who would be waiting, fingers crossed for Hritik Roshan to deepen his voice and say "Vijay Dinanaath Chauhan" through entire course of the movie and the other, well, who won't be doing that. I was the former. And how does it feel when he actually says it? To be frank, it felt forced. Yet I loved the fact that he did it in his own way and did not even try for that matter to copy the original, which we all know is as imitable as the 'boy with a pipe' by Picasso.

Agneepath, from start to end, is intense. Intense action, intense characters, intense tension between the characters, intense drama and an intense item number. The director was gambling on the high dose of typical Bollywood drama coupled with fantastic acting performances and delightful song sequences with brilliant choreography.

As much as I want to talk about Hritik first, I cannot do that because the first position must go to our very own legend, Rishi Kapoor. I mean, wow. Like, wow. His performance alone should fetch Agneepath a few rating stars. And the best part is that it was a new character, absent in the original script. So kudos to the director or whoever thought of it. Rishi Kapoor did an incredible job as Rauf Lala, the kingpin of Mumbai's prostitute and drug market and the crime godfather of apna hero Vijay. It really was pleasurable to watch him perform. Hritik Roshan as always, looked prepared and because of his sharp facial features, flawless in his own version of Vijay. The only problem is that the guy is too good looking for the role. There, I said it. But don't call me gay already, because later I am going to be extolling the makeup artists as well. Sunjay Dutt, as expected, fit perfectly in the pants (or dhoti) of this nightmare on mandwa street. Priyanka Chopra, apart from desperately seeking screen space, was perfect in whatever little she was supposed to do, which basically was the role of heroines in the 80s/90s, i.e. add some glam-n-glitz and entertain, whenever the audience gets bored of watching the same angry faces all over the big screen.

So bhaiyon aur behno, if chikni chameli's pointlessness irritates you then may be try wanking off over the technicalities like Vijay's young sister shiksha actually looking her age; how the upper lip hair wasn't removed to let her be a school kid she was and not a pre-teen sex siren and how the sets and locations were really worked hard upon. Movie Nazis will always argue that these things are expected with a big budget film but if we never leave a chance to slam them then why not laud when they deserve it.

And to those who only ask one question, "Katrina hot hai ki nai?", I suggest you go in the second half. Agneepath is as tight as Bollywood can get. Watch it to revisit apna pehle wala Bollywood.

Dont read this blog

I'm only wearing a loose t shirt and an orange colored panty. I didn't know whether I was more surprised to hear this or more turned on, because 2 minutes ago I was blabbering some agonizing shit about my guilt of having a very hedonistic relationship with her. But she showed maturity and turned the discussion back to the only thing that matters, SEX.
Now that I have your attention, I can talk about anything right? You must've figured out that the title and the first paragraph of this blog reeks of cheap publicity. That stunt was basically a comprehensive hint of what I want to talk about. I want to talk about twitter. I know millions and millions of words and hundreds of thousands of pages have been written on this very subject, but that was a long time ago and now is the time to rediscuss it. I won't put forth my profoundly fraud (inspiration: ZNMD) philosophies about the endless search for acceptance through twitter. Rather I'm going to show you a side reaction and it's catalytic mechanism in this micro-blogging autoclave.
Now, every new product with something different to offer, initially becomes a rage and blows uncontrollably. But it's just a newsmaker then. No matter how many sale records it breaks, it takes time for it to become a 'washing powder Nirma'. Twitter is no different. It has had it's boom n even though now it has plateaued, it certainly has stood the test of time. So now that we can safely call it a global phenomenon, do we really need a reason to waste our time on the timeline? Duh! Unless you posses mind numbing good looks [I have a theory that mind numbingly good looking people don't need to justify anything, but more on that later]. So why are people on twitter? I can see a plethora of advertising geeks, social media marketers and brand developers whose job demands them to be there. Then celebrities are as good as mind numbingly good looking people. Then there are college kids who have all the time in the world and are at an age where they should experience everything. Then writers, bloggers and critics who must show their intellectual diversity, hence building a fan base or in other words, bread and butter. Then other people with shallower reasons. For example, sports fanatics (not fans, because fans aren't shallow). But why are people whose career paths are miles away from the social networking BDSM on twitter? I can understand if you have an inherent attraction towards random trivia like those quizzers and news maniacs. Then that's just internet addiction. Nothing specific. I think the answer would come by digging the foundation stone of this 140 character cocaine. What thought went into developing twitter? To let people speak their mind and know other people's mind about a certain piece of news? Arguable hypothesis, but at least a decent premise to begin with.
But if I only want to know the popular word, why can't I follow a herd of twiple and whenever there's an opinion worthy news, I can just log in to read 20-30 tweets, why be active unless I want my voice heard? Well, there are two problems with this method. One is finding the right people to follow. This is fairly easy to tackle with the help of your twitfreak friends. Everyone has plenty. But the 2nd problem is where you witness the real layers of this onion. See, the public opinion is controlled by a public figure, much like the politics of 70s. On twitter, celebrities aren't the controlling devices. In fact, they are very simple people with more or less trite comments. What really controls twitter are the twitcelebs, the crocodiles of this river, which are the crux of our 2nd problem. They are active, quick witted and thick skinned, so nothing fetters them while taking on anyone from an utterly insignificant person to the president of USA. Now, what you want to see when a news comes out is what people think about it but what you get to see is an illusion of vaguely strong feelings and opinions, which are in most cases far from the actual sentiment. The crocodiles manage to achieve this by simply cracking a smart joke (though irrelevant) using innovative tools like wordplay or the trusted HASHTAGS. This is a beautiful example of how red herring works. I'm not saying people dumbly follow them. On the contrary, the avaam is smart enough to not form an opinion too early as and when the said news is fresh. But when this unsure, vulnerable, wet clay of a mind reads something even mildly amusing, written by the crocodile, who has a massive twitter following (=respect), then the mind is liable to follow up on the scheme of jokes or even outrage for that matter. Now people are just making jokes, they probably haven't even given a cursory thought to the real issue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying twitter has failed. But you just need to devote a lot more time than you think, to make good use of it. Our smart phones make us believe that our life has become faster, but actually for most people they slow it down tremendously. But I know I don't need to say this. Every user knows the truth.
So basically if your career doesn't demand social networking and you aren't the time passing college student then you are as good as the close friend of a rich guy who is taking loans he can't handle, just to maintain the gregarious lifestyle. Twitter demands regularity, for you to know the behavior of the twiples you follow which is how you can grasp the popular opinion. That means sacrificing a lot of time to know the real trick of this internet David Copperfield. But if *I* know the reality, why am I on twitter? Am I just another dude procrastinating the fuck out of his precious life? No. Actually I'm the rich guy, I can handle the loans.
PS: this whole perpetual mockery of Facebook on twitter is such a meta. But you know what else is meta? This blog.

Metallica concert (the one that was)

This is a the worst title for this blog because Banglore may have had the real concert but the Gudgaon one is still more fun to talk about. I see you are still reading it, so if you aren’t a friend whom I have begged to read or another human being who just happened to have time right now then I totally love you. Now i'm not only a bad marketer but also a slut. Anyway, the concert was worth every penny including travelling costs and as kickass as any concert for which I had to wait 20 odd years because I have been listening to Metallica since I was 1 year old (that’s not true but Hetfield kept saying it, so I take it as patthar ki lakeer). I know it’s too late in microblogging years to blog about the concert now but see I had to archive it somehow, especially when I hadn’t taken many pictures and when I was one of the few (~25000) who actually made it to the concert and how! [A subset of the ‘how’ part is covered in my previous blog]. So, yeah, the concert was mind blowing. They played all their best songs, which are basically their old songs, like ‘for whom the bell tolls’, ‘sanatorium’, ‘enter sandman’, ‘fuel’, ‘fade to black’, etc. For a brief gap, the members went off stage and then Hetfield returned with a small chair for our friend Kirk Hammet who entered with what looked like a semi acoustic in his hands. It was one of those moments when fans turn to each other and say, “dude I think he’s gonna play nothing else matters”. And ‘nothing else matters’ they played indeed. But no one expected a breathless stretch of the most incredible songs that followed, namely ‘one’ and ‘master of puppets’ back to back which if I try n put in the simplest possible words, gave us the fucking trip. Kirk Hammet looked high on acid with whitish eyes and a Hendrix like gaping mouth throughout, throwing random solos here n there. Hetfield as expected owned the place and gave constant goose bumps from the moment he entered. Lars Ulrich I like to believe gets his kicks from some kind of monstrous (see wat I did there) cocaine + red bull mixture because the guy is like a wild boar. Madness. Sheer, brain shearing madness. Well, that’s about it, because no one really cares about Robert Trujillo (the ugly bass guitarist, who’s getting chicks solely because of Metallica).
Now, ‘not caring’ brings me to the harder part of the concert, the part that the organizers (DNA) were supposed to take care of and which is more or less talked or trolled about in this: [ https://www.facebook.com/notes/jonva-madding/sad-but-true-what-happened-at-the-metallica-bangalore-gig/10150430713280240 ]. DNA didn’t care about security, which was practically less than half the size of a college fest contingent for an attendance 10 times of that; they asked the fans to keep their bags outside because they didn’t have the conscience to check the bags and let them in, which was required because they didn’t care to keep a cloak room in the first place; they clearly didn’t care to put any amount of planning into this whole thing because despite the above mentioned lack of security checking, it took the crowd in entry line at least 4-5 hours to move from the main gate to the ground; and surprisingly I can’t even say they cared about making much money either. There were only a handful of food and drinks stalls. No points for guessing that their stock got over before Hetfield could say ‘thank you, good night’. There were around 25000 hungry metal heads (some of them in munchies) after such a draining concert, ready to give away a limb for some food or water in a city where every restaurant closes by that time, and what do you do as an organizer? You don’t keep any food stalls! Apart from the thefts and the traffic mayhem, I must congratulate DNA for causing food riots in the few places that were open (like Empire), not to mention stomach ulcers to drunken rockers who slept hungry.
Now I don't know if it was the collective karma (spamming the twitter timelines of those not attending) but somehow the city wasn’t exactly helping the situation there. I know we should’ve known about the 11pm curfew, but come on man, it’s India. Plus somehow miraculously all the mobile networks just refused to work right after the concert, which was basically when ppl needed it the most, to locate their lost friends in all the mess. And no, 25000 ppl calling simultaneously doesn’t explain it. Anyway, on a more selfish note I say aaal ij well that ends well and I for one got drunk and had enough food but had to hunt the fuck out of it.
Abrupt ending.

The bus wala kissa

As I'm writing this right now, led Zeppelin is doing a private concert in my ears and I'm stretching my legs in this surprisingly spacious bus running on Gujarat roads, which are the single most admirable thing about the Gandhian state. I'm sitting in a bus full of mostly non gujjus (race joke alert). The high fashion quotient and the 2 cigarettes lying in my pocket are feeding me the momentary tranquility I so need. These are, mind you, not trivial things I'm writing here. They all took a great deal of effort on my part to achieve.
Now to begin with, I'm an employee of India's biggest private sector enterprise, Reliance industries Ltd. and I live in the township and work in the world's largest grassroots refinery, here in this chutiyap city of Jamnagar. Now if you are wondering, which I'm sure you aren't, but I must specify that I hate it here and I'm constantly making jokes about Gujarat and its alcohol ban on twitter, though all those jokes are effectively on me because well, I live here but I guess what I sent around came back around to anal me in the form of this incidence. Now this being the Diwali season and also the Metallica season (after 'Metallica' trending since weeks now it's only justified to call it the Metallica season more than Diwali), I had booked my tickets home in the only train that comes at this god forsaken place. The train happens to leave at 5 am and the all generous Mr Mukesh Ambani had arranged for a bus at 3 am from the township. But, as I had to surf the shit out of internet the previous night, I slept late and ended up getting up at 3:30 am, too late to catch that very bus. Since you already know I'm in the bus, there's no suspense but as if it mattered even when you were watching The Shawshank Redemption (sweating self confidence now!). So, when I got up and looked at the time I DID NOT think that there was a possibility that I had missed my bus, because had this thought in these exact words entered my brain, I would've never bothered to get my lazy ass up to try n catch the bus. Instead, my whole life flashed in front of my eyes. I got reminded of the enigmatic 4 years I had spent in Mumbai, living the life and dying several deaths in that city. I also got reminded of how many times my lips had touched the elixir of life, i.e. alcohol in the past 3 months, and the number is a pathetic 3. All this intertwined with some animated shots of 'my friends telling me to "be cool" in slow motion while leaving college' were running through my head. I must pause and say that our brain is a fantastic piece of machinery because this film which felt like eternity, played in a matter of seconds urging me to do everything possible to catch that vehicle which will help me get out of this place. So, I got my 'active' on and in seconds of getting up, ran to the reception wearing only boxers, asked him to call the township security and I called the shuttle (taxi) service using my cell phone which was the only thing I had picked up apart from the boxers. Now I simultaneously pleaded both to the security to stop the bus which they did and the shuttle guy to get to my building asap. Then I ran back to the room to get my clothes and travel bag only to discover that I had somehow miraculously NOT forgotten to bring the keys. This is important because we all know how Murphy's law becomes a bitch in all these situations. And in all the haste, I did not forget to get those 2 cigarettes which I'm so tripped out about because I will be needing those for the super early morning poop in the train. Kids, don't try this because it's illegal and of course because smoking kills but we all know there's nothing like a satisfactory dump. I felt like mumbai police that time. Doing everything perfectly and fast, but of course after waking up late initially. I swear if I had the physics Olympiad exam papers in my hand right now, I would've made my parents proud. My brain was and still is working so fast right now that I'm group whatsapping, writing this thing, listening to some good music and even stopping and staring. Yay I guess.