Murder on Christmas Eve

Imitiation, Bhikku, will not get you salvation. But sometimes, it is fun. And that should count for something.

-- The Diary, December 24th, 505 BC

The clock had just struck eleven when I heard the knock. It was an odd hour for a visit, but I was an odd man to visit. My mother calls me Donny, but to everyone else, I am d'Onald, Super Sleuth. I am a paid hound. Sometimes I track down criminals for people. Some other times, I track down people for criminals. Always, I do it for cash: fifty greenbacks per hour. Travel, food and Jack Daniels are extra. That's for the tracking down. Violence costs more: 250 per small bone, 300 for medium and 350 for large. Death is a coupla grand. Regular body disposal is five grand, premium is ten. Silence is free. In my line of business, you talk today, you sleep with the fish tomorrow. It's a tough life, but I'm a tough man.

The caller entered. He was thin. That was the first thing you noticed about him. The second thing was that he was stupid. Very, stupid. His age was difficult to tell: it was 34 years and anywhere from 21 and 24 weeks. He wore an English bowler hat (black), a waistcoat (lavender) and brown pants in the baggy style. The belt was was half a slot too loose, ditto the Rolex. The watch and the horn-rimmed monocle spelt R-I-C-H-D-A-D-D-Y. So did the smell of expensive wine. Funny folk, these rich people. They drink their stuff after first letting the horse piss in it. You might wonder why. I don't. In my line of business, you get paid to ask only the right questions. It's a curious life, but I'm not a curious man. This stupid rich man had probably lost a puppy, a gift from his aunt last Christmas. I prepared for a dog-hunt. Business had been dull, and the blonde was high-maintenance. It is a dog's life.

"What-ho, old bean! Are you the sniffer, or are you the sidekick?"

The voice was surprisingly gruff. I pictured Dick Cheney dressed up for Gay Pride day. This was going to be difficult, doing business with this imbecile. I eyed him coldly. The trick was to unbreak the ice. In my line of business, you make friends today, you make the obituary column tomorrow. It is a loner job, but I am a loner man.

"I am Detective d'Onald, Private Eye. Can I help you?"
"You can do better, my lad. You can save my life."
"Yeah?"
"Postively"
"Oh yeah?"
"Scout's honor, old man. May the pants come loose at the Annual Ball if I speak aught but the truth."
"Listen, bud! What say you cut out the lingo and cut to the chase? What duyya want?"
"Ah! The American spirit. Onward, ho, to business. Shoulder to the wheel. Eye on the ball." I growled. "Well, as you say. Business it is. Quite. You see, my man, I've lost my brother on these strange shores. The lad's gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Evaporated. Poof."

This nut's brother? This was going to be much worse than the gift puppy. I winced. Inwardly, of course. The face was a mask. In my line of business, you show emotion today, tomorrow they'll be scraping your small intestine off Canal Street.

"When didya last see him, this brother of yors?"
"Ah, the facts. The background. The pieces of the puzzle. The clues. You are a lark that knows its tune. Capital, old boy! Wait till I tell the blokes at the club."
"I said, when didya last see yo' brother?"
"It must have been last summer. I was at the races and the chap was cooing to Maggie. The lad was in love. Dangerous stuff, love, particularly if you are in the habit of writing poetry, as the flesh-and-blood was. Made a right nuisance of himself. Why, that day, he was saying Maggie's eyes cleft his soul in twain. Some rot about he was unable to decide whether they looked like olives from Eden lying on virgin Swiss snow, or black diamonds smouldering afloat the river of her soul's white fire. A lot of rot, if you ask me. If Maggie's eyes looked like anything at all, they looked like a dung-beetle thrashing about in a cube of rotting cheese. But try telling that to the lad. Do not get me wrong. I'm second to none when it comes to fraternal feeling and blood-thicker-than-water and all that, but I draw the line at sunsets. Sunsets ought to remind a chap of dinner. But put the cove within half a mile of a sunset, and he would spout rot about the colors of the bridesmaid's dress at an angel's wedding, after the best man had unwittingly spilled Pinot Rouge on the her clothes--the bridesmaid's, you see, not the bride's--while they were dancing to Chopin after an apple pie. Details, he used to say. That's what poetry is about. Anyhow, the lasses always right fell for it. Keep encouraging him to coo his ghastly stuff into their ears. Why, some even ask him to repeat the rot about dew and cherubim's tears.

Ah, but I digress. To the point, of course. L'espirit Americain! Quite. As I was saying, the lad was cooing to Maggie at the races. Was blocking my view, as a matter of fact. Didn't matter, of course. My mare was walking backwards. Would have finished third in the previous race. Say! What an idea. Might get ten bob for that one. Free association, my man. That's the word. The steaming ideas of the unconscious breaking out in wild waves of free association and what-not, just like an underground sewer suddenly flooding all of Picadilly. What-ho, for the Joyce of the stream of consciousness! Got that? Joyce of the stream of consciousness. Ha, ha! That's a killer."

"You mean," and here I was screaming. Second time in my career. The first time was when Black Jack Big Mac had his dog lick my ears for two hours to find out who wanted his real name so bad. I didn't sing, if you're wondering. In my line of business, you sing today, tomorrow a friendly jackknife might ask for an encore from your vocal chords. It's not a musical life, but I'm not a musical man. "You mean he has been lost for a year?"

"Why, you're an odd bird. A foul fowl, in fact. You think I'd wait one year before seeking trained help? The lad's only been lost three hours. We were both dipping into the same trough at seven just this evening, as a matter of fact."

"I thawt you said you haven't seen him since last summer?"

"Of course I haven't. Not the sort of chap you want to see very often. The beauty quota of our family ran out with yours truly. The cove's an eyesore. I try to look the other way. Feel like I've seen him too much already. I'm too much i'the sun, as Shakeaspeare would put it. You read Shakespeare? Capital chap. Full of beans. How was that again? Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt and all that. Splendid bloke. Nothing quite like him to build the apetite. Particularly if your Butler is serving Bacon for dinner. Ha,ha! You got that? Butler serving Bacon for dinner. Old Gussie's crack. Capital chap, that Gussie. Bit sad about his cook. He eloped with the housekeeper, you know. Gussie sort of fancied her. Say, old boy, think you can find them too? I'll throw in five bob extra."

"Get out"

"I say, you have all you need, eh? What-ho! The scent's on the deer's tail, and the wolf's on the deer's trail. Let me say, my man, that I have the utmost admiration for your methods. The psychology of the individual. The missing link. The inconsistent detail. The dog that did not bark. The wrong color of tie. The snot in summer. The boils in winter. The nukes in Baghdad. Gaze not upon me with such astonishment, you old duffer. Not spring's brightest flower am I, but I am the Gardner at many Holmes. I may lack your spark, you sharp kettle of fish, but let no man say old B is slow to catch on. Why, it wasn't a .."

Abruptly, my trusty 0.38 Wesson let out a cough, and the sweet sound of silence filled the room. Business was still dull and the blonde still wanted a gift for Christmas. Some would have said this was not the season for killing clients. But there are times when a man has got to do what a man to do. Even if there's no cash in it. Christmas is mostly about internet shopping, but there is something in the program about Good Samaritan acts.

The night was cold, the fish were hungry, and the body was still warm. Did I tell you that down in the Hudson, they think of me as Robin Hood? I like to see the fish rush in when the body breaks the surface. Sometimes, I cut the limbs apart before throwing it in. Makes it easy for the fish to bite chunks off. Avoids competition and violence. It is a sentimental thing to do, but I'm a sentimental man.

A Tale of Two Loves

"A good monk loves all of Creation. A good woman loves just one man. Both erase and remould the self for their love. Neither makes a distinction between high and low, good and bad. And who is to say which love is the nobler emotion?"

-- The Diary, a Tuesday in January, 507 BC

They fell in love, the poet and the woman. It was a glorious spring. The gulmohar and the laburnum decked up in fire and gold just for them. Every morning, the sun rose only to add another day to their joy. The ducks swam out to greet the returning sun, one eye on their newborns bobbing clumsily up and down behind them, and another on the poet rushing to meet her after a night's unbearable separation. The lakeside dew glistened, and in its golden glimmer, it seemed to be laughing gently at the impatiently approaching poet.

Spring turned to summer. The laburnum and gulmohar shed their passionate colors and settled to a subtler green. The mangoes ripened, and so too did their love. It was sure-footed now, and free from passion, jealousy and fluctuation. They did not need physical closeness any more, but seemed to see each other reflected in all that was beautiful and noble in the world. When he saw a crying child or a playing dog, he thought of her and felt a sudden burst of joy he could hardly bear. When he hotly debated politics with friends or frowned fiercely while playing chess, she smiled and longed for them to be alone so she could smooth his unruly hair. When they went out to a play, she fretted about the door (had she locked it), the fire (had she put it out) and the mice (would they get the food again), till he asked her to shut up, the pressure of his hands on hers belying the harshness of his words. When he recited his poetry, she stood still, lost in the music and beauty of the words and scarcely even looking at him. He liked her best in these moments, for she seemed to love not just him, but the essence of him which was much larger than him.

And then it all ended. War was afoot, men were needed, and poets in love weren't exempt. Bravely the poet went forth to fight, foolishly he charged, and easily he was captured. Months passed, the war ended. Some more months passed, and cold officialdom indifferently released him. Eagerly, the poet made his way back to his hometown and went straight to her house.

She wasn't there. They told him she had married another man. Everyone had thought him dead. The poet was struck dumb. His shock slowly became anger. He rushed to her husband's house, barely knowing what he wanted or hoped to achieve.

She opened the door and let out a cry of surprise, joy and some dismay. Her husband came out, and immediately understood. She had told him about the poet. He welcomed the poet and offered to leave them alone. They both refused. The husband asked the poet to stay for dinner. The poet refused, but she insisted and he relented.

The poet soon saw her husband was a good man, but a prosaic trader, a stranger to poetry and beauty. His grief soon turned to pity for her. What was she without her love of beauty, and what joy would this man give her when he couldn't fathom the core of her being? He was ashamed of his earlier self-pity. He had only lost his love, but hadn't she lost her soul's craving? He watched her keenly, a mellow sorrow in his heart. He expected to see a defeated pain in her eyes.

But what he saw made him recoil in disgust. She looked at the poet with warmth, but when she turned to her husband, the old tender glow lit up her eyes. She listened to the poet talk about his imprisonment, tears welled up in her eyes, and her voice broke as she replied. But when her husband spoke of the most trivial business matters, she seemed to come to life. She asked questions and probed. She chided her husband for his ignorance of basic economics and mocked his clumsy account-keeping, but her tone was playful and her voice quivered with a passion that once could be ignited by poetry alone. It was as though her soul were a harp, and someone had changed its strings so it now resonated to a lower, earthier note.

The poet left her house late that evening and the town early the next morning. He couldn't bear to stay on and see the lake and the birds and the trees and the plays, recalling what they had had felt earlier, and knowing that she probably didn't even remember anymore, and was indifferent to whatever she did remember.

He wandered aimlessly for a few days. His initial bewilderment turned first to bitterness and then contempt. He saw that what she had felt for him and for his poetry, like what she felt now for her husband and his business, was not love. It was shallow sentimentality, mere animal delight in the self. Like an amateur's copy of a Master's painting, it was pleasing to the senses but devoid of spirit and soul. His contempt slowly turned outward. He saw that most human relations were but base self-gratification. Art and poetry were an elaborate ritual of delusion, designed to keep man from seeing the pettiness of it all.

The poet withdrew from the world. He stopped writing. He wandered far and wide. He learnt to medidate. Slowly, his contempt for the world withered away. He almost forgot her. He passed into ever deeper states of meditation, and often lost consciousness of the self for days together. But the self eventually did return, and with it came emptiness. He had gone deeper and deeper into himself and while he had escaped the coldness of cynicism, he hadn't found the warm fire of life.

One day, he chanced to see a monk seated atop a rock on a hillock. It was early May. A bird was flying in and out of dense tree-cover, probably fetching food for its babies. The monk was watching it intently, as though it were a play whose end he couldn't wait to find out. There was something about his pose that broke the poet's resolve. He approached the monk, sat at his feet, and without any preface, calmly narrated his story. When he finished, he looked up at the monk, childishly hoping that he would show him the way with just a word or gesture. The monk's eye shone with empathy, but he said nothing.

The poet stayed with the monk. They both roamed the country, never staying anywhere for long. They seldom talked. They medidated alone, hardly seeing each other for days together. But like soldiers, there was a brotherhood that tied them. Often, they stopped at villages, and while the monk preached, the poet watched. The monk liked to play with children. The poet watched with an amused smile. The poet sometimes wrote again. He sang about the monk's love of all Creation. He sang of the empathy that made his heart tremble with every passing whiff of breeze, as though he were spring's tenderest new leaf. The monk listened and said, "I don't understand poetry. It must be good, since you say so." But his eyes twinkled as though he were playing with children again.

The poet observed the monk carefully. It seemed to the poet that liberation, the spark of life, which he so desparately craved, came easily to the monk. Perhaps, thought the poet, he couldn't conquer the self because he tried too hard. Or perhaps, he hadn't found peace because he did not really want it, deep down. He was still seeking self-fulfillment in some subtle way. He mentioned this to the monk, but the monk merely smiled and waved it away.

Suddenly, a storm approached. The poet and the monk took refuge in a village. They barely survived. When the storm cleared, the two saw that the village had been devastated. Hardly a house remained standing. Children had died, cattle swept away. People were too shaken by death to rebuild life. The monk gathered the villagers around. He wanted to talk about the Illusion of earthly existence and salvation through the end of attachment. Instead, he ended up talking about rebuilding, preserving those who had survived. The crowd was mobilized. The monk led the reconstruction, guiding the villagers, tending their children. He even lent a hand at manual labour, though he wasn't any real use. If the monk was the spirit of the reconstruction, the poet was its heart, muscles and legs. His poet's heart had been touched by the suffering around him. He was everywhere at the same time, exhorting, singing, cheering and even putting to use things he had learned in the army. In a few weeks, all the houses had been rebuilt.

The poet and the monk left. They had been walking a few hours, when the monk pointed to a tree that had half fallen, but now seemed to be growing almost horizontally, its roots hungrily gripping the earth like the greedy sinewy arms of a mountain climber. The monk said, "Strange, isn't it, how life changes shape and breaks its own rules to cling on somehow? Maybe that's what they call love, the complete forgetting of the self in the business of life itself. Why, we haven't medidated in nearly two months, and yet I hardly noticed." He smiled, and went his way to medidate.

Startled, the poet looked after the monk. Maybe he had wanted to solve the mystery, or maybe he had just made a casual remark. The poet looked at himself. Maybe he had finally found the spark in the village, or maybe he had just lost himself in the moment. He thought of her. Maybe she had been a sentimental man-hunter, or maybe she had known the Truth all along. Who was to know what really happened? And at any rate, what did the facts matter?

With an unspeakable joy welling up in him, the poet started his search. He wasn't looking for Liberation or Love. He just wanted a quiet place to medidate in.

---

Note to Comrade WS^5: This stinks. You told me so. I know. But temptation, it's a bummer. You know?

Note to any other reader: Strange but true, this meandering piece actually had a point. I lost it somewhere along the way, but I had more or less pilfered it straight off The Darling by Anton Chekhov. Read the original. It'll be worth your time.

Science and The Pursuit of Happiness

Happiness, Bhikku, is like an Iraqi nuke. There is no such thing. And if you perversely go looking for it, you'll only get your ass whipped.

-- The Buddha's Diary, a Friday in June, maybe 511 BC

Note: Bhikku = Bhikshu, roughly the same as Monk.

The Hindu Jihadis have spoken. The Vedic Era, they wistfully whisper with tender nostalgia, was a rare Golden Age in Brownistan's history. Those glory days, they declare, were a long orgy of universal contentment in Brownistan. For once, they speak the truth. All brown people were satisfied in Vedic times. The men satisfied themselves by beating their wives. The women satisfied themselves by bullying the oldies at home. And while noone really cares what oldies think, even they were satisfied because they knew they'd die soon and go to Heaven or Hell, either of which could only be an improvement on Brownistan.

Contrast this Utopia with our own decadent times: Wife-beating is regrettably passe', and old people are indefinitely kept alive somewhere in Florida, instead of being slowly killed at home. Everyone, as a result, is thoroughly dissastisfied.

Sadly, this is not an isolated instance. Nay, it is part of a tragic pattern. Modern man, particularly in the West, is in a million ways more miserable than his forefathers; and the primary reason for his profound gloom is Science.

Let not the reader consider me ungrateful. I freely acknowledge that Science has given us much: Viagara to create real men, surgery to create unreal women, MPEG video to capture the combo in action, broadband internet to download the said video with, and Prozac to soothe the depression when blokes gets bored of porn, as blokes eventually do. (I am not talking here of my old friend SC. He never tired of porn, and probably never will. But he is a genius at lechery, while you, gentle reader, are only a genius at not being a genius.)

I salute Science: it is the giver of plenty. Nevertheless, it is also the root cause of the West's woes.

The problem with Science is that it fixes stuff that ain't broken. Like Rahul Dravid, it performs spectacularly under pressure, after first going through great trouble to create the said pressure. Note that Science heroically cooks up miracle cures for strange new diseases. It need not. If it had instead let sissy blokes die of urinary infection, they would not have lived to get these high-end diseases. Note that Science constantly develops ever more complicated and controversial theories about the universe. It need not. It could instead accept the entirely self-consistent claim that the Universe is Allah's third wife. Two damning examples already, and I have not even got to SMS messaging, iPod, TiVo, toilet paper, low-fat peanut butter, and remote-controlled microwave ovens.

Indeed, I submit that most scientific innovation is not only unnecessary, but decidedly detrimental to the Human Condition in some way or the other.

The apologist for Science might point out that this is not really an indictment of science. Innovation, like liberation, comes with a price tag. When one develops an extra-whitening toothpaste, one should not be begrudged a little carcinogenic effluvium. Bah! most human misery is but collateral damage, as Donald Rumsfeld constantly reminds us.

This is arguably true. However, it is besides the point. The real problem is not merely with the process or its side-effects, but lies at at the very core of Science. The nub of the matter is that Science has raised the bar. Before the Scientific Revolution, Man's highest hope was that his neighbor, and not he, would get the plague. Contentment was easy because expectations were low. Along came Science, and led white people to mistakenly believe that

(1) There is a thing called happiness.
(2) If only they tried, they can get it too.

The effects of the deception are manifold and profound. Nobody is better placed to see this than me. The great land of North Texas, where I roost at present, is a land of such dreadful monotony that even hurricanes and earthquakes do not come here. The only natural disaster that frequents these parts is George W. Bush. He has his points, but you'll agree he's not quite the same thing as a tornado. Yet, people regularly ask me what plans I have for the weekend. When I first moved in here, I found this quite hilarious. "Charming devils," I thought, "How wittily they allude to the storied Dallas dullness!" I was wrong. These blokes actually make plans for the weekend, and execute them. Their interests include, hold your breath,

(1) indoor suntan with discount rates for extra UV-protection
(2) kayaking in a large-sized artificial puddle, nay lake
(3) white-water rafting in the same puddle, nay rapid
(4) hunting imported African animals in a fenced-in mock-forest, and
(5) hand-gliding from nowhere to nowhere over miles and miles of nowhere.

One evening, I was driving to the grocery store when I chanced to see one of these blokes about to take off on his glider. (The highest point in North Texas is the overpass of Highway 635 over Highway 75. Taking off from there guarantees 20 miles greater range.) Unable to contain my curiousity, I asked him, "Why?". He looked at me, shrugged, and with a faraway look in his green eyes, whispered : "To have fun". It was then, my friends, that I saw clearly the canker that eats away at the hearts of my hand-gliding brothers, for a man who seeks fun in Dallas is a man whom not even Prozac can rescue from the loony bin.

But that man is not alone, nor is Dallas unique.The white man today, all over the world, is a pilgrim seeking the Holy Grail of happiness. All the world to him seems a veritable Paradise, except the place he currently lives in. And armed with the gizmos that Science constantly cooks up for him, he goes forth to find this Paradise in ever more unlikely places. He flies to the Grand Canyon to get married, because the old church wedding isn't fun anymore. He fights for Zion, because DisneyLand isn't fun anymore. He kills brown people, because killing bears isn't fun anymore. He turns gay, because being straight isn't fun anymore. He buys organic, because buying sex toys isn't fun anymore. He goes to Alaska, because going to the bar isn't fun anymore. He does yoga, because doing drugs isn't fun anymore. He loves Jesus, because loving the neighbor's wife isn't fun anymore. And in seeking greater and greater happiness, he only sinks deeper and deeper into his misery.

It does not have to be thus. Dark is the night, but the white man only has to look to the East for light. The trick is to accept, as colored people do, that life is a bad deal. If you aim for the stars, you'll only get to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder. If you aim for the treetop, you'll at least get a few squirrel-eaten fruits. The white man wants to use science to create Heaven on earth. He fails, for it is beyond him or anyone else. The brown man, on the other hand, only wants help in making babies. If science will not give it, he knows that Swami Premananda will.

This is not mere theory. A few years back, a survey was conducted to find how happy people from different nations were. To some people's surprise, the survey found that the happiest people on earth were the Bangladeshis. White people were deeply consternated, if that's the word I'm looking for. There was a mad scramble to locate the damn place on the map. Bangladesh is, after all, a nation that has both Allah and poverty but neither Al Qaeeda nor oil. Naturally, white people had formerly ignored it. When they dug up some more dirt on it, they found that it had once been rescued from cow-eating brown people by grass-eating brown people. They also found that it was the only of China's neighbors that China did not want to annex, because Chinese people know a bad deal when they see one. Such a land, said white people, cannot be happier than God's Own Country, and so saying they dismissed the survey as faulty.

They were wrong. Here is what really happened, as I found out from a reliable native.

The surveyors went out and asked the natives if they lacked anything they wanted. The natives said, "No". You see, it was the month of Ramadan and though they didn't have food, they didn't want it. The surveyors then asked the natives if they were happy. The natives laughed, because they found the question funny.

Naturally, the survey gave Bangladesh an A+ for sheer joie de vivre. Any survey would have, under the circumstances.

Somewhere in this story, gentle reader, there is a lesson for mankind. I wish I could tell you what it is, for you clearly lack the brains to see it yourself. But right now, I don't have the time. I need to suit up and go indoor wind-surfing. They tell me it is fun.

Prelude to a Profound Piece

Chaos confounds us and obscures the Omnipresent Truth. Forms deceive us and lead us to perceive the Many where there is but the One. Colors overwhelm us and blind us to the pure Light that pervades all. Yet chaos has been conquered, and forms deconstructed, by wise men blessed with extraordinary insight. The prism of Thought-that-is-beyond-thought has repeatedly reclaimed Light-that-is-beyond-color from the radiant but temporary hues of this world. If this hard-won Truth is to reach all, it must be simplified, for common eyes cannot take in uncommon Light.

The function of myth, as Joseph Campbell points out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is to simplify the Truth so that it will enter and ennoble the consciousness of the common man. There are many myths in every culture, and while they might differ in form, they all share the aim of elevating all men to the great heights first scaled by a select few.

Of course, the biggest myth of them all, and one that pervades all cultures, is that the common man will understand all this jazz. The common man, as the reader might have noticed, looks like a nincompoop, talks like a nincompoop, and behaves like a nincompoop. Applying the scientific method, it is safe to conclude that, barring any future evidence to the contrary, the common man is a nincompoop. No matter how much a thing is simplified, it is still too complicated for everyone to understand it.

Take, for instance, that touching, tragic and heroic Brownese myth, the Ramayana. It has been perverted so much that brown people take that great freedom fighter Ravana to be a lustful wife-snatcher. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected. Epic is, after all, creatively written history; history is, after all, the chest-beating propaganda of the victor; and the victor was after all that scheming Bhaiya Rama. In any case, brown people will believe anything they read in their textbooks, including the ridiculous theory of evolution, which directly contradicts the divine Ramayana.

The reader, being a seasoned nitwit, fails to see the connection. Let me explain. Clearly, as the Ramayana points out, North Indians are real men and South Indians are monkeys. Thus, the theory of evolution implies that North Indians came from South Indians, a proposition offensive to both parties. If brown people had any brains, they should see red, cry foul and let slip the dogs of war. Instead, they blithely sing hosannas to Charlie Darwin in 50-word answers to 3-mark questions. Has there ever been, I demand to know, a race more credulous or more laughable?

One might say that expecting brown people to understand myth is as unfair as expecting them to use condoms. After all, it is not without reason that brown people have been subjugated. The white man, on the other hand, is not a subjugatee but a subjugater. From him, we have come to expect better. Is he not the inventor of the highly unintuitive toilet paper, and its essential accompaniments, eau-de-cologne and the remarkable Scabex ointment which guarantees instant relief from painful sores in private parts? Indeed, as the Scabex promos proudly proclaim:

If your backside is all a-boil,
Don't simply hose it with oil.
Stick some Scabex up yo' ass,
'N walk again with some class.

To the refined white superbrain that developed these and many more wonders, myth, one would expect, is but child's play.

Alas, even the princely race of white men diasppoints, when in comes to interpreting myth. Consider that deeply symbolic tale of the fall of Man. The popular belief is that the first man and his missus were sauntering along the beachfront property that God had allotted them, when they came across Satan in the form of a serpent. You, gentle reader, are a real man. On seeing a snake, you would have smashed its head, fleeced its skin, and had shoes made for your mistress. Instead, the first man stupidly chose to leave the snake alive. On the other hand, the first woman did exactly what your wife does to every new reptile on the block: she talked to it. (As I have always maintained, only one gender in this species seems to be evolving.) Thereupon the snake convinced the first frau to bite off the Fruit of Knowledge, which is widely believed to have been an apple. In spite of God giving them express instructions to keep their hands off the said produce, Mr and Mrs Uno took a bite. Thereby they realized in stages that they were

(1) ugly,
(2) nangoo, and
(3) screwed.

This popular belief is, as always, exceedingly childish. The logical fallacies are numerous and egregious. For instance, we have reason to believe that God, for all his faults, is not a frigging vegan. If He went to the trouble of making a Tree of Knowledge, wouldn't He make it bear mangoes or jackfruit or some such respectable thing instead of God-forsaken apples?

And then there is the glaring fact that there is no Horse in the story of the Fall. As anyone who has followed the Aryan invasion debate knows, the role of the Horse is pivotal. A theory without a Horse is no theory at all, but merely a pseudo-secular far-left opinion, a piece of vile anti-national Chinese-sponsored propaganda.

Clearly, the popular understanding of the Fall is a pile of horse-manure. Fortunately, intelligent people can see past popular belief into the real meaning of things.

My comrade and partner-in-crime P~, for one, offers a very original and off-beat interpretation of the story of man's fall here. P~'s interpretation, which I encourage the reader to read, is highly profound. Unfortunately, it is also wrong.

First, P~'s story has no horse either.

Second, P~ implies that there really is no such thing as Evil on earth. He obviously hasn't met enough Tamil people.

Third, he naively tries to make everybody look good in the story of the Fall. While that is charming, it is highly unrealistic. Even in regular fairytales, where the author has license to dream, you usually get one good person, at best two. Clearly, even those in the fantasy business know that fantasy should be tempered with realism. In P~'s story, on the other hand, 4 different individuals--Senor God, Senor Uno, Senora Uno and Senor Sssss--are good. Tell me, gentle reader: Talking man to man, of all the people that you know, does not everyone except you strike you as a rather villainous serial rapist? Where, then, can this fantastic assemblage of four good individuals be found, except in P~'s ultra left-wing liberal mind?

Do not get me wrong: P~ is a frightfully intellectual bloke, who always keeps bothering himself about the Human Condition, as if it were a tooth about to fall. But the trouble with P~ is that for all his brains, he has no prior experience in busting well-entrenched myths. Your humble correspondent, on the other hand, is a past master at busting w.-e. myths.

Brownistan's greatest myth of the 1990s was that our class topper G~ was unbeatable in power systems. However, in the heady summer of 1998, one handsome lad outscored G~ in not one, but two, consecutive Power Systems quizzes. If P~ had been that lad, I would have bowed to him, kissed the ground beneath his feet and accepted his interpretation of the Fall of Man. As it turns out, that giant-slaying lad was not P~, but yours truly. Having thus proved my worth for once and forever, I exercise my right to call P~ wrong. Instead, I will give a parallel interpretation of the Fall in one of my posts, whenever the mood takes me.

Till then, gentle reader, amuse yourself with harmless pleasures. Covet your neighbor's wife if you like, but kindly covet from a distance.

Pip-pip.

Leo and The Priest: A True Story about Surviving God

"History", said the great Sir Thomas Carlyle, "was made possible by the shortage of Viagara." Indeed, we have evidence that when the choice princes of each age were unable to make love, they made war.

Recall that the only parts of his mistress that Hitler regularly assailed with violence were her ears. Recall that Bill Clinton rained bombs on Serbia only when he was cruelly cut off from Monica. Note that the present Bush, who clearly suffers from too much Bible and too little Laura, takes out his ire on Iraq. Recall that his father, who suffered from too much Bible and too much Barbara, did the same. And lest you should think colored people are somehow immune to this trend, recall that the only two times India popped a nuclear device instead of the regular 1000-wallah, it was led by Indira-ji and Atal-ji, both of whom were officially celibate at the time.

To find a possible exception to the above rule, you'll need to go back to 1st century BC. Augustus, the greatest of the Caesars, then ruled much of the planet. He loved but one woman in the whole world, and strangely enough it was his own wife. Unfortunately, when left alone with her, Augustus, like the average Bangladeshi batsman, displayed much vigour but little placement and even lesser staying power. This, one would have thought, spelt doom for the world. Not so. As historians point out, Rome was never more at peace than under Augustus. Remarkably, our hero, in spite of not seeing action at home, waged wars only in Egypt, Gaul, Germany and Spain. Just four wars in fifty odd years makes for an extraordinarily peaceful reign, as any sane man would agree.

Alas, even this exception only proves the rule. Augustus, it is now known, was no monk. In fact, his much-loved-yet-unloved missus, in order to spare the people of the world, actually arranged for L'Empereur to accidentally meet luscious young ladies on rainy nights. Like India in league matches, Augustus, it is said, performed spectacularly when the pressure was off.

That leaves us with a cardinal, unbroken Golden Rule: When Big Chief don't get no fun, he'll whip out the big gun. If people want to avoid the draft, they should choose a real man as leader, and keep him well-supplied.

Tragically, this lesson from history is forgotten. The man on the street but dimly recalls the glory days when the King numbered his children because they were far too many to name. Bill Clinton, that path-breaking hero, had the ability to bring back those good old days, but he was tragically thwarted by the times he lived in. Virtue on the throne, regrettably, is here to stay.

I survey this scene and I'm deeply saddened. Let it not, however, be assumed that I am a sentimental pacifist. Honestly, I don't think war is a big deal. After all, only about 2000 Americans have died in Iraq, and as Dubya will probably tell you, most of them are teenagers who would have killed themselves in road accidents anyway. There is the small matter of 30000 dead Iraqis, but considering how many brown people there are in the world, does anyone honestly think 30000 more or less makes a difference? No, indeed. If an under-sexed El Presidente kills himself a few thousands, I say Hail the Chief, Halelujah and could-we-switch-to-ESPN.

No, what really concerns me is not the effect of my Commander's abstinence, but its cause. After all, people always elect a leader who is just like themselves, only a lot richer. If Dubya behaves like the Grand Inquisitor, I ask, can Joe Republican be far behind?

Anybody who follows the ways of the Free World would know that things are in bad shape. God, who seemed for a few centuries to have popped off to better worlds, is back in a big way. As a child, I was afraid of ghosts, and my grandfather comforted me by quoting the Vedas which said God is everywhere. It sounded vaguely reassuring. Now, I am grown-up, I live in Texas, God is everywhere, and I am scared shitless. I've always thought God is a quiet sort of bloke, but He seems to be a Talker. Lots of people are hearing stuff from Him, and it ain't increasing their love for their fellow man. Ten years back, the only things people seriously looked for were marijuana and Madonna's perenially missing underwear. Now, they are looking for Communion with God, the Inner Voice and Spiritual Bliss.

More than anything else, however, God's born-again children are looking for Sin. Almost anything you do, from petting your dog to not petting your dog, is sin. Nothing is beyond the purview of the moral police, and nothing escapes its attention.

Most interestingly, while the virtuous disapprove of sin, they cannot really tolerate virtue. This is, of course, natural. Cops cannot be said to love thieves (unless the cops happen to be Bihari and the thieves happen to be women, but that is a different story). However, cops clearly do not want the end of all crime, for that will make them redundant. Likewise, the virutous need sin so that they have something to disapprove of.

John Kerry lost the elections not just because he looked like a mummy and made it worse by trying to smile. No, he lost because he was squeaky clean. Dubya at least had a police record and had confessed to sniffing a little bit of crack when the old man bothered him too much. At any rate, our Lord and Master is such an imbecile that it is almost a sin. Kerry, on the other hand, was fifty years old at birth and aged rapidly hence. The man was just too damn dead to sin. If he were to be the President, where, I ask, would the public have gotten their moral superiority? Is there any wonder, then, that he did lose?

The Land of the Free is now one big moral circus. The only pleasure people have allowed themselves is that of finding and loathing sin. They just cannot accept virtue, for it denies them this one remaining pleasure. If Jesus were born today in Alabama and if he miraculously survived the hurricanes that God regularly sends to punish the poor for being poor, he would be lynched to death anyway.

The question of the day, particularly for men of sound moral fibre like your humble correspondent, is this : Is there a way out? Can any moral man survive in this country? Is it possible for a sinless bloke to soothe the suspicions of the righteous?

The answer, strangely enough, is yes. And the man who found the way was none other than Lev Nikolaiyevich, the greatest author that ever lived, and my childhood hero. Leo, as he is fondly known, spent what one might call a real man's youth. Having had his fill, he then declared that sex is immoral. The local priest, of course, found this highly suspicious and promptly interrogated Leo. Here's how Leo quelled the priest's doubts.

Priest : Do you, sir, think that sex with women, even with one's own wife, is immoral?
Leo : I do.
Priest : You are into men, then?
Leo : No, indeed.
Priest : Children?
Leo : Of course not.
Priest : Hmm, you are truly a strange beast! Hmm, beast! You like animals?
Leo : How dare you?
Priest : Animals neither. A queer fish indeed! Ah, but of course! Fish?
Leo : Puh-lease.
Priest : Not fish either? I see it now. I must tell you, sir, that the Bible strictly forbids toys. What do you say to that?
Leo : I say screw the Bible.
Priest : Ah! A bibliophile! Why didn't you say so earlier? It is slightly unusual, my boy, but hardly unique. Confess and I'll absolve you.

There it is, clear as day to any that can see: In a society that is obsessed with sin, the only way for a moral man to survive is to pick one acceptable sin, and specialize in it. As Lord Bacon said, "Practise maketh sufficiently imperfect."

A Great Tragedy

Greatness contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The force of life is the same as the force of death, and it takes but one small error to convert the one into the other.

Note, for example, the curious case of Dubya and Christian values. Christian values were Dubya's unique, and only, selling point. It seemed that as long as he had Christian values, no war, no hurricane, no downturn could touch Dubya. Recently, alas, Dubya nominated as the next Supreme Court judge a ridiculously soft-hearted woman who only kills liberals but does not drink their blood. Incensed by Dubya's lack of faith, the keepers of the the self-same Chrisitan values are now calling for his head.

Note, for example, the curious case of the White Man and technology. The White Man used technology to subjugate the brown, black and yellow people of the world. Alas, instead of nerve gassing them en masse, he spared them and educated them to serve as his clerks. He counted on their lack of brains, which was fair enough. Alas, he did not account for his own lack of brains. As he made technology simple enough for himself to use it, he also made it simple enough for brown, yellow and black people to use it. And while both brown and White men can write software, only the former can breed prodigiously, as anybody in New Jersey would have noticed. Having failed to close the issue when he was on top, the White Man is now a marginalized foreigner, a hysterical second-hander, in his own country.

But the grandest tragedy of recent times occurred not in the prosaic West, but in that land of Legend, that cradle of Epic, the great nation of South India. Aye, in South India, there recently lived and died a man whose life illustrates the self-desctructiveness of greatness more poignantly than anything I have seen or read. It is his tale I recount here.

The late N. T. Rama Rao, or NTR as he was known, was a lot of things: he was film star, politician, friend of the common man, not-just-friend of the common woman, and in more ways than one, the Father of the state of Andhra Pradesh. His greatness cannot adequately be described in my humble prose, so we take up NTR's tale towards the end of his life.

NTR was slowly receding into the dusk. In his old age, he developed a fascination for vans, which he tried to convert into chariots; and middle-aged women, whom he tried to convert into Headwomen of Andhra Pradesh.

In the former, he succeeded spectacularly. Andhra Pradesh is full of people who will call anything a chariot if you promise them some cash. Some of the more inspiring Telugu poetry of recent times likens the headlights of NTR's van to the lustrous saphire eyes of an Arab thoroughbred.

The latter exercise, namely, that of making people accept NTR's mistress as their own, proved more challenging. In India, women get voted to power only if they had spiced up the public's private fantasies at some point of time in their lives. Unfortunately, NTR's middle-aged woman looked, well, middle-aged. Worse, she looked like she had looked middle-aged all her life. But NTR knew that even this could be overcome. In Andhra Pradesh, as I've said, a little bit of cash goes a long way towards ensuring suspension of disbelief.

Cash, and NTR's image, ensured that the public did indeed flock to see NTR's anointed successor. When NTR finally died, he did so thinking that he would rule through the person of his mistress for another forty years. However, fate had willed otherwise, for NTR had made an error that was to undermine his own greatness and annul his legacy. It is this fatal error that I shall now describe.

The Tragedy:
As mentioned earlier, NTR was quite active in the production business. He wanted sons to carry on his legacy, but even he could not control the gender of his offspring, and some of them turned out, unfortunately, to be girls. It was a problem, but one which Indians solve regularly and ingeniously with some rat poison in the baby's milk, or an extra affectionate hug. However, NTR's prolific rate of production made production control well-nigh impossible. Consequently, some girl children did get away, and flowered into doe-eyed beauties. NTR knew that daughters, if they were allowed to marry, would bring sons-in-law, who would compete with NTR's own sons for power. So, he fiercely guarded his daughters from lustful eyes. As poet Vemanna recounts,

Andamainadi NTR gari kooturu,
Dani choodadaniki abbaiyilu potaru,
Kopam ostundi NTR-ki valluni choosi,
Tintadu vallatho koorelu chesi.

which, in the infinitely less poetic English language translates to

The beauties that NTR did sire,
Were courted with much desire,
But suitors suffered the sire's ire,
Yea, their privates were set on fire.

It appeared that everything was under control and NTR's lineage would not be challenged by strange men that he had not fathered. But then Fate struck in the person of Nara Chandrababu Naidu, or simply Naidu. Naidu managed to marry one of NTR's daughters by the simple expedient of looking so ugly that NTR's henchmen considered him harmless. It must be said that their judgement was not far off the mark. However, they forgot that NTR's daughters saw NTR regularly, and that lowered their expectations from men as far as looks went. So it happened that NTR himself unwittingly drove one of his daughters into the waiting hands of Naidu.

The rest, as they say, is history. After NTR's death, NTR's mistress, now wife, and his son-in-law Naidu were involved in a power struggle. The wife told the people that NTR had loved her, and she was his rightful heir. All of Andhra Pradesh was awash with posters of her standing beside NTR to prove the point. It was, she believed, a surefire winner. After all, Naidu had never been in a picture with NTR.

And then Naidu pulled off a blinder. He simply had his men write "He loved this?" below the posters.

Needless to say, Naidu won the elections convincingly. He dedicated a grand tomb to NTR, cut off all neighbouring trees and released crows in the area. The tomb is now called the White House of Hyderabad.

NTR's wife has not been heard from in a while.

A 55-word story

Determined readers of this blog would have noted that "TheDQ" left a comment on my last post, which said, and I quote : "Dr., you have been tagged." This message greatly disturbed me.

TheDQ, as she calls herself these days, is a charming young girl. I have often had occasion to buy her biscuits on my way back from work, and she always says, "Thank you, chacha-ji", and runs quickly to stash them away in her secret hideout. (TheDQ is a Gujju, and she believes in saving up, since you never know when she and her 42 children will be struck in a remote Himalayan cave for 263 days before the CNN crew gets there, followed, in another 94 days, by the Government relief trucks.) TheDQ's chief charm is that she does not, like most other children, insist that I play hopskotch with her.

Now, when such a charming well-behaved little girl says "Dr, you've been tagged", you fear that this is the beginning of the end. The next thing you know, she'll insist that you take her to the fing-fing in the lot-lot, and play pickaboo with Winnie-Pooh, otherwise she'll su-su all over your fofa. Clearly, preemptive measures were called for, to avoid a rapid descent into depravity.

I wrote her a stern e-mail to go play with kids her own age, and not disturb chacha-ji. And then she patiently explains that this is not some children's game where the simple objective is to gouge everyone else's eyes out. No, sir! The idea is that a bloke, say person A, writes a 55-word story. In the process, he discovers that writing 55-word stories, and not Peanut Butter, is the key to salvation. Fuelled by the good samaritan spirit, person A then wants persons B, C, D, E and F, all bosom buddies and childhood mates, to also bite off the fruit of Knowledge. Then these people write stories and invite their bosom buddies to do so, and so on.

I have had a long career of hearing idiocy, since I talk to myself quite a bit. But I've never ever heard anything quite so idiotic. That is when it struck me that neither Evolution nor God can end up creating anything as ridiculous as Man. Then, sipping my hot tea, I came up, in a trice, with the brilliant theory of the Big Prank, which neatly explains how and why we are what we are, and puts forever to rest the Creation-Evolution debate. But that's for another post.

I was going to send a legal notice to TheDQ, but then I realized that she had a point. For all my God-like virtues, I'm after all, human, and writing 55-word stories is the way of all flesh. So here goes mine:

Allah said, "I created men. I am the one true God."
Krishna screamed, "Liar! Impostor! I created men."
The devil entered, and said, "Good job, whichever one did it! They tag each other to write 55 word stories."
Allah said, "You created them, you fool".
Krishna said, "Don't blame me! You did it! Pig!!"
Amen.

Note 1
TheDQ : I'm being a creep, to put it mildly. This is not the first time, it won't be the last. But it was just too tempting, and you know that I'd sooner offend a friend than lose the opportunity for a joke. But hey, I did at least write a 55-word story. In fact, here's one more:

Mr. Verma said, "Munnoo, caam heeeyar. Uncle ko namaste bolo!"
Munnoo rolled in, looking at me coldly.
"He ees jaast chaild, but he can kaawoont up to 10. Munnoo, uncle to numbers bolo!"
Munnoo squeaked, "One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten!"
Mr. Verma smiled apologetically, and said, "Baccha hai, Seekh jaayega"

Note 2
Since friend collection is not one of my hobbies, I don't know 5 blog-writing people whom I can tag. P~ and ~P, you are welcome to write ghastly 55-word stories if you want. Just don't blame them on me.

An Evening By A Lake

I walked alone once to a lake,
Remorseful and heavy of heart,
Ashamed, in a quarrel's wake,

Of playing in pettiness a part.

In truth, there was but little pain.
A tiny ripple in a sea of calm.
And what of pain did remain,
Was really a bittersweet balm.

(For remorse is but a game
Every kind man slyly enjoys.
Virtue often courts the blame,
In its own rigour to rejoice.)

The conflict seems simple now,
But that day it seemed profound.
And I paced, with furrowed brow,
Now thinking, now looking around.

I glanced awhile at the setting sun,
And asked why man with man strives.
I turned and saw the east darken,
And sought meaning in our petty lives.

A full hour I spent thus thinking,
Of questions grand and far too grave.
To the red sun, now slowly sinking,
'Twas but divided attention I gave.

Perchance I turned, and behold!
The west now wore heavenly hues.
'Twas blood, brick, brown and gold,
'Gainst grey and a million blues.

For a while, I stood in dumb awe,
But thought slowly, slyly returned.
And I sadly rose to leave, but I saw
Near me a robin, westward turned.

He was staring at what I'd just seen.
But briefly he turned to catch my eye,
And turned quickly back to the scene,
Like one asking me to look at the sky.

To leave would have been impolite,
And so I sat and looked westward.
Together, we mourned the dying light,
Two brothers, not just man and bird.

As night fell, he quietly flew away,
With not even a chirped goodbye.
There wasn't anything left to say:
We were one--he, the sky, and I.

As I bid farewell to the lakeshore,
The big answers I still didn't know.
But I asked big questions no more,
So I gently smiled, and rose to go.

Epilogue:
My wisdom alas soon did ebb,
For wisdom is but a living thing,
I'm caught again in the web,
Again have I fallen to striving.

But not all of me stoops to fight,
For even as I hear the battlecry,
I dimly see a bird in fading light.
And I smile, for I'm he, and he's I.


Note
This attempt at poetry was made on October 2nd. On the same day, it was discussed in a popular forum, frequented, my dear reader, by cultured art lovers like you. You can find the article here.

Meter Lost, Poet Suicidal

From our special correspondent
Dallas, TX

Serial poet B. is disconsolate: his magnum opus "An Evening By a Lake" (link) was so nearly a critically acclaimed classic. It had everything: a touching core idea (inspired, let us say by Frost's "A Tuft of Flowers"), a beautiful photograph of Lake Yellowstone, and even rhyming lines. Critics claim, however, that the complete absence of meter in it makes the poem something of a failure. Meter, as the reader might know, is commonly used to make poetry rhythmic.

A press-release from serial poet Badri says : "The absence of meter in the poem was forced on me by the sudden and unexpected loss of my own meter, and the unavailability of replacements in the market." The release continues, "I had it [the meter], I even used in the first line, but I took my eye off because I was getting the lines to rhyme, and before I knew it, it was gone."

When contacted, serial poet Badri was depressed and incoherent. "It [the poem] would have been a masterpiece. If I hadn't lost my meter, it would have sounded musical. But now, it sounds like I ate too much mirchi bhajji before writing it."

We asked serial poet Badri if he couldn't make do without meter. He replies with an emphatic no. He laments:

"Writing poetry without meter,
Is like wiping up without water.

The result doesn't appeal a bit,
The damn thing's just full of shit.

For verse, meter is a vital part,
Without it, you get fart not art."

Citizens with the good-samaritan spirit are requested to either seek out serial poet Badri's lost meter, or lend him one for the interim. This is an emergency situation. "There are just two things I really crave," says serial poet Badri, "..., and the second thing is to write poetry."

Tender Homage to a Beautiful Soul

A reader of this blog points out that there's nothing in it about the life of the writer. The reader, who is evidently a trained practitioner of the scientific method, infers that the writer does not have a life. The reader is wrong, and the point of this post is to prove it. Proving people wrong is, after all, the purpose and chief pleasure of the writer's life.

Quite simply, I'll prove I have a life by paying tender homage to one of my close friends (note the plural), a bosom buddy dearer to me than life itself. Out of my inherent respect for people's privacy, I'll not directly name this thick chum, but merely call him Regis Rex The Sphinx, or Regis for short.

If I may digress a little, I invite the reader to marvel at the audacious genius of this pseudonym. It is merely a translation of my friend's original Brownese name to English. To get the original requires only two things : brown skin and a non-zero IQ. Each of these ingredients is available in plenty, but ne'er the twain shall meet. Ay, there's the rub, and the tantalizing trickery of the pseudonym. Not subtle but simple is the stroke of genius, but how fresh is its force, how rare its rawness!

Enough said about sociology, codes and genius. Let us proceed now with the tribute.

Regis, I've always said, is truly a friend in need, meaning that he always needs one to do something for him. He's one of those beautiful people who grow on one, just like an extra finger, or a pus-filled boil. When people first meet Regis, they think it's a coincidence. After the second meeting, they begin to suspect it's a mistake. The third time around, they are trying to decide between disaster and international conspiracy. The fourth meeting brings with it the resigned realization that this is the Finger of Heaven. After the fifth meeting, they stop thinking, but feel a vague, dull pain. Some sturdy souls live to the sixth time, but nobody quite knows what they feel since they're beyond speech. Noone has yet survived the seventh meeting.

To the naive (and lucky) reader who has never met Regis, this description seems a touch extreme. To edify this gentle reader, I should perhaps give more details. Here are recordings of what Regis tells people at various stages of a relationship that grows more alarming with each passing moment.

Meeting 1 : Hey, so nice to meet you, man. Please can you just give me a ride to Walmart?

Meeting 2 : Hey, give me a ride to Walmart. I might take a little time there. Why don't you review this paper for me while you're waiting?

Meeting 3 : Wazzup? Let's go to Walmart first on the way to lunch. By the way, tell me how to solve this N-dimensional optimization problem. Your research is similar, right? I need to write up a paper by tomorrow.

Meeting 4 : [Stage directions : Regis enters scratching his head. This denotes the "comfortable old friend" phase of the relationship, meaning Regis is growing comfortable and you're growing old.] Dei, vetti badu! Give me your car. I need to go to Walmart. Yeah, by the way, here are my notes on my research. I think it's an N-dimesional optimization problem. Why don't you state it clearly and solve it? Do it before I come back. I need it for my meeting today.

Meeting 5 : [Regis enters scratching, well, let's say 2.75 feet below his head.] Mayiru! Loser! Your tank was nearly empty last time. I just about made it back. You thought I'll fill gas? Kanjoos! Why do you hoard all your money? Anyway, give me your car and some money. I need to take my friend out to lunch. I need to publish more papers, man. I need ideas. Why don't you come up with some nice problem in network topology and solve it?

As I've earlier noted, minutes of meeting 6 are regrettably unavailable.

Let it not, from the above, be concluded that Regis is anything but admirable, and less than pleasant. No man rushes to another's help faster than Regis, as long, of course, that no loss of cash is involved. No man knows the loopholes in the law more thoroughly. No man has ever converted the annual India trip to an equally profitable business venture. No man has pimped cheap cellphones for more grad students. No man makes better coffee, or hands it out with greater love. No man laughs at himself more, or has greater reason to. (This post, for instance, was written at Regis' insistence.)

I've said this many a time, and I say it again: there's no man I'd rather become than Regis. He remains the only man I'm truly jealous of, for he's closer to salvation than anyone else I know. To Moksha, there are but two paths : one is to refine thought till it transcends the narrow confines of time, space and personality; the other is to screw thought and concentrate on cash. The Buddha took the first road, and Regis has taken the other.

Regis is that transcendent one-with-the-One, the All-Pervading Self, the realized soul, the Brahman. That misguided old fool Emerson read some RSS propaganda and went on and on about the virtues of the Brahman (Google : Emerson Brahma). If he'd been alive, he'd have let Brahman be and sung instead of Regis

They reckon ill who think me a wimp,
When me they mock, I steal their cash,
I am the drug dealer, and I the pimp,
And I'll find treasures in what you trash.

Regis, verily I say unto you : I'm your fan, admirer and devotee. I'm your follower in this world, and servant in the next. I'm the merest dust on your feet. I am prepared, nay eager, to give you my fondest devotion, my most fawning obeisance, my most prayerful veneration, my most unjudging reverence, my most unquestioning obedience.

But why, oh why, do you insist that I give you cash instead?

The Dirt About Sigmund, and Why Kids are OK After All!

The propaganda of Sigmund Freud and his cohorts has been tragically effective: Everyone these days believes kids are obsessed with sex. A New York Times survey reveals that fewer people than ever hold and pet their children, wary perhaps of the storied lustfulness of the little ones' subconscious minds. The moral standing of children, I'm afraid, is at an all time low.

Take, for instance, the last post on this blog. It was intended to illustrate one of my pet theories about human relationships. The point of writing it with children was not only to make the reader suspend harsh judgement, but also to take sex out of the picture, as much as possible. However, all three readers of this popular blog thought the damn thing was a love story. (They also thought I should stick to fart jokes, the damn barbarians!) Kids, it is assumed, are just too lewd to be just friends.

This perversion of the public opinion greatly saddens me. I confess I'm very fond of children, as long as they are other people's children. After much personal interaction with them, I've come to the conclusion that they are not evil monsters or lustful devils. No! Au contraire, they are general dudes, only a little cuter and a lot smellier.

Like all honest writers, I wish to elevate the public morals and fight false propaganda. To that end, I'll now relate the true story of old Sigmund's hypocrisy, his son's perceived peccadillos, and how the combination of the two led to the establishment of two schools of psycho-analysis and, more tragically, the untimely death of Sigmund Junior.

Sigmund, as is well known, had a chela called Jung. It is less well known that Sigmund had a son, and Jung had a daughter, and they were friendly. In fact, the two never had fights to the death with home-made hand grenades, and this, naturally, led to some suspicion about their normalcy. Rumours, unproved to this day, were heard that their mamma-pappa game involved more than just mock-cooking by Freud junior and TV-watching by the young Jungess. For a surprisingly long time, the vile whispers didn't reach the ears of the doting fathers. Many a time, Sigmund and Jung used to discuss the suspected debaucheries of other people's kids, smiling indulgently at their angelic offspring at play.

The idyll was rudely ruptured. On a fine spring morning, Sigmund had the following conversation with the missus. (Let not the story-teller be blamed for the silly lines that follow. They merely reproduce the flowery language that is common in psychoanalytic households.)

S :
Oh! Flower of the Far East!
On you my eyes daily feast!
Oh! stunning sultry Frau mine,
For you every moment I pine!
Oh! Lady lovely and luscious,
The passion of my Unconscious,
Star that doth my sky adorn,
How are your bowels this morn?

Mrs. S :
Oh! Handsome daadi!
My sweet sugar daddy!
Master of the Hidden Mind,
Whose equal none can find!
Emperor of the id and th' ego,
Smoothly did my motions go.
Oh! Hero whom I love a lot,
How was your session at the pot?

S : [anguished]
Out it flowed like a stream.
But wait, I had a strange dream.
Our son, heavenly little lad,
In my dream, was sex-mad.
My unconscious grows senile,
Our angel so unfairly to revile.

Mrs. S:
Oh, precious husband mine,
You drink too much wine.
It isn't a dream, for Chrissake,
You saw it while wide awake.
How can you fail to notice,
What a vile beast the boy is?
And why, oh why, did he pick,
That Jung's horny little chick?
If he had to be such a little pig,
Why not our neighbour Hedwig?

S:
I see! My damn unconscious,
Finding the truth too odious.
Through its usual sly scheming
Made me think I was dreaming.

Mrs. S:
You of all people fooled, honey!
If it weren't sad, it'd be funny.
Weren't you, dear, first to find,
Every baby has a filthy mind?

S:
About other children, I was sure.
But our boy, I thought was pure.
"Boys are beasts," I boldly said,
Thinking our boy was well-bred.

But surely, he isn't the one to blame.
The fool can barely spell his name.
Even if he had desire in his veins,
He just doesn't have the brains.
It's that girl's doing, thatI know.
She asked, and he couldn't say 'no'.
The vixen! Gotterdamerung! [note: Gotterdamerung = God-damn in Deutsch]
I will take this up with Jung.

So saying, Sigmund stormed right out of his house, and right into the Jung's. Now Jung had had a similar revelation from his Frau and was all aboil. An argument ensued that cannot be reproduced in this PG-rated blog. Finally, Freud walked out in a huff. Poor Jung had to find other means to relieve the pressure.

The two great minds worked furiously to rationalize this new, painful piece of information into their Map of the Mind. So it is that Sigmund proposed the superego, which essentially says, "My son's subconscious is a pig, but deeper down, he is a saint." Jung came up with the theory of the Collective Unconscious, which says, "My daughter is a sex maniac, but so, my friend, are you!"

It would have been tragic enough if it had ended here. But both men were closet Republicans, and couldn't take this slur on the family lying down.

Jung sent his daughter to Alabama, thinking she'll acquire Christian values by association. It was a mistake. They noticed that she was European, and had even looser morals than Bill Clinton. Naturally, they concluded she was the Devil. Her death by stoning, it is reported, was slow and painful.

Freud, hearing this, smiled to himself, and sent his son instead to Gujarat, India. Lack of morals, he reasoned, wasn't likely to be a problem there. It was a grevious miscalculation. The Gujaratis noted that the boy was white, and more virtuous even than their home-grown divinity, Lord Krishna. Naturally, they concluded he was a missionary, and burned him. Old timers in Ahmedabad still say that there is nothing quite like fried Freud to go with a well-aged pot of bhang.

An Estrangement

The girl cried. The boy, her best friend in the whole world, had refused to play with her. He was going to play with other boys. They called him a girlie wuss, and he was ashamed. He didn't like them, but he had to go play with them anyway. He felt like crying too, but her tears cheered him up. He felt powerful, like his father. "Don't be such a girl," he said, and ran away.

He had fun playing with the other boys that day, and came back home happy. He thought of the girl, and smiled. She was such a baby, making a fuss about this. Of course, he couldn't keep playing with her all the time, though he liked her more than anyone else, even more than his own brother. How small she looked, crying but trying to not show it. He'll make it up to her the next day. He'll let her wear his boy scout's cap. That'll make her happy. She looked very sweet when she laughed, almost as sweet as when she cried.

The girl cried for a while. She went to the park, and tried the swing. She couldn't go very high on it without him pushing her. She got down after a while, and went home miserable. Her baby brother came running towards her. She pushed him away. He cried. She pinched him. He cried a little more. Her mother came in and slapped her. She wanted to cry, but didn't. She just stared at her mother. Her mother slapped her again, took the baby and went in to cook. She waited till her mother left, and cried. She cried till her father came in to call her for dinner. He saw her, smiled and took her in his lap. She cried into his shoulder for five minutes. They went in for dinner, her mother gave her an extra sweet. She suddenly felt very happy. She slept between her parents that night, and made them both keep their hands on her.

The next day, the boy almost ran to school. Even so, he was late. He couldn't talk to her before the school assembly. He waited impatiently for the recess. When the bell rang, he sprang up to go to the girls's row, but she was already walking out with her next-seat neighbour. She was laughing. Suddenly he hated her. How silly she looks while laughing, he thought. All day, she avoided him, and all day he was miserable. That evening, it wasn't much fun playing with the boys. He misfielded thrice, and his teammates shouted at him to go back and play with girls, since that's all he was good for. He couldn't leave.

The girl had been miserable all day. She had expected him to follow her and talk to her. "He doesn't care!" she thought, "Well, he can please himself. I have my friends too." She played with her brother all evening. She thought he was very cute, even when he clawed her.

They didn't talk to each other for two months. Both were miserable.

The girl got out of it first. A new girl had moved into the next house. She went to the same class. They met each other shyly first, huddling close to each other's mothers. The ice soon thawed. They were thick friends, exchanging feathers and blue and pink hair bands.

The boy was learning to bike. He would often pass by the girl's house for no reason, frowning and looking ahead. He hoped she'd notice and talk to him, so that he could snub her. The girl did notice. She'd almost forgotten the fight. One day, she stopped him and introduced her new friend. "We're going to our singing lessons now. If you want, you can come and play with us tomorrow", she said.

The boy went home. He beat his brother. When his mother stopped him, he hit out at her. She stopped him easily, then just glared at him and took his brother away. When his father came, he was morose. His mother told his father he'd been wild all evening. He wished his father would beat him. His parents just talked softly, and left the room. He cried. He cried for himself. He cried because he was sad and she was not. He cried because she didn't care anymore.

From the next day, he played with the other boys every evening.

The girl sometimes came and talked to the boy. First, he wept bitterly every time after she left. Slowly, he stopped crying, and she stopped approaching him.

The girl and the boy avoided each other, but were polite whenever they had to talk. His father was transferred next year, and he moved out of town.

They go to college now. They don't remember each other.

Harry Potter and the Hounding of Brown People

Brown men the world over are rising in revolt. They've read the latest J. K. Rowling book, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, and it contains much that deeply shocks and disturbs them. They do not particularly object to Ron's unexpected gory death on page 459. No, fatalism is at the very core of brown men's beings. They shrug and read on.

They even readily forgive HP & the HBP for being another tiresome tale about the Cosmic Conflict between the White Side & the Dark Side. Brown men know that no matter what giant strides they make in world politics or world population, no one will ever talk of of Yellow vs. Black or White vs. Brown. The image of brown and yellow men as peacable non-violent vegetarian bystanders is here to stay. True, the white man kills quickly, and the black man kills with flair, but the yellow man kills more quietly than these two, and while the brown man lacks swiftness, style or stealth, he has sheer numbers. However, the brown man will never get credit for all this world-class killing he does, and he knows it. In the world's grand epics, the brown man will never be hero or villain. He's stoically resigned to being forever a sidekick.

Nay, what has finally set brown men's blood boiling is the indiscriminate snogging, smooching, necking, pecking, coo-chi-cooing, jalabulajungs, whisper-it-softly-KISSING that abounds in HP & the HBP. The damn book has more physical intimacy than the average PTC bus in Madras, and more R-rated content than The Transcendental Metaphysical Reverberations of Disgusting Sexual Acts and other art movies that intellectual people seem to watch for purely intellectual reasons.

Every page of HP & the HBP has serious adult material. To suitably explain this, it is best to use algebraic notation, where X is somebody, Y is somebody who is not X, and Z is somebody who is neither X nor Y. In every page of HP & the HBP, either X is necking with Y, or X is imagining him or herself necking with Y, or X is imagining that Y is necking with Z, or X is imagining that Y thinks that he/she (i..e, X) is necking with Z (who you might recall, is neither X or Y), or X is imagining that Z will rudely interrupt when he/she (again X, big day for him/her) is necking with Y, ...

The terrible thing is that this sudden epidemic of incessant, universal necking features Harry Potter and his band of punk teenagers. Yes, teenagers. Not Bill Clinton, not the poor old people who came out of retirement to act in Swabhimaan, not even middle-aged Mallu matrons of giant proportions incongruously called Babykutti. No, sir. I repeat: these teenagers do with practised nonchalant ease, things that the average 25 year-old brown man only fantasizes about blushingly while boiling his daily glass of milk-with-no-sugar-both-my-parents-have-diabetes- and-i'm- watching-my-weight.

"So what?", you smikingly say, my white friend from Boston, Southern Canada. You think the brown man is a prude (yeah, like that'll stick. there are a coupla billion of us and counting, baby), or that the brown man is just a sex-starved middle aged mama. Worse, you call him a hypocrite, a raving conservative lunatic, a jihadi.

You're wrong. There's one thing no self-respecting brown man will tolerate, and that's being accused of moral values. It's not outraged virtue that's driving the brown backlash, but jealous rage.

Imagine that! Teenagers black and white are necking like there's no tomorrow, and the brown man, at the ripe old age of 33, has never so much as kissed the hem of a maiden's robe. Heck, even his fantasies about necking are based on pure guesswork. He hasn't seen the darn thing being done, even on film. When there's the remotest sniff of a smooch in the next five minutes, brown men's movies start showing flowers dangling, or birds feeding each other juicy worms, or most terrifyingly, a picture of a laughing baby. Brown men nearing retirement age naively believe that a smooch is a sure-fire child-producer, and avoid it like the very plague.

Thus it is that the brown man has, pardon the poor pun, impeckable chastity till his parents wake up and arrange a marriage for him, when he's nearly thirty five. Not for him the pleasures of youth: he has to slog his behind off and pass some entrance exam or the other. Not for him dates with pretty young things, for he's too busy learning English, Hindi and other foreign languages that are constantly forced down his throat. Not for him the tender joys of young love, for he is invariably locked up in a men-only engineering school where the sight of women's footwear is enough to send thrills down people's spines and spark off wild orgies.

Isn't the brown man, then, right to feel hounded? Is it fair to tell him that love, to him, is a spectator sport, and he can but cheer forever from the sidelines? Is it rational to expect him to just stand and watch when half-grown manlings and womanlings smooch away? Isn't it understandable that he wants to join the party or burn down the building? Can anyone help but sympathize with him?

Women of the world, particularly you lovely sisters of my white and black brothers who are yet not my sisters! Repent. Make amends. It's still not too late. Show the brown man all the affection you can.

He's nasty, but he needs it.

He's horrible, but he hungers for it.

He's disgusting, but he deserves it.

Please, please, please.


PS: To all Harry Potter fans, I'm one too. No offense meant. And Ron doesn't really die on page 459. He only starts his sentimental speech on that page. Actual death, which experts agree occurs only when the heroine wears white and snivels before a bloke's garlanded photo, occurs only on page 462.

A Brief History of Rakhi

When the wolves in the woods die of mass diarrhoea, do the doe and the deer sing dulcet tunes and dance in delight, or suffer dreadful dullness and dolefully dream wistful dreams of deadlier, more dangerous days? I do not know. All I do know is that it's that time of the year again, and a strange emptiness fills my heart. I've never known a rakhi day when I wasn't slinking away from the postman's knock or the beckoning beauties or the new grad students whom the sirens use as their messenger. (The last mentioned are the most psychologically challenging: you know you've got to hate the smirking face that hands you the rakhi cover, but deep down, your heart cries for him. Did you not, with similarly unseeing pride, deliver rakhis for Haritha Hazaarbhaiya last year, and will not this trusting lad suffer the same cruel blow next year?)

I should perhaps explain my lament to my non-Indian readers, if any be so loserly as to read a brown man's blog. The rakhiis an ancient North Indian custom, and like all ancient North Indian customs, it has a history of horrible bloodshed and suffering behind it. It's a long tale I'm going to relate, my friends, and I beg your indulgence.

It is well known that the sex ratio in India is slightly skewed, there being about 51.3 men to every woman. Long were the lovely dark tresses of the ancient Indian woman, and longer still the snaking queues of lustful lads longing for the merest glance from the lissome lass. Of course, a lady can't like every suitor, and so it is that some were put to labour and some to death. But there came a time when ladies tired of saying no, the Hindi phrase for "no" being Chullu bhar pani me doob maro, shaitan ke santan. Further, reports had reached the ladies that some men found being fried in oil a touch uncomfortable, and we all know that the Indian Woman won't tolerate discomfort, even to an excessively persistent suitor.

A gentler, more humane way to refuse proposals was needed. Many ideas were considered, some of which have led to various contemporay conveniences like cold fuel, sweetened rat poison, musical electric chairs, and so on. But the breakthrough idea came, as breakthrough ideas always come, from a burger-selling, hair-gel using Gujarati called Piyush "Bobby" Shah, who was looking at quite a different problem.

It is common knowledge that North India is a strife-torn land, where killing is common and bloodshed blase'. After all, the Hindi word for the commonplace "chop off his head, drink his blood, feed him to the dogs, save the remains for shahi korma" is katl, while the Hindi phrase for the abstract and unusual term "peace" is kya ghaati batein kar raha hai, be! Dimaag ghas char raha hai kya. In such a land, people from different villages of course had to kill each other, but tragic and too frequent was the accidental killing of brother by brother, comrade by comrade, neighbour by neighbour. Brown-skinned people, as you might notice in any high-tech firm, tend to look sinister and suspicious, even when they're just going to take their hourly leak. When you sight brown skin, it's always better to lop the head off first, and ask questions later.

It was this problem of incestuous killing that Piyush "Bobby" Shah solved by using the colored turban. Each village was to have a friendly color. All the residents of that village got to have that color dyed on their turban free of cost. If, for some reason, two villages, say Rampur and Srirampur were to become friendly, then Rampur's people could wear the sporty light saffron color of Srirampur on their turbans, and Srirampur's citizens could proudly bear the sportier lighter saffron color of Rampur on theirs. One look at a man's turban, one quick look at your own village's "do not kill" list, and you knew whether to throttle or embrace this dusky stranger. Also, to avoid cheating, it was your duty to kill anybody who wore the colour of an unfriendly village.

Like all great ideas, Piyush's brainchild pervaded popular culture. To this day, North Indians celebrate Holi, a one-day voluntary ceasefire when people daub each other with all known colors, indicating that all villages are to be on friendly terms that day. On Holi day, all men are brothers and one can go on unarmed into the lush green fields of the Great Gangetic Plains and relieve oneself without fear of gruesome death.

Seeing the stupendous success of the color coding scheme, the gentle ladies of ancient India wept for joy and decided to adopt this idea for their Humane Suitor Refusal campaign. Their requirement, was of course, much simpler. It was not necessary to indicate who had refused a given man, merely to indicate that he is being refused. Colors, with their costly need for dyeing, were not necessary. A mere token of refusal would do.

And thusly came into being the lovely custom of rakhi. When a woman wished to refuse a man, she simply gave him a piece of thread, marked red tilak on his head, and called him bhaiya. Like all other Indian customs, this one is deeply symbolic on multiple levels.

1. Bhaiya in Hindi means "sucker! loser! The next batch of grad students is in. They can wash my clothes and do my dishes. And Sameer next door has bought a car, so I don't need you to give me rides. I have no more use for you. Become scare. Drrrr.!"

2. The red tilak is applied to all animals before they are slaughtered. The color red, of course, indicates blood, but also refers to Ek Handi dal chaval which tastes very good with fried fingernails.

3. The piece of thread says, "I should actually kill you right here and right now, but the smell of rotting flesh interferes with my digestion, and cremation is both costly and environmentally unfriendly. Kindly have the good sense to go far away and hang yourself. This rope isn't long enough, but this is all I can spare at the moment."

It is understood that the rakhi, once given, is final. The recipient of the rakhi, even if he be so ungentlemanly as to not move out of the district, should maintain consistently a cold attitude towards the giver of the rakhi, going any length to avoid even being seen by her. In other words, he should treat the giver of the rakhi like he would treat his own sister. Thus it is that the word bhaiya, explained above, has also come to mean brother in contemporary Hindi.

This beautiful ancient custom, started first in the sixteenth century B.C., has survived to this day. So it is that Indian lads, in a touching but vain effort at prolonging their license for lustfulness, try to go undercover on rakhi day. They go to Timbuktoo, practise deep undersea diving, take a cruise to Antartica, become astronauts and escape into deep space, hide in manholes and septic tanks, attend classes, go to work, visit their parents, and conceal themselves in other unlikely places. But long is the reach of a resolute lass, and many that have imagined themselves safe have had rakhis delivered at the very last moment. As Bill Shakespeare has wisely said, "Verizon hath no coverage like a woman determined to scorn".

All for a chick, or Charlie and the Prelate Factory!

The Church should wake up, smell the coffee, have a long shower to get over the hangover and make Charlie Darwin a saint. Noone else has ever composed a more beautiful hymn to God, fondly known as the Big Boy.

You see, the Church thinks God bought an assembly kit from K-mart, spent six days making up the Earth, the Heavens and All things bright and beautiful, had a nice nap on the seventh and has since been keeping score of men's sins till the Big Audit comes along. In other words, the Big Boy is some kind of mechanically talented accountant.

Along came Charlie, and proposed the theory of evolution, which essentially says nature, like any other large dynamic system, will constantly go towards its equilibrium, without Big Brother watching it. God didn't have to be a control freak. He just had to make conditions to form the big soup somewhere. From the big soup came bacteria, thence fish, thence birds, worms and Tamil Iyers, thence mammals, thence monkeys, thence man.

It is tempting to say that Charlie just proposed gibberish. After all, no one has really seen a monkey suddenly quote the Vedas, or at least no one officially admits to it. More to the point, Charlie's dynamic system, nature, is hopelessly huge, and it's impossible to write down the steady-state equations for it, leave alone the initial conditions and the transients. In other words, you can only cook up explanations based on Charlie's theories, not realistically predict the result of a Bihar bye-election, leave alone the future of life. Essentially, one might argue, Charlie just did a Fermat, wrote 2 + 2 = The Collected Works of Ayn Rand on his toilet paper, and conked off without giving the proof.

So have all Republicans, Southern Democrats, Evangelicals, Creationists, Baptists, Anabaptists, Unitarians, Protestants, Catholics and other sorts of Jihadi Christians argued. So, too, did your humble correspondent wax non-judgemental till last Saturday when his eyes were opened by The March of the Penguins, a must-see documentary if ever there was one.

The basic story is that Emperor penguins, like South Indian men, defy the elements, dare death, and conjure miracles of patience and persevarance just to get a chick. It goes as follows: Sometime before the beginning of winter, Emperor penguins collect in huge groups walk 50 miles inland in the Antarctic winter to the very spot where they were born. There, they pair up following decorous, well-defined courting rituals. Then they do it, and the she-penguin lays an egg. (Note: Penguins seem to have read too much Tolstoy. They go in for a 20-second quickie, considering sex only a means to procreation, one assumes.)

And here's where the fun begins. The penguin's egg in the sub-freezing Antarctic winter is like a 5-paise coin in Trivandrum. You drops it, you loses it before you can say Babykutti Kunjumon. So the egg has to be balanced on the penguin's feet and kept warm under their fur till the chick hatches, some two months later. Now, mama's already laid an egg and can't starve no more, so she hobbles back to the ocean to hunt for grub, after handing over (OK, legging over) the egg to papa. Here's the killer : the fathers just stand there, all huddled together to keep out the cold, for two months with the eggs under their feathers, on their feet. No grub, no evening visits to Ethiraj college to check out the babes, no booze, no cigarette, nothing. They actually take turns standing on the circumference of the huddle, where it's coldest. Winterstorms rage around them, but they don't make sentimental speeches about dad's unrequited love like King Lear. No, sir: they just huddle a little closer, and swear in genteel undertones.

The chicks hatch by and by, but after a brief dekko from papa, Junior goes right back under the apron. The mothers return after two months, and after a tearful reunion and a censored kiss, papa trudges to the ocean, while mama takes over the tending of munnoo. Finally, after the chicks are grown up enough to demand cable TV and sleepover rights, mama leaves them to their devices and trudges back to sea.

The chicks don't go the ocean. The ocean comes to the chicks. It's summer, you see, and all the ice has melted. The chicks then enjoy fishing, swimming and other junior league sports, and prepare for grown-up life, consisting as always of much ado over chicks, very little sex, wives that leave the hearth untended and hubby unfed, brats that need constant sheltering, and air-conditioning that doesn't work.

Here's where Charlie comes in. Noone who see TMotPcan fail to see the crushing, stunning elegance of Evolutionism and the loserliness of Creationism. To say that all the beauty, greatness, nobility, grace, courage, drama of this tale came because Big Boy chaired an Emperor Penguin Orientation meeting on Day Five is ridiculous. More than that, it's profane and completely blasphemous. Consider, then, the Evoultionary explanation of this is, i.e., that penguins evolved this elaborate rigmarole in response to gradual climactic change as the Antarctic broke away from the equatorial mainland. It's beautiful, spellbinding, uplifting, divine.

It may be that Evolution is the wrong theory. At least, it may be that it's unnecessary, since it doesn't reduce one's hair loss any more than Creation does. But it sure gives more elegant explanations for everything, and that, mes amis, is enough reason to believe.

Note:
This unduly long post was written as my personal birdie to S~, who thought I cannot be serious for more than 5 minutes at a stretch. S~, you blister on bin Laden's bottom, louse on Lalu Prasad's head, pimple on Pol Pot's face, coveter of other people's underwear, you BITS-ian! I've proved my worth again. I've torn your j~. I'm serious, dude. I'm the Crown Prince, Director-General, Program Manager of seriousness. I'm more serious than Terri Schiavo ever was. I'm so serious the liberals want to kill me to prove their kindness and the conservatives want to keep me alive to show their commitment to moral values. Paul Wolfowitz has more humour in him than me. I won't know a joke if it comes and bite me on my arse. Whenever anyone says joke, I think it's a mallu saying chalk. You'll die laughing, you vile comedian, and I'll survive forever with a face like a funeral. After all, the bible does say that the geek shall inherit the earth. Ha, ha, ha!

On this extremely grown-up note, I leave y'all to your petty crimes till the next one. Stay out of jail. Peace.

I slogged, I blogged, and I went to bed!

We are testing our design in the lab, and of course, nothing works. So the last weekend was spent at work. I mean, the last weekend was really spent at work:I landed up there at 9 am on Saturday and left at 3 am on Monday, with two breaks of 4 and 2 hours respectively. Of course, one might say I slogged because I'm an anti-social, despo seengle luzaar (that's single loser in Bengali), who needs to get a life. Well, that's clearly true, but it's so boring that one should come up with a different explanation.

One might think I slogged because I wanted to be thaa man,and shine in Heaven's glorious light, and be considered a superhero, and get a raise and climb up the ladder, and gain recognition among my peers, and be known to upper management as the Rock on which the company stands, and all that. But this is not only boring, it's also untrue. You see, from generations of hiding in the forests from the invading Bhaiyas, South Indians have evolved to be camouflaged by wood. Like my other South Indian brethren, I just blend into the office furniture. Maybe I'd be noticed if I went to work in pink shirt and purple pants, but I seriously doubt it. Heck, even if I went naked, I don't think it'll register a blip on anybody's radar. The good thing, of course, is that I won't be fired, because nobody even knows I exist.

Let it also be said that I've been very understated about my weekend's achievements. The only time I talked about it was this morning:

Colleague : Hey, it's hot today, man.
Badri : True. I think it's 95, which is slightly less than 36 degrees celsius, which is actually less than the number of hours I spent at work this weekend.

Strange, things have been quiet at work today. Very little conversation with anyone. I guess everyone must be awed by my sincerity.

Anyway, the really amazing thing, and I guess the point of this blog, is that I absolutely, thoroughly, completely enjoyed the weekend slog in the lab, and I've been wondering why.

Well, first of all, there's the existential pleasure of engineering. (Yes, I use the word existential in everyday conversation, and no, I don't know what it really means, and no-ho-ho, I don't intend to find out! RIP!). I'm not one of those practical make-it-yourself blokes. I don't know a spanner from a rat's arse, and I usually call for qualified help when light bulbs need changing. When I set about removing an airhole in the electric motor at home, I flooded the room, caused a district-wide power failure (that soured Tamil Nadu's relations with Karnataka and almost made us secede from the Union), and launched my cousin's literary career. But even I can feel the thrill of wrestling with something real.

When you solve a cool math problem or answer a quiz question, you feel kicks, of course. In fact, it requires intelligence, so you'd think it's better than engineering, which doesn't really tax a man's, or even a woman's, brain. But making practical stuff work is not really the same thing as solving a difficult problem. For one thing, if you've been working with any reasonably complex system, you don't understand the whole of it, and like all reasonable people, you know that the parts that you didn't design will not work. Worse, like all truly enlightened people, you secretly fear that the Devil exists, and He's punishing you for not believing in Him by messing up the system. Finally, like all good engineers, you distrust logical thinking and believe that the scientific method should be restricted to developing extra-reach toothbrushes and effective contraceptives.

Out of a million random things, you pick one after the other, and after much trial and even greater error, some thing finally works. You know that this was pure chance and it'll stop working soon. If you're a hopeless optimist, you think it'll work again sometime that night. In any case, you try again, and hmm, it works still. And then you try again, and you reset everything and try again, and you go take a leak and try again, and go to bed and come back in the morning, and try again. Finally, you're convinced it really works, and then you cook up some logical explanation and tell your colleagues that you finally figured out the real reason.

In fact, I think all this goes back to our origin as hunter-gatherers. You see, in the old times, they didn't have central heating, and life was really challenging. Nature was not just some place you took your kids to for fun. It was something that you didn't understand or control, but had to work with. Blokes who liked to fight the good fight with muscles straining, brows sweating and hearts singing had a selective advantage over intellectual types who thought about the Human Condition. Thus it is that Nature taught Man to love fighting her, and thus it is that bull-fighting is more popular than chess. We all instintively thrill in working with complex, irrational, intractable systems. Why else would men marry and have children?

In fact, when you dig a little deeper, it's clear that anybody who genuinely loves engineering also loves Nature and believes in God, because he knows a complex system when he sees one, and he knows that there obviously must have been a designer to optimize the amplifier gain in the forward path, the time constant of the feedback path and the probabilities of detection and false alarm in the controller.

Even in a completely corny movie scene, like the bulb lighting up in Swades, you feel a secret thrill when some contraption works. When you spend 5 hours and finally see zero BER (or whatever) on the screen, you can almost hear Beethoven in the background.

That, my friends, is real kicks. Sex, drugs, mud-wresting and mountain climbing are nothing compared to it. (Yeah, I would know. I've seen all these on TV, and everyone knows that things are better on TV than in real life.)

There is, I think, one more reason why this weekend was so much fun. It's the same reason why people were happier during the War than they're now, and why we'll all end up killing each other. But that's for another blog. So much for now.