Journal Entry #5 05 April 2016 2138 hrs

The new US president calls his chief of staff and asks him to prepare an all woman army (ground assault, air force, the whole deal) and use it for fighting in the middle east. "The only real way to beat a man is to scare him or humiliate him. And nothing would humiliate these extremist assholes and their implicit allies sell us oil (and use the money to buy them weapons) more thoroughly than being mercilessly annihilated by an army of women and women only.

"We've been fighting a one-year war, year after year for thirteen years. We have been paying big pharma for penicillin and the bacteria have become resistant. I am talking about vaccination, end the disease once and for all. You may think I am crazy or naive, but try to imagine what the scientists and politicians in the 1939 thought about Einstein when he imagined the atomic bomb? The people who built the bomb, the people who put us on the moon, they were truly mad, sure they were geniuses, but also mad. What we know about science, what we know of engineering today is largely because of the horrendous mistakes those guys made. They had NO idea what they were doing when it came to space flight, hypersonic behaviour, hell they didn't even know planes would fall apart from fatigue if you flew them high enough for long enough. they just thought of stuff and tried to make it happen, the recorded and analyzed their mistakes, learned from them and pushed on.

"Sadly, we haven't done that when it comes to protecting the interests of America. All this spending, this killing, this fighting and dying in foreign lands, its just a smoke screen, bright lights and loud noises that create the illusion that we're doing something about this serious problem, that we're protecting the interests of American citizens. What we're really doing is protecting the interests of the weapons manufacturers, the military-industrial complex. They need to sell killing machines to stay rich, so we buy them by pretending we need them. Once we buy them we must be seen to be using them, lest we give the impression we're wasting the tax payers money, God forbid. So, we find new excuses to use them, we kill and we tear families apart and we leave anger and hate in our wake, filling the ranks of our enemies with willing recruits.

"I want the real war to end all wars in the middle east. These fuckers, the ones at the top, they believe they have the God given right to rule the world because they call God by a certain name are men. A big part of their philosophy and their lifestyle is the subjugation of women. Even the so called 'progressive' Muslim countries with female nuclear scientists and commandos and whatnot are basically patriarchal hells dressed up pretty for the press. The freedoms women enjoy there are not considered their right, they are believed to be privileges granted by the men, to be withdrawn if and when a woman forgets her place, never mind what she's managed to achieve in the world. One of the pillars of their belief is that God put them above women, made them better, put them in charge.

"This would show them my man. Let them have their asses kicked to kingdom come by a bunch of women. That'll shut them up. I have four years in office, God willing I would not be killed or impeached before that time. Give me my Amazon army. Let us end this once and for all".

The chief of staff thinks the new president is bonkers, and the president can see it in his eyes. He leaves the meeting, thinking that it would've been better to elect Drumpf because this was an even bigger nut case. He had believed it wasn't possible for a bigger nutcase to exist and yet, he has just finished a meeting with one and would be reporting to him for the next four years. "How had none of them seen this coming?" he thinks to himself.

But, the boss has spoken and at least it isn't an order to nuke Russia. So as a token gesture he gets some of the lady brass in the forces together and hauls them over to the White House. He hopes this madness would be forgotten by next week. The president starts with "Ladies, I ask your help in ending the world of men". He starts outlining his plan, the expressions around him start changing from skeptical to resolute. Fifteen minutes later, before the incredulous eyes of the chief of staff, the irate female generals who had walked in to have their time wasted, walk out with the fire of fanaticism burning bright in their eyes. It is the beginning, of the end.

What would I say if I were to give a speech at the UN General Assembly as the Prime Minister of India

Assuming I am me, and not some alter ego of mine and somehow, despite being already completely lost at the age of 25 I decide to further exacerbate my present sorry state by pursuing a career in politics (though for the life of me I cannot imagine what mental ailment would compel me to do so) and succeed in bagging the biggest prize one can in this country, what would my first speech at the UN General assembly be?

(Not that the task of governing a billion and a half hypocritical, misogynist, religious fanatics can be considered a prize by anyone sane)

Now that I have ascertained that I might be seized by the fancy, no matter how unlikely the possibility, I think its wise that I write a speech before hand. I think it would be prudent to do so because my experience in life so far has taught me one thing- people change, and for the worse more often than not. Just like working at a corporate job and a school-college system of education surely destroys your creativity, working in politics will turn me into a jaded nemesis of myself. I would not be the pothead corpulent degenerate I am today, to whom the assertion that all the world's leaders and most of the world's adults are stark raving loony is a logical conclusion derived from careful observation of our world's deplorable condition.

You remember when you turned up for your first day at the first job? That the system running the workplace was an elaborate sham aimed at convincing outsiders a lot of work is being done while systematically making sure nothing ever shall get done was obvious to you wasn't it? Especially to those of you with the misfortune of being an engineer working at the so called core job. But four years down the line, you become one of the automatons, and you forget that you ever figured out something was very very wrong with the place to begin with.

Same principle, different field. I am sure, that by the time I become PM (or any one like me who decides to pursue this lunacy for that matter), I would be completely owned by the system, and would talk, act and spew garbage like the rest of riff-raff that composes world politics. So I'll write my speech now, thank you very much. I'll write it and save it on every online storage resource available to me, and I'll set a reminder on my mobile phone (and all the subsequent mobiles I own) for this date. Every year, from now till the day I become PM my mobile will dutifully beep on this day at midnight and remind me to read this speech to recall why I decided to go about embracing this form of slow death. (Jeez I talk like I am actually gonna run for the   job). And on the D-day, I'll carefully unwrap the brittle yellow pages of the handwritten hard copy, dust it off, scan it, re print it, smoke a toke of the most potent genetically modified weed available on the planet and get ready to drop the stink bomb on the world's high and mighty (assuming there is a world left).

But all that's beating about the bush. The speech will go something like this:

" Respected Secretary General of this august gathering, my fellow delegates, and all my mad compatriots back home, I stand here today in realization of a dream conceived many years ago at the cusp of my youth, one fine night while I was high as a kite. The dream was to one day stand where I stand today and tell you in clear, no nonsense, plain English, what a bunch of mad motherfuckers you all are.

For representation only. I don't like BiBi

Not only have you taken great pride in converting our home into a big stinking pile of industrial waste, you have actually convinced the sorry bastards who put you in office that its a great achievement to stockpile the instruments of your own annihilation. You have taught the populace of the world to take pride in preparing for suicide. The kind where a father shoots his kids, strangles his wife and then slits his own throat before blowing up the neighborhood"

My Little Dude Maker

Lipi mitra madam's younger daughter, Su-mo-na mitra's younger sister, is my little dude maker. The year was 2001, NWWA quiz, after weeks of cramming useless fact after useless fact into our head, acting superstitious like old time sailors, saying shit like 'if this stone right here hits that bottle right there, we win if it doesn't others lose' our unlikely trio was ready for the biggest event of the biggest cultural festival on the Naval school circuit across the country. We were fourteen, and to us it was like, THE event of the school circuit, the day of judgement for the geeks of the school circuit, the NWWA quiz. Navy Wives Welfare Association Quiz.
Note the 'wife', its an office that ranks higher than the President of India, for even the Chief of Naval Staff. And this quiz was their baby; not that it matters now, (nobody tells you at 14 that the only event in life that matters really, is your payday- should occur once a month if you're doing it right) but back then for outcast weirdo geeks like me, this was like the Armageddon or something.
So, were at this biiiiiiiig quiz, with the entire naval brass on the east coast lined up in full gear to be inspected by the collective admiralty of the wives association, you wouldn't see uniforms this crisp and white at the Republic day parade. Huge audience, tension like its the Dark knight's premier at the Kodak Theater and we're doing pretty good in front of the home crowd until a second round mishap on the horn of  Africa by Ayub, puts a wrench in the works  and a frown we'd all learned to fear on the face of our mentor, Meenakshi ma'am.
Ayub is one of my two team mates. Brilliant, humble chap,a Bournvita Quiz finalist. He knew almost everything there was to know about the arcane art of General Knowledge, never in doubt about his facts, never wrong, except when in came to the horn of Africa, that was the one thing he was always confused about. Tunisia  to him, didn't look much like a horn, now Sudan, that was a country that looked like someone drew a horn on the face of Africa. He could never quite get used to the idea of Tunisia being mistaken for a horn by anyone. (you see what they do to kids in school?). So, when the quiz-master, or mistress, and quite a good looking one at that, asked him about the horn of Africa, he said Sudan of course.
Following this there were other mishaps, some by me, some by my third team mate. Ayub was flawless after that 'horny' mistake.Tensions kept mounting round after round, our lost lead staying put, until i got the double whammy question and we were with a decent chance of the title shot. The audience is all clapping loudly, I am their hero, the nice looking lady with the mike is beaming at us like we're all her own sons, and just told her we topped the Board exams or something.
And then I see this cat eyed tiny she devil up on her feet with an ear to ear grin, all the way back in the 10th row or something. Her eyes narrowed down to slits even in all her excitement, hands clapping so fast they're a blur. i recognize her instantly as the younger daughter of one of the teachers at school, whose older daughter had tried so very hard to take my seat on the team, the competitive little vixen. To this day, i don't know the little girl's name, only the elder one's: Sumona. No one could quite pronounce it like she wanted them to, particularly Ayub, so she had this cute but annoying reflex of reminding them how to do it whenever someone asked her name and repeated it to her idiosyncratically. Su-mo-na.

So this chick is clapping her heart away, like you see 34 yr old moms do at Justin Beiber concerts, or twilight screenings. happy like I've never seen anyone be in 8 years now. and 12 years down the line, in the hazy afterglow of a marijuana wave coming down to the breakers, i realize i was responsible for a little kid feeling so bloody happy; even if for a moment, even if for a pointless silly inconsequential thing like school pride, and i realize that for a selected crowd comprised almost exclusively of nerds who didn't have a clue what i was about, i rocked, for that little moment in time.

The extreme, extreme happiness of a little girl i don't know the name of, captured like a snapshot and buried deep inside the cobwebbed corner of my brain, made me feel like a total dude 12 years later. my 10 seconds of fame. the moment of my life where i thought i would make it. the time when i thought i had it all figured out, that nothing in the verse could stop me, defined by that expression of delirious violent silly childish happiness on the face of a little girl. My little dude maker. I think there definitely is, a mathematical theory out there that proves each one of us has our own dude maker, a moment in time when you were THE dude of the entire known universe. Dude maker.

“Chess is an infinitely complex game, which one can play in infinitely numerous and varied ways”—Vladimir Krammik

This and the following two articles in my blog were written with the aim of helping a friend complete his essays for applying somewhere. However, the end results were, at least in my humble opinion, worthy of publication.

A game of chess involves 2 players, if each player has made a move, over 400 possibilities exist for the second move itself. The next move has over 72,000 possible variations ( as can be seen from applying the laws of permutation and combination, but let’s not go into that here); the next move has 9 million options and the fourth move has over 288 billion various versions. At first glance the game of chess certainly seems to have infinite number of ways in which it can be played. However, of these infinite possibilities, only a finite (although large) portion can be said to consist of rational choices. Here rational implies a desire to win the game of chess in question. The individual players concerned may choose to make choices deliberately leading to their defeat in the game, but as long as both parties play with an aim of victory, it can be proven that the number ways the game unfolds is indeed finite. From a more abstract point of view, infinity has no limits; where as the game of chess involves a limited number of pieces moving on a board having a limited number of set positions following a limited set of rules. And the culmination of each such game has to be either an unambiguous win for one of the parties or a draw; wherein each player can play indefinitely without having any hope of a win. The latter course of action can safely be categorised as being irrational. The writer, being an engineer by profession, is not proficient in the ways of intricate logical arguments and knows but two ways in which infinity can be achieved (if such a term as achievement can be applied to the concept) : a division by zero or a recurring function with no upper limit. Take the latter case, an infinite geometric/ arithmetic progression in chess automatically entails a draw. If the parties choose to continue in such a situation, we can safely classify their actions as being irrational and hence the game ceases to be one of chess ( in the classical sense of course) and becomes one of endurance ( the goal being to irritate the other guy into admitting defeat). A division by zero is unlikely to occur where the functions involved are permutation and combination and the limits for the variables involved belong to the set of natural numbers. Now, the humble writer neither claims to be a fervent follower of the game nor a proficient player. However, he hopes it’s not presumptuous of him to assume that a man like Vladimir Kramnik has a rational set of mind at least where the game of chess is concerned. The only conclusion from these assumptions and the rather simplistic arguments he has put forth is that Mr. Kramnik was tending towards the hyperbole when he made the statement and the number of ways in which a game of chess can be played is a finite if gigantic quantity. Some of the other brilliant minds tasked with this assignment may take it upon themselves to elucidate the point the writer has made with mathematical functions and terms that boggle the intellect, however the writer is content with what his humble intellectual faculties have produced.

"A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before"- JF Lyotard

Jean Francois Lyotard in his iconic piece "The Post Modern Condition- a Report on Knowledge" prophesized radical changes in the "research and transmission of acquired learning".

Our generation has been blessed with the opportunity to witness his prophecy take shape, changing the way we perceive, and interact with the world around us. As theorized by Lyotard, knowledge has ceased to be an end in itself, rather it has become a means to an end: information.

In today's world, no one is entirely, truly alone even for a moment. We wake up to the morning news, or the numerous channels on the TV. We are never far from our near and dear ones, and not so dear ones as well. Mobile technology coupled with the huge internet database, makes sure that if you want to, there's no one on earth you cannot reach. We live our lives after a fashion, on the pages of various social networking websites, meeting and familiarizing ourselves with strangers half way across the world. From the moment we wake to the moment we find solace in the arms of sleep, we are never alone. And through all this, we are constantly bombarded with information, both solicited and unsolicited.

This constant barrage of information, has changed our lives in more ways than we can imagine. An average layman of today’s age, has means and the ability to acquire respectable expertise in areas totally unrelated to his primary means of livelihood, because of the ease with which he/she can access the information required. In a manner of speaking, we are the most aware individuals in the short history of mankind.

Every trade we know of has thrived because of this boom in telecommunication. Entrepreneurs can get in touch with prospective investors more easily. Its not uncommon for business partnerships to forged over a distance of thousands of miles. We live a much smaller world than the one our parents knew, at the same time, there is more room for everything.

But how does this make business more complicated than it already was? We've already shown that its EASIER to run a business for you these days. Well, the problem is, its easier for your competitor's to do so too. The customer base you are thinking of targeting would be in the cross hairs of your competitors as well. Its not easy to keep a secret these days, one day you're sitting on a new idea, a gold mine, the next day that idea might be the latest fad on the net, and totally worthless as a commercial venture. Competition might resort to underhanded tactics and with the tools at its disposal, taking a smear campaign worldwide isn't a difficult task at all. With the availability of information, the customer you find yourself facing is a much more demanding one. He knows what other options he has for his money. More than the individual, one has to consider the collective psyche of the masses these days. This psyche has internet and television as its mouthpiece and its information input comes from a billion computer terminals plugged into a database that would eat up a forest the size of California if printed on paper. With new fads like 'stumbledupon' and facebook, you never know what your target base is thinking today and what it may be thinking tomorrow. A truly terrifying position for a business man to be in.

Add to that the fact that with new age, come new laws and restrictions to abide by. Stricter quality norms, more definitive guidelines regarding what may or may not be considered as misleading the customer.

Take the US scene, anyone with a good lawyer can bankrupt a major firm with a lawsuit and can walk away a millionaire. Not that customer grievances are wholly unjustified, but most of the cases would not have seen the light of the day a few decades ago. So, whether you are an upright businessman or not, the running and growth of a business enterprise has definitely become a more daunting and complex task of late.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what we call paradoxes.

 In order to fully appreciate the relevance of this statement in the context of contemporary Indian politics one must first be aware of the statement in its entirety.

" Politicians accuse me of always contradicting; but therein they are my masters; for there is one person more who they contradict-namely, themselves.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life, and just as only the great souls are exposed to passions, it is only the great thinkers who are exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo" [Reference - Soren Kierkegaard's journal, April 22, 1838]

As such, the Indian political, economical and social scene has been full of paradoxes ever since the inception of our fledgling nation. The attempt to eradicate poverty by making every one poorer (as in embracing the socialist ideals) or the oft quoted expression that India is a rich nation full of poor people all point to the natural talent we have of creating grandiose paradoxes.

Ever since the green revolution hit the country, our grain production figures have been more or less on the rise. Yet, while on one hand the ministry of food and environment shows that its granaries are overflowing, we hear increasing reports of deaths from starvation. Madhya Pradesh is not called the Ethiopia of India for no particular reason. The agricultural lobby from our wheat belt has been a prominent vote bank for the taking for a long time now. Successive governments have been announcing consistently higher minimum support prices (MSP) for wheat and rice. This is a surefire way to appease the lobby and keep the votes coming in. The downside is that due to these abnormally high MSPs, most of the produce ends up with the government which has neither the facilities to store it for future consumption, nor the public distribution network needed to dispose of it before it rots. The result: sky rocketing production figures and rising deaths from starvation.

More recently, as the reputation Indian politics gradually drifts towards its nadir, we have been fortunate enough to witness another paradox in the making: the trend of people on the run from the law becoming law makers. The examples of people like Shibu Soren, Syed Shahbuddin etc who have been facing serious criminal charges running for the posts in the state gorvenment, a body which itself is responsible for  maintaining law and order in the state. Although some might like to classify this phenomena as having overtures of irony, the writer personally would like to think of it as a paradox.

However, Kierkegaard might not find these paradoxes to be akin to those he was thinking of when he made that statement. The closest our political scene comes to meeting his idea of a paradox is the creation of an islamic state by a man who thought of himself as a secular leader.

Indians and the PDA hangover

This is a satirical article I wrote for a friend. The article is supposed to be written by someone in 2020, telling us how life has changed with technology in the past ten yrs. But it turned out into something else.

  

 

The young generation in our year of the lord 2020 probably cannot relate to the good old days of ten years ago, when a man still needed a bulky 16" laptop and a dongle to be mobile and connected. Nowadays everywhere you look there is a young punk with a sling around his neck with a two inch cube. Now, readers my age would probably be able to fully appreciate the beauty of fitting a camera, a transmitter, a high powered microchip and what not into that little beauty, we'd have needed a van to drive around that much equipment in my day. I'm sure no one back in 2010 would have even imagined Facebook would be obsolete just a couple of years after Zuckerberg became the Time man of the year. And to know, that all this was made possible by a nerdy Indian post-grad at MIT who open sourced his "sixth sense technology" gives me a warm feeling inside. Despite all this, I am not a happy man in India, in fact I do not think any single man could be happy in India,ever. The reason? The country that spread revolutionary technology to the entire world, killed off corporations by the sheer ingenuity and brilliance of its cheap technology is still hung up on a pre-historic concept like PDA.

No no, I am not referring to the dinosaur era handheld device, I am talking about public display of affection. Last night I was out at 2 am with my regular squeeze, taking a walk in the park. I always like to walk the park after its empty, other wise the feel of the institution is lost. Its a small park, in the middle of the residential complex I live in. The only kind you get to see these days. When people are around, all you see is fluorescent squares of light all over the trees and shrubs , every one is blogging live, kind of makes you wonder why the came to park in the first place. At night, the park is empty, and one can enjoy the beauty of nature unmarred by 3-D screens hanging in mid air all over the place.  Anyways, not to drift astray, me and my girl are out, minding our own business doing what healthy couples on the wrong side of twenties do. Things are looking good when some self appointed insomniac guardian of the great Indian tradition of modesty and abstinence starts shouting  in righteous indignation "what are you two doing out there? don't you know yeh shareefon ka muhalla hai?" By god, you cretin, what kind of a "shareef" stares out of his apartment window at 2 in the morning, waiting to ruin the mood for the first couple that crosses his line of sight?

I mean seriously people, you'd think that fundamentalists and hypocrites like these wouldn't exist in a country that made the internet obsolete, revolutionarized the way people bank and live. The way these hardcore traditionalists are spawning and behaving, you'd think the two and a half billion Indians that outnumber the Chinese 2 to one popped out via immaculate conception. In my opinion, the reason the west dominated and still dominates the world in every aspect (except proliferation of technology and ultra low cost innovation of course) is because they do not waste time and law enforcement money making sure people don't kiss and make out in the street. They found free love keeps the people happy and creative back in the sixties and we still haven't come around. People here are creative, more so than the west (we have to do more with less) but they're not happy. Some times I think this whole charade is just resentment, (I didn't get to do that in my day, and I'll be damned if some young punk rubs it in now) but that's just me. All I know is I am not happy, till I get my PDA.