I’m off…

…to NYC baby! Here’s what’s helping me get into that New York state of mind. (Think I’ve missed anything? Let me know.)

Adios, for now.

3 Weeks in the First World: Seinfeld, Priuses and the Terracotta Army

• America is an incredibly automobile obsessed culture. Perhaps ‘obsessed’ is the wrong word; it implies a voluntary addiction of some sort, and not a necessity. Here, it’s most definitely necessary to have this obsession. Now, I’m no militant environmentalist (to say the least), but you have ask if there isn’t something a bit wrong at the sight of hundreds of single occupant vehicles starting, every morning, at various points in the surrounding suburban areas and heading to more or less the same destination within the downtown Houston area. And this isn’t just with regards to the commute, but everything rather. And I mean everything. Groceries. School. Work. Baby Sitter. Tennis practice hardly a kilometre away. Access to any thing, any service, and any person, requires and, even if it doesn’t, involves, vehicular transport. Outside the downtown area, where no one actually lives by the way, there is no concept of public transport, and everything is spread so far out that access by foot is pretty much unthinkable. All that said, I must say, that it is quite nice to see how cars are supposed to be driven. Strictly within lanes. And really fast. Unlike, say, anywhere I’ve seen in India.
• Also, in this automobile obsessed culture, the type of car seems to point in the broad direction of the type of person driving it. My cousin’s pony tailed Saxophone tutor, for instance, drives up to the house in a Toyota Prius. No surprises there. The soccer moms driving Nissan Titans are a bit confusing, though.
• As I have been telling anybody who’ll listen, I saw Seinfeld! Performing live on stage! You know, with just the spotlight, the microphone and a small black stool with a glass of water on top. And it was bloody good. I thought the guy who opened for him, though, was funnier. Seinfeld took a little time to warm up, and his humour being more of the observational variety, although hilarious and really clever and everything, is not really the RollingOnTheFloorPissingMyselfLaughing (ROTPML) variety. The first guy was definitely ROTPML.
• Seinfeld on Twitter users: “Why say a lot of things to a few people, when you can say nothing to everybody!” Yeah, it was funnier when Seinfeld said it.
• The picture on top of the street named after the bard was taken, by the way, in a charming neighbourhood adjoining Rice University and quite near the downtown area. An area that not only seems nice to walk around in, but where a lot of people actually do. I saw more Priuses here than usual, too. Although to be fair to other neighbourhoods (and owners of other, gas guzzling, albeit cooler, cars) the Prius seemed more like the vanity third, or fourth, car, and the land prices in the Rice Village area are so high that you’d have to be filthy rich to afford houses as big or as widely spread out as in the suburban areas farther away from the downtown area.
• I also happened to see  Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor, a most brilliant exhibition put together by the British Museum that’s currently showing at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. I paid extra (or my aunt did rather) for a portable audio guide, and it was worth totally worth it. They brought over quite a few of the original, almost 7000 strong army of meticulously detailed, slightly larger than life sized terracotta figures that guard the tomb of the megalomaniacal First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Who, by the way, commissioned the project when he was 13, and also thought he was Master of the Universe. Yes, not just master of China, or even of the known world, but the friggin’ Universe. One of the other interesting things I learned was that they, meaning the archaeologists and the like, still haven’t excavated the Emperor’s actual tomb, only the surrounding necropolis. And the reason they haven’t, is because the tomb contains representations of China’s rivers made of Mercury, meaning archaeologists can’t, as of now, actually open it, without poisoning either themselves, or the surrounding rural areas. Quite the wanker, that Qin Shi Huang. He did quite a few ‘useful’ things, too, apparently. He standardized, among other things, the Chinese script, insisting everyone use it (as they still do today), the currency, the system of weights and measures and a bunch of other things. I wonder what would have happened if Ashoka or someone had done the same in India (as in the standardisation bit, not the crazed mausoleum building upon hitting puberty)?
• If you can, do pick up Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The book’s way better than the movie.

Woohoo!

The fascists and the commies lose! Yay!

(But that pseudo-mallu prat Shashi Tharoor wins. God, I hope he doesn’t get any smuger.)

I’m off today to the US for a couple of months and I shall be beaming all the way, because warts and all, Mera Bharat Mahan!

(I’m not making any promises about posting more regularly {or at all}, though.)

New Post

But not here. Here.

because I went out right away and got these tattoos on my eyelids to make it look while I was sleeping that people would think I was awake.

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Hello everyone,

I’ve probably given the impression that this blog’s reached its viable die-able age, since its been ages since I posted anything. Didn’t mean to do that, sorry.

The BC shall live (I’ve come to the conclusion that there are folks who actually read this, and that my stats aren’t just me visiting the site without having logged in).

Meanwhile, do pop in to The Pseudputs Review; it’s a new (ok, not new, but newly active) groupblog a few friends and I have started. We give gyaan, basically. Pop in and join us for various pointed, as well as pointless, discussions.

And who knows, maybe we’ll even move to WordPress when we run out of things to talk about. Fun times ahead!

Yours bitterly,

The Cucumberist

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(I know, lame.

But I think anonymity is an ideal that one must aim at.

A couple of weeks back I had a telephonic interview for a part time job, and at the end of  what I was sure  was something to be reasonably pleased with, they asked me whether I blog.

I said yes.

Put link, they said.

Errr, I stammered, for obvious reasons.

It’s ok, we’re pretty cool, they said.

That’s nice. Here, I said.

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.

.

They never called back.

So much for coolness.)

Happiness is a Good Sending. Bang Bang. Shoot Shoot.

It struck me the other day that I’m half done with college, at IIT anyway. In another period just about as long as the one that’s passed, I’d be done. I’d have a degree and all.

And I must say, it’s been fun.

When I started this blog, I was adamant I didn’t want to end up with an online journal. Get a damn diary, was the exact opinion. But I figured it’s time I broke that little rule of mine, indulged myself a little. I thought I’d narrate an anecdote that I find rather quintessentially ‘insti’, one that happened about a couple of weeks back. Celebrate the halfway mark and suchlike.

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There’s a peculiar Bangalorean verb that I find rather delightful- ‘sending’. To ‘send’ is to um, how should I put it, puff the magic dragon. I have no clue how this innocuous little English verb came to be adorned with such a meaning. I’d love to know though, and for some reason I find its usage incredibly clever.

“Macha, let’s go seendd its da.”

Darned delightful, that.

If only people did graduate theses’ on these kinds of things, instead of postcolonial identities or some such similar rubbish. I’ve always held the opinion that there just isn’t enough scholarship in our country on the fascinating realms of sociolinguistics such as this; Bangalorean stoner lingo. I mean, if this isn’t subaltern studies, then I don’t know what is.

So I was with some folk, Bangalorean and otherwise, in one of the hostels, and we were all ‘sending’, so as to say. It was then that these finer points I’d mentioned earlier, the directions academic scholarship on the usage of English language in India should be heading, occurred. Four of us had suddenly developed an insatiable craving for some tea, and we decided that we must head over to Taramani Gate and get ourselves some of it. It was 11.30pm or so, so the gate couldn’t have been shut yet.

After having had our tea, we re-entered through the gate, grateful for the entrepreneurial acumen of these wily people who lived on the outside, staying up till the wee hours, satisfying the peculiar wants of those who lived inside of the gate; ‘senders’ and ‘muggus’ alike, the IITians.

But lo, the guard wouldn’t let us pass.

He had a book of some sort, a register, it slowly registered upon us (we were slightly ‘off’ it, as you can imagine). He wanted us to write our names and hostel room numbers on it. I was somewhat perturbed; did he know we’d ‘sent’ it? Did we reek of its smell, and also, did I have enough money for Dragon Chicken at Basera?

Suddenly, it struck me.

I grabbed the pen from the guard and scribbled John Lennon in the names’ column of the register. I left the hostel column blank, and signed off as Love. Just love. I have no idea why. I even underlined it.

All you need is love, right?

–

‘Dude, did you see what I just signed as?’ I asked, while walking back, rather pleased with myself.

‘Yep. I signed as Ringo Starr, and Mistake as Paul McCartney’ said Kundi.

‘And you?’ I asked Sample, brimming with glee at this wonderfully impromptu, albeit slightly bizarre tribute we were paying the Fab Four.

‘Oh, I signed as¹ N***** J***** ’ he replied.

He even put in my room number.

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Schieze. Sheisse².

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Good laugh, though.

I took consolation in something Calvin said to Hobbes once, to justify not doing homework and going out sledding. Something like this could lead to regrettable consequences in the short term if say Dean Chandy were for some reason to go over the register, and wonder what 3 of the Beatles were doing with one N***** J*****, and then conclude that this had been a clear case of ‘sending’, thus leading to expulsion, causing arguably, regrettable long term consequences too.

But hey, like Calvin says, in the really, really long term, I’d probably look back at this someday and laugh.

Not to mention get a blogpost out of it.

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1: This part originally also contained my actual name. The effect was somewhat funnier, but let’s just say I’ve decided to grow the fuck up since then . (Yes,  and my scrotum’s become considerably lighter too: happy?)

2: As Kaushik so eruditely points out in the following heated discussion on the comments page, it’s Sheisse, and not Schieze.

Who feels love?

It’s very easy to just say, ‘We’re going to become difficult now and challenge our audience.’ I like my audience. They paid for my swimming pool. I’m not fucking challenging anybody.

Noel Gallagher on Radiohead. Read more here.

Nothing quite like arbit Gallagher quotes on a slow weekend, especially when it involves one of your other favourite bands.

While we’re on the topic, here’s an image of Thom Yorke looking happy and tanned (since such a thing is unheard of, the image has obviously been photoshopped):