Bengaluru - the Interim Post.

I hope I have appeased local rowdies with the usage of 'Bengaluru' in the title. I will now proceed to say 'Bangalore' throughout the post. Adjust maadi. :)

So I am in Bangalore. A proper Bangalore post is creating itself at the moment. It will be unleashed as soon as -

1. it is finished, and
2. a freak - and highly localised - earthquake causes my landlady to move her good self away from her PC.

You see, I am highly internet deprived. My fingers tremble in the night, but there is no keypad to soothe them. My eyes glaze over in expectation, but there is no ugly monitor to stare at. I lech at the three hundred and eighty seven cyber cafes on my way to work, as they beckon to me with their curvaceous modular keypads and their beautiful dark cable modems; my poor financial situation leads me to rebuff their advances. I stare sadly at them for five seconds and then go eat excellent tomato rice (with thick coriander chutney and thicker coconut chutney, with side order of excellent tadka dal) at Imperial Hotel, for the princely sum of eighteen rupees. Yum.

I think I will bring the two-lunch system into fashion. You will eat one lunch, and then you will eat another, just to keep the first one company inside your stomach. Cows may eat eight lunches, because they have four stomachs and of course, for a proper partay you need two lunches for each stomach.

(I am not responsible for any cows keeling over and dying out of indigestion.)

If your digestion is not strong, you have no place in the world I am going to create. The same one where I am going to be Supreme Lord(-ess? Ramu, your opinion?) where I will eat two lunches out of respect for the law (which I have created) and two lunches each for every unfed citizen in my country, just out of the kindness of my heart. I will cry copious quantities of fat, sympathetic tears for them, but I will stop as soon as I get to the puliyodharai, because you know how the rice tends to be quite salty to begin with.

I have seen some lovely sights in Bangalore, including the interestingly named Philistine Auto Repair Works off Old Madras Road, and Bux! Bux! Bux! on Bannerghatta Road, the latter being a bookshop. I have keenly observed its location (in between Chamundeswari tea shop and Chamundeswari Auto Repair) and as soon as I figure out where in this neverending tangle of roads, this bloody Bannerghatta Road is, I will run off and check Bux! Bux! Bux! out.

Strawberry Fields is a nice place to spend a jobless weekend afternoon. There is a nice assortment of good South Indian boys with curly eyelashes and adorable little jiggly paunches in place, who are cunningly attired as METALHEADSSSS. (Ya right.) There is a relaxed atmosphere composed of lots of sun, good egg rolls and a general happy unwashedness.

But seriously, some of the bands are quite nice.

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PS - To Kannada-knowing peoples: I have been faithfully trotting out my extensive Kannada vocabulary consisting of "Oudhu!" "Illa!" and "X Colony olige hogitha?" at regular intervals, to sundry bus-drivers, bus-conductors and bus-terminus Enquiry Officers. Oudhu and Illa have worked ok, but one bus-driver laughed when I asked him whether the bus, X-Colony olige hogitha. How exactly have I screwed up? Kindly be enlightening.

PPS - One excellent side-effect of my luck to always be finding auto-drivers with road-rage problems, is that I may not be able to ask where the loo is, in kannada, I may not be able to order food in kannada, I may not be able to ask for directions in kannada, but if I am pissed off I can shout Nin Hendruna Kaiya! But I have been advised that this is not a smart move. Whattay bore.

Bye.

One Day..

I will write a book.

Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mohammed?

I want to know from anyone who reads my blog- how does one choose one religion for oneself, if one wants to?

On what basis do you evaluate a particular religion? Does it even make sense to 'evaluate' a religion, i.e. examine it using logic and reason, when belonging to a religion is completely dependent on not logic, but faith?

If you insist on examining it critically with logic, in an absolutely unbiased fashion, then you do not have faith. And if you do indeed have unequivocal faith, truly objective criticism is impossible. Consider a devout Catholic attempting an objective evaluation of Catholicism; it simply will not work. Equally applicable to all religions.

Here is the circular trap as I see it -

I've read over fifty accounts of islamic apostates, i.e. people who left Islam, and at least as many of people who've left Christianity, and most accounts of why they left their respective religions are logic-based. I'm finding it difficult to understand how a logical criticism of a religious text can be a valid criticism when religions simply ask you to have faith.

If you are sceptical of it in any way, (one way being attempting a critical evaluation of it) then how exactly do you have faith? And even if you go on to prove successfully, that the primary religious text of a particular religion is logically inconsistent (say it is full of anachronisms and self-contradictions), what exactly have you proved? Your criticism will not make any difference to the devout, for they have faith, and faith is not critical. Your criticism can only make a difference to the skeptics, which makes no difference, because by virtue of being skeptical, they do not have faith to begin with.

So when you have no faith, and yet you cannot criticise, how do you choose a religion?

Or do I have it on backwards, and does the religion choose you?

Regular commenters, please oblige, and lurkers, please make an exception and delurk, pretty please. :) I want as many opinions as I can get. Atheists, agnostics, everyone please come forward.

Thank you.

***

(No disrespect is meant by the title; the title stays as it is because it seems to sum up my problem perfectly.)

I am a Ninja, and you are Not.

Allow me to comment on the weather once more. It is in that blessed twilight moment between summer and winter, where summer seems to pause on its way out and look us straight in the eye, and we have caught that moment, captured it indefinitely in our skin and our eyes. Crisp and cold and so strangely clear in the mornings, with that large white winter sun that simply cannot heat, unexpectedly hot afternoons, where you pull off your sweatshirt, cursing (or if you are a Dilli-person, you point and laugh at the 'Saooth-Indian' who, poor her, is feeling cold already and it isn't even winter yet. Are you reading this, you Saddi-Dilli-type person? POO on you. One day you will call for me in a weak, shaky tenor that comes from chest catarrh, and extend a pale shaky arm to me for help and I will coldly watch and even more coldly laugh, and with infinite pleasure swat your pleading arm away. Ahahahahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.) and chilly nights, where you observe all the work that you have planned for the night, and then you observe all the warm, toasty blankets you have piled up on your bed, and the work does not stand a chance. And you climb into your bed and assume a foetal position and remain in said retarded position until four minutes before class.

I am the first to admit I spent the first winter here freezing my extremities off, drinking much shitty coffee and declaiming loudly to the world in general what a very large craphole University is, and what a much larger unwashed craphole a desert winter is. I never realised what a fan I am of warm, humid, rainy winters (think Madras, think Pondicherry, think Bombay!) until the Jodhpur winter snuck up and stuffed icecubes up all my orifices when I wasn't looking. And left them there for three months.

But, you know, I really like this winter now. I like the cold that brings tears to your eyes (literally), I like the fact that winter clothes beautifully camouflage any and all flab you have gathered eating rasagollas with with every meal. And of course, I like eating rasagollas with every meal.

What I DON'T like is having to hover sneakily in the freezing bathroom to fill my two buckets of hot water every morning before it runs out. HOT SHOWERS, DEAR GOD! By Methuselah, has nobody heard of MODERN PLUMBING?!

But this post has gone in a different direction than intended. No really. Sometimes I do come here with a specific intention in mind; of course, it usually happens that I end up doing happy backflips in an entirely different direction, and remember my original thought only when I am exhausted and flat on my back and dreaming of Honey Nut Crunch ice cream from Baskin Robbins, to satisfy the keening, growling sugar craving I have from doing backflips on the internetz.

Anyhow.

My original intention was to applaud the neat social structure that my University has developed. It appears to follow, unhappily, the standard format of every high-school American show I have ever watched. But it is still a nice, neat social structure. And by neat, I mean dependable also. Like we are a bucket of pondwater where the layers have settled down, and you pick it up and shake it, and when it settles down, the scum is still on top and the gravel is still on the bottom. So this social structure. Nice and exclusive. Each little clique talks to its own little clique and watches the same shows and hugs the same teddybears and dates a generic boyfriend, who wears a generic shirt, and also generic undies, which he will duly display above his generic jeans. Or I may be referring to only the Ballerina-Flats Clique. You know the ones, yes?

"Do you watch Friends? OMFG wasn't Joey so cute, there, where he pulled the same stupid face he's pulled for ten seasons and paused for just the right amount of time and made a deep yet funny comment? OMFGROTFLMAO. LOOOOOOOL. OMG what did you say? You don't watch Friends? Like, how can you not watch Friends, like, where have you been, like, ew."

I am forever put off ballerina flats and white pants, I think.

Look out for them. They have horns and fangs. And straightening irons and hot wax.

I'm the quiet one in the corner, the one in the extra-large hoodie. The one who you know, instantly, is a NINJA.

*Dramatic closing music*

Oh Yay, Vitamin B tablets!

This is a hot, sticky night, cold desert nights are a myth. Suffocation, and the smell of vodka and pineapple juice is not leaving my tshirt. Hairs, too many hairs on my head and they are tired and dying moist, sweaty deaths on my neck, my itchy, salty neck, the one that I would like to cut off and cover carefully with a sheet of cellophane and store in the freezer for 3-4 hours. Allow to set and serve with whipped cream and a sprig of mint on top. 

This taste of salt is everywhere, and MY GOD, WILL EDDIE VEDDER SHUT UP NOW RIGHT NOW, iTunes, iTunes, pause! Pause pause PAUSE pause pause!!!!!!!! Oh no, it hangs, oh please don't hang my project is open like a bombay duck sliced into half on a cold dead slab like itself, but not a slab, a fish, adjust as per taste, and Crawford Market is a smelly, smelly place. Don't believe them when they say it's Historic, because what use is Historic when there is Smelly? They try to con you with that OO LOOK IT'S HISTORIC PLEASE OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND MAKE APPROPRIATE AWED NOISES at Agra too, but you just say I don't care if it's historic, I'm not going in there and two people are dead in there and there is no eternal love cos there's no bloody romance when you're bloody smelly. Being dead is secondary, or tertiary or even quaternary because you have saat janam anyway but I don't know what comes after quaternary or I would have said it. 

If Kurt Vonnegut wasn't an angry man I shall be disappointed with fate, because I Vonne Gut someone too, but I was not blessed with a name like that, was I? No. It would make everything so convenient, like who are you? i am Vonnegut and what do you want? i Vonne Gut.. that is hilarious, that is. LAUGH.

If I could do a keg stand, would it be worth it if I were teetotalled? No. I would have to be totalled. That just goes to show you not to aspire for things that are not within your grasp. ..Grasp is SUCH a satisfying word to say, like 'debilitating' and 'ridDONKulous', which is the way 'ridiculous' should be said, but it is MY way and if you say it like that without my permission I will shoot you with a Colt .22 cos I have no aim, and That Person says you don't need to have aim to shoot with a Colt .22. That other one said I'd suck at shooting too, but that's what they told Gandy before he put on his dishcloth and went to London to see the Queen. Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you do there? I executed my diplomatic responsibility, but that doesn't fucking rhyme now, does it? 

Anyway, that's not what they told Gandy, they told Gandy he SHOULD shoot but he said he didn't wanna. 

Happy birthday Gandy.

Oh your birthday was three days back. Oh shitttt.

Oh no, oh no, Vitamin B...

I Love the Smell of Crazy in the Morning.

One good way to concentrate directionless anger inside you is to read Ann Coulter back to back until you've either kicked the computer screen in or unintentionally redirected the Slice in your mouth to your keyboard via your nose, thereby precluding the ability to scroll to read further.

She says good science and good religion are based on the same principles. She says these principles include the ability to be factually proved.

I'd say WTF, but I have come to the conclusion that quiet understatement is the only way to go here. 

In connection, I think some women are meant to talk and be heard and some women are meant to be quiet and look pretty. Ann Coulter looks like a skinny blond horse -  a fairly pretty horse, but a horse nonetheless - so I was momentarily perplexed as to what to do with her. I have come to the conclusion that she could be a potted palm.  Inoffensive, quiet and pretty in an anaemic, apologetic way. Hotel-doorway-ficus-plant. One would put Coulter's feet in the planter and fill up with good nutritious mud. Then one would stretch her arms out and fertilise them. Water regularly until green shoots are seen. 

If she remained quiet, people would pass her by without comment. If she began talking, little boys would pee in her and people would surreptitiously dump bad Paneer Butter Masala in her. I often wish that this could happen to her in real life.

I grew a plant when I was six, as part of a school assignment. It was a little kidney bean. I put it in a plastic cup (sorry, I didn't know of Al Gore.. Not that anything has changed now that I do.) and filled it with cotton and arranged my bean artistically in the centre. Then I watered it and watched it night and day like a hawk (Would I be that mum, the one giving her kindergartener kid advanced algebra lessons?). My bean cooperated commendably, textbook-fashion (shoots on day 1, lengthening on day 2) until the third morning  when I was to take it to school where it would sit on a shelf and compete in size, colour, positioning aesthetic, length of shoot, shotput, weightlifting and 100m sprint with all my classmates' beans. But when I picked it up and did the final rearrangement, the shoot broke off the bean. I was unfazed, reckless and not excessively  encumbered with scruples.

I stuck it back with fevikwik. 

What? 

I was discovered when it remained the exact same size for the next three days when the other beans in class continued to show off, pushing out fat little shoots of suspicious length in an obscenely enthusiastic manner with no consideration for the delicate sensibilities of their disabled brother. When confronted with an accusation of Sproutal Malpractice, I maintained at that time - and this continues to be my official position - that my bean was simply suffering from performance anxiety. 

Modern parenting is a fucking headache. 

It is an indicator of delicious weather that your first reaction to it is the barely controllable urge to tear off your clothes and run through the sprinklers in the football field. Or anywhere. Personally I prefer sprinkler-dampened football fields. Temporary insanity is uplifting, but hot asphalt will bring you down to earth, which would be ok if the earth weren't so skin-peelingly, nose-shrivellingly, hair-fryingly hot. In any case, I do not run (not dignified, and my limbs protest and jerk about stupidly in different directions. I look like a 1956 washing machine that's come to life without notice. The day I run in a cohesive fashion, I will run in public. This excuse may or may not be a poor cover up for my sudden and inexplicable desire to own Juicy Couture trackpants.)

Oh, and I do not go naked, because my jiggly bits are shy, unlike my talky bits.

When my throat gets very dry and I keep talking, I sound like Billie Holiday. (At this point, a friend wishes to record her rather offensively strong dissention; apparently I sound like an aging bullfrog. To my good friend I say my blog, my opinion. Go make your own blog. Gngngngngn)

Modern American biology textbooks are enjoyable for the reason that they're very, perhaps too approachable; they make complex discussions of mitochondrial function sound like something that can be learnt off a Magic School Bus episode. You're always left with the vague but persistent feeling that it's got to be more complicated than that! It is for the exact same reason that I dislike American Physics textbooks; they make me feel like an idiot for having whimpered miserably at the mere mention of Physics my entire life. IT WASN'T THAT EASY, OK?!

The world is slowly and inescapably moving towards anarchy. One good way to prepare your children for this is to teach them to hunt for their own food. Place a Milano biscuit packet across the room and have your child stealthily stalk it with silent grace until the perfect moment where he (or she) may attack and be sure to succeed. Then take the packet from them and eat all the biscuits in front of their eyes. What? You're bigger, it's the law of the jungle. 

Sleep appears to be a good idea, but I won't really know for sure until tomorrow morning, will I? Unless there are larger, more distant repercussions unknown to me now, which I will be sure to record here for your benefit in the  last few moments of my life. 

Bye.

Revolutions begin with Haikus in Loos.

Sometimes you need a template that matches the mood (mood = dark, not constipated; also, NO, the mere reference to a toilet in the header does not mean you're invited to make toilet jokes. I've heard them all, anyway. I've even made a few.)

Speaking of headers, many thanks to this girl, whose habit of arming herself with permanent markers and skulking around communal bathrooms occasionally produces interesting results. ;) Welcome to National League of the Underperforming, Jodhpur - even our showers are educational. As the man has rightly said, Revolutions begin in the Bathroom*. 

We are toying with the idea of doing a whole series of these. 

If you were religiously inclined, for example, you would no doubt appreciate this little effort in that direction (I cater to the masses; after all, it has been so correctly said, pee is the great equalizer*) : 

And now I sit me down to wee

Dear God, I hope the seat is clean

I hope the pot, of proof, is free

Of someone, earlier, having been.

Haiku enthusiasts? 

one stream of water

showerhead blocked (surprise?)

bath will still happen.

also,

O soap that vanished,

i left you on the wash-stand!

soap thief!! i smite thee.

More as and when inspiration/insomnia strikes, or public enthusiasm/support is shown. 

Oh and before I forget - Revelsign, this post is dedicated to you. 

Please don't kill me. I couldn't resist. :D

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*Or Charles Dickens did, only may have used the words 'Charity' and 'Home' instead. Quiet down, nitpickers, I aim to capture the spirit of quotes; accuracy is SO 1997.

*Susanna Moodie in Life in the Clearings versus the Bush, 1853 (though wrongly attributed to Thomas Carlyle) and she was talking about death, but it's a fairly flexible phrase, no? Oh shut up.