The Deep Cut

It is that time of year, when the national dress code for guys is a skin-tight shorts, borrowed from the rickshaw-puller's son who lives nearby. On top, you display your manly shaven/unshaven chest out to the world. If unshaven, the chest-hair should be of contrasting bright colours - such as magenta, yellow or sea green - if shaven, then this chain of thought is rendered pointless. The vest that used to be, better known as baniyan (no Noelle, not banyan. That's a tree!), is so deformed that you use it as a belt instead. Your flip-flops are torn but you're unwilling to let them go.. But then all that don't matter, because you're coloured entirely in black, filthy green and silver and it won't be making any difference to an unassuming onlooker, even if you go naked right now. The festival of colours, ladies and gentlemen, is an official license for people to launch a colourful assault on each other. And it always brings back sweet, and some bitter-swee...

Oh Bombay! As I otherwise immerse myself completely for the cause of foul-smelling genetically modified organisms in the lab, there are only the sudden, last minute get-away plans that have been my saving grace for quite sometime now. And my saviour is one of my junior-school friends, who is now working for Fractal Analytics . Posted in Mumbai, he resides just a few kilometers further on the JVLR, making it easy for me to make quick escapes from the lab. This Saturday, with the plausible excuse being meeting a third friend, I skip my preconceived afternoon catnap to gear up for another night out with the guys. After lazily browsing for the bus routes for half an hour on Google Navigation, I called a cab-service, only to take an auto-rickshaw finally. The auto-man, for some very odd reason, immediately asked me if I had a girlfriend. (I can't possibly be that handsome now, can I?!) Sensing weirdness, I cut my route short and forcefully asked him to drop me at the IIT ...

In a first, the worst book I've ever read, got converted into an excellent on screen adaption!  Kai Po Che . 3 Mistakes of My Life. Reading the book was my first big mistake, but thankfully watching the movie wasn't. In fact, to a certain extent, Chetan Bhagat redeemed himself. But then we always knew that the novelist would do better as a Bollywood screenplay writer, didn't we? I mean, my friend Abhirup has already thought of the placement of songs (1 comic, 2 romantic, 1 bromantic, 1 sad, 1 item number and 1 song on national integration) for his novel Two States, written on the great Indian matrimony scenario. His best till now. The story was a little paced, but that happens when its an adaption. Look what happened to the Dan Brown adaptations - compared to the books, the movies, with their alternate explanations, turned out of a lesser quality. '3 Mistakes..' was originally meant to be a tragedy, as it should, with all the cataclysmic events that weste...

As I celebrated the new year's eve on train this year, I found myself among a band of babblers for company. It consisted of a precocious girl of 18, her dad: by the way he spoke things, probably he's almost the same age as his daughter, and the mom: more than double the age of everyone else's combined. There were others too. Another dad and mom in their mid 50s, without the children.. and a Marhwari boy, caught in between emotions ranging from a pitiful 'AAAAH!' to an embarrassed 'Ooh!' You're probably wondering why I didn't take up a flight. But one should know that I find airway journeys, at the zenith of the most boring things to be done in the modern world. And you wouldn't ask, if you'd have read my earlier train experiences here  and  here . So, where was I? The girl's family, yes, was the kind we see in game shows, reality TV shows and somewhere among the spectators of the cookery shows where the hostesses exude doctrines ...

'Are you pissing?' That particular sentence from 'Life of Pi' brings back memories. They are the 'not-so-worthwhile' snippets and clippings from our mutual lives that I have decided to keep. And now that they have resurfaced, I'm going to force them upon you guys. You see before I start writing something, I think of you. And then I desperately try to bring out the essence of a memory that has left me, or is leaving me in a slow, painful process. The feeling is akin to be retiring to an armchair in old age, and staring out of the window overlooking the misty garden in winter. It is a soothing feeling and a grievous one too, both at the same time. Once I begin to write about it, it occurs to me that this is going to be a rare post. In a way that it is partly gender-specific. Men may appreciate some aspects of it more, while the ladies will have to do a little bit of guesswork and bank on their imagination out there. But it is in no way, a sexi...

So, apparently I'm at risk. Not just me, all you 20 something youth of the second most populous democratic constitution in the world. You are at risk. All you twitter addicts, facebook fans, the blogger junta - everyone is after all, at risk. But why are we at risk? Well, the great constitution that boasts of (wait, lets take a deep breath here; and begin) Sovereignty, Secularism, Liberal democracy and Republicanism, is kind of turning onto itself, more often nowadays. Why, is the pressure of a billion people's antagonistic mindset, too much to handle for the government we elected? Following the twitter ticker nowadays really shows how many people out there are actually aware of the contemporary situation in the country. They are the other kind of people I guess, the ones who won't have to look up into the dictionary to get the precise meaning of the 'strong' words I mentioned above. Most people, I believe, would ignorantly flash their wrongly-spelled voter...

I had never been to Nagpur before, so when Divya asked (read demanded ) us to come visit the Orange city of India over the period of Diwali holidays, I was the first one to accept (read succumb ). Now obviously, there wasn’t much in Nagpur to attract. There were some strings attached of course! First, we all love to travel and have at least been to each other’s hometowns: Rahul’s Calicut, Noelle’s Margao, Reshu’s Kharagpur, Mine and Rupsa’s Kolkata; and the only place left on our list was that of Divya’s. Secondly this was, predictably, the last major trip that we made together, before leaving the university. Thus big words like ‘sentiment’ was cited quite frequently. The emotions attached to this clause, could perpetually be read between the lines throughout the grandly scripted trip to the Orange city. ... We celebrated Divya’s birthday on 10th midnight. We stayed up till late, more because we were watching Gregory Peck’s vintage classic GUNS OF NAVARONE on the h...